Body Count

1 Table of Contents - 1 - body Count Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the War on Terror Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan First international edition (March 2015) - 2 - Table of C ontents body Count Casualty Figures aft er 10 Years of the War on Terror Iraq Afghanistan Pakistan First in te rnational edition - Wash ington DC, Berlin, Ottawa - March 2015 tr anslated from German by Ali Fathollah-Neja d available from the editors: Inte rnati onale rzte f r die Verh tung des Atomkrie ges / rzte in soziale r Verantwortung (German affiliate), Berlin PSR: Physic ia ns for Socia l Responsib ili ty (US American affiliate), Was hington DC PGS: Physic ians for Global Survival (Canandian affiliate), Ottawa of IPPNW (Inte rnational Physic ia ns for the Preventi on of Nuclear War) hardcopies: (print on demand) ISBN-13: 978-3-9817315-0-7 - 3 - Table of Contents Table of Contents Pr eface by Dr.

2 Hans-C. von Sponec k .. 6 Foreword by Physicians for social Responsibility (USA).. 8 Foreword for t he international edition - by IPPNW Introduction ..11 Executive Iraq body Count in Iraq ..19 Different Methods of Counting .. 21 Fr agmen tary Observations .. 23 Realistic Estimates through Rep resen tative Polls .. 25 The Lancet Study of 2006 .. 26 The WHO Study .. 28 Possibl e Distortions in Mortality Studies .. 28 The Question of Who Are the Perpetrators .. 28 Summary 30 Ostrich Policy .. 33 Incomplete IBC Criticism of the Lancet 34 Evidence of a Gross Underestimation by 36 Lancet Study Figures Appear Mor e Plausible .. 38 Deficient and One-Sided Reporting .. 39 Examples of Large Gaps .. 40 The Numbers War : On the Dispute Sur rounding the Credibility of the Lancet Studies ..43 The Lancet 43 Spontaneous Rejec 44 Barel y Disputed Among Experts .. 45 Criticism from Scientist s .. 46 Main Stree t Bias.

3 47 40 Households per Day Not Feasible .. 47 No Response to Critical Questions .. 48 Dec rease in Chil d Mortality .. 48 Low Pre-War Mortality .. 48 Danger of Underestimation Greater than Danger of Overestimation .. 49 General Doubts in Rep res en tative Methods .. 50 The IFHS Study .. 50 Flaws of the IFHS Study .. 51 Poli tically Motivated Restr iction .. 52 Who Did the Killing? .. 53 Poli tical Attacks against the Authors of the Lancet Studies .. 53 Justified Criticism .. 55 Summary .. 56 Meti culous, But Late: A New Mortality Study on the Iraq War ..56 Core Details of the Stud y .. 57 Comparing the PLOS and Lancet Studies .. 58 - 4 - Table of Contents Reasons for the Difference Between the PLOS Study and Earlier Studies .. 58 Adjustmen ts for Migration in the PLOS Study .. 59 Consensu s .. 61 Res ponse Rate .. 62 Pr oblems with the Cluster Selec 62 Responses to the PLOS Study .. 63 Afghanistan Estimates of the Number of War Deaths in Afghanistan from October 7, 2001 to December 31, 2011.

4 65 Civilians .. 66 Directly Killed Civi lians .. 66 Indirectly Killed Civi lians .. 69 Killed Combatants .. 69 Killed Afghan Secur ity Forces .. 70 Killed ISAF and OEF Soldiers .. 70 Killed Staff of Private Secur ity Contractors .. 71 Killed Taliban .. 71 Afghanistan .. 74 Security For ce s Killed in Afghanist an .. 74 Insurgents Killed in 75 Civilian Employees of the US Governmen t Killed .. 76 Journalists Killed in Afghanistan .. 76 Civilians Killed in Afghanistan .. 76 Abbreviations .. 79 Pakistan Overview: Pakista 81 Journalists Killed in 82 Victims of the War on Terror in Pakistan .. 84 The Most Important Areas of Conflict aside from the War on Terror :.. 85 1,842 terrorist att ack s in which 1,395 persons were killed.. 86 An Assessmen t of the General Data Situation: .. 87 Summary .. 89 Crowd Killings .. 90 Expansion of the Man Hunt .. 90 Transparency 92 Tough Guy Obama .. 92 A Deceived 93 Festive Parties as 93 Disregard for International 94 Authors / Contributors.

