Welcome
Conventional wisdom in American politics focuses only on American costs in the war in Iraq: the casualties to U.S. soldiers, the financial costs, and sometimes the strategic costs. But the human cost to the Iraqis themselves are nearly ignored in political discourse, the news media, and intellectual circles. This site is a corrective to those oversights. We present empirical reports, studies, and other accounts that convey and assess the consequences of war for the people of Iraq. John Tirman, Executive Director, MIT Center for International Studies
Recent
First-hand reports say instability, violence persist
Late April bombings in Iraq draw the news media's attention back to the country. As many predicted, the end to the subsidy of the "Awakening Councils" appears to be one source of new violence. Meanwhile, more eyewitness reports indicate how fragile the situation is. "We didn’t create a paradise in Iraq; we created a hell," journalist Nir Rosen told Amy Goodman in April. "It’s still pretty bad for most Iraqis, in terms of water, electricity. There are still explosions. . . . Prime Minister Maliki is creating kind of his own Republican Guard, an extralegal group of elite, thousands of soldiers. They act with impunity, above the law." See the interview.
Rosen cites the recent Refugees International report on the displaced, which notes, that the refugees and internally displaced "remain reluctