How Many Civilians Have Died Due to Violence in Iraq?
The New England Journal of Medicine presents the findings of an Iraqi study of the number of civilian deaths due to violence since the Liberation. It’s not 601,027 as the Lancet study proposed. It’s not 500,000. Or 400,000. Or… well, you get the idea.
ABSTRACT
Background Estimates of the death toll in Iraq from the time of the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 until June 2006 have ranged from 47,668 (from the Iraq Body Count) to 601,027 (from a national survey). Results from the Iraq Family Health Survey (IFHS), which was conducted in 2006 and 2007, provide new evidence on mortality in Iraq.
Methods The IFHS is a nationally representative survey of 9345 households that collected information on deaths in the household since June 2001. We used multiple methods for estimating the level of underreporting and compared reported rates of death with those from other sources.
Results Interviewers visited 89.4% of 1086 household clusters during the study period; the household response rate was 96.2%. From January 2002 through June 2006, there were 1325 reported deaths. After adjustment for missing clusters, the overall rate of death per 1000 person-years was 5.31 (95% confidence interval [CI], 4.89 to 5.77); the estimated rate of violence-related death was 1.09 (95% CI, 0.81 to 1.50). When underreporting was taken into account, the rate of violence-related death was estimated to be 1.67 (95% uncertainty range, 1.24 to 2.30). This rate translates into an estimated number of violent deaths of 151,000 (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006.
Conclusions Violence is a leading cause of death for Iraqi adults and was the main cause of death in men between the ages of 15 and 59 years during the first 3 years after the 2003 invasion. Although the estimated range is substantially lower than a recent survey-based estimate, it nonetheless points to a massive death toll, only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis.
OK, so I’m turning loose the wonks to determine if this study has any validity. One thing I note from Table 2 is that there were no reported murders in the pre-invasion period. Seems odd.
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Well the mid point number would be 165,000 which is pretty bad. even more so since it represented only about 1/2 the time of the war. So let’s call it 330,000 dead so far.
[Editor: Can't read or do math. Must be a liberal. The estimate was for March 2003 through June 2006. It's been eighteen months since that time frame, not half which would be 29. So, using crude methodology, an additional 75,000 have died.]
Doesn’t matter what the number is. The point should be that these civilians were mainly killed by their own country-men or by AQ. When the US toppled Sadamm, the population could have chosen peace and prosperity, instead they chose war and poverty. Not our problem.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the - Web Reconnaissance for 01/10/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
Editor, your crude methodology ignores the fact that the period after the study included the most violent months of the war.
And, even ignoring the Lancet study, 100,000-200,000 dead by violence in the first 3 years is a huge number.