5 96 Pictu re Credits .. 97 List of Acronyms .. 97 - 5 - Preface I believe the perception caused by civilian casualties is one of the most dangerous enemies we face. U. S. General Sta nle y A. McCrystal in his in au gural speech as ISAF Commander in June 1 Spencer Ackerman, NATO-C au sed Civilian Casualties Increasing in Afghanistan, The Washi ngton Indepe ndent, April 16, 2010. - 6 - Preface Preface Dr. Hans-C . von Sponeck The Multinational Force (MNA) in Iraq, the NATO International Securi- ty Assi stance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF-A), also in Afghanistan, have carefully kept a running to tal of fatalities they ha ve suf fered. However, the military s only interest ha s been in counting their bodies: 4,804 MNA soldiers ha ve died in Iraq bet ween March 2003 and February 2012, the da te when the body counting stopped.

6 As of early end 2014, ISAF and OEF soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan since Since and other foreign military boots are only intermittently and secretly on the ground in Pakistan, mainly in the northern tribal areas, there are no body Count statistics for co alition force c asua lties availa ble for P akistan. The pictu re of physically wounded military personnel for both war theatres is in- complete. Only the military is identified: (a) 32,223 were w ounded during the 2003 Iraq invasion and its aftermath, and (b) until November 2014 were wounded in No figures are known for mental disorders involving military per sonnel who ha ve been deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan a nd Pakistan. Officially ignored are casua lties, injured or killed, involving en emy combatants and civilians .4 This, of course, comes as no sur pris e. It is not an oversight but a deliberate omission.

7 The authorities ha ve kept no known records of such death This would ha ve destroyed the arguments that freeing Iraq by military force from a dictatorship , removing Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and elimina ting safe-ha vens for terrorists in Pakistan s tribal areas ha s prevented terrorism from reach ing the homeland, improved global secur ity and advanced human rights, all at defendable However, facts are indeed stubborn. Governmen ts and civil society know now that on all counts these assertions ha ve proved to be preposterously false. Milit ary ba ttles ha ve be en won in Iraq and Afghanistan but at enormous costs to human secur ity and trus t among na tions. One must not forget the financial costs .7 The 21st century ha s seen a los s of innocent civilian life at an unprecedented scale, especially in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

8 Nobody should even da re to ask the 2 See iCasualitie : Iraq Coalitio n Casualty Count , available at http://icasualtie 3 See Breitbart Newsletter /2014/11/11/over-20k- so ld ier s-wounded-in-a fg han-w ar-t heate r/ 4 In 2011, the Brussels Tribunal (BT) convened an in te rnational conference in Ghent (Belgium) on Iraq i academia. It reveale d that 449 academics had been murdered sin ce the U. in vasion in 2003. Neither the occupation authoritie s nor the government of Iraq carried out an in vesti gatio n of these crimes. 5 Former U. S. Defense Secreta ry Donald Rumsfeld in his memoirs Known and Unknown (P enguin Books, 2011) refers to Iraq i death squads and secta ria nis m as cau ses of civilian casualtie s. This is not wrong. He omits, however, any reference to U. S. or coalit ion contributions to the death of Iraq i civilians. 6 Former U. S. President George W. Bush concluded in his memoirs Decisio n Poin ts (Virginia Books, 2010): I did not see how anyone could deny that lib erati ng Iraq ad vanced the cause of human rights.

9 7 Joseph E. Stigli tz, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Economic s, and Lin da J. Bilmes pointed out in 2008 out that before the Iraq in vasion, au thoritie s assumed a cost of $50 billion. Their own estimate came to $3 trillion, a figure which today is considered too low and likely to be ex- ceeded when final accounts are available . See Joseph E. Sti gli tz & Lin da J. Bilmes, The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Ir aq Conflic t, Norton, 2008. - 7 - Preface question whether it was worth it! As independent jour na lis t Nir Ros en noted, the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis are not better off, [..] the children who lost their fathers aren t better off, [..] the hundreds and thousands of refu- gees are not better off. 8 The IPPNW body Count publication must be seen as a significant contribution to na rrowing the gap bet wee n reliable es timates of victims of war, especially civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and tendentious, manipulated or even fraudu- lent accounts.

10 These ha ve in the pa st blurred the pictu re of the magnitude of death and destitution in these th ree countries. Subjecti ve and pre-conceived re- porting certainly is a seri ous matter. This includes the dissemina tion of deliberate - ly falsified information. In the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, there are many examples of manipulated fact s. The Department of Defense s short- lived (2001/02) Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) is one stark example of gov- ernment-generated mis- and dis-information meant to influence public opini on in supporting its I raq With this publication the public becomes aware of how difficult it ha s been to grasp the real dimensions of th ese wars and how rare independent and non- pa rtisan casua lty assessments ha ve been. For governments a nd inter-governmental organizations, the IPPNW review represents a powerful aide m moire of their legal and moral responsibility to hold perpetrato rs accountable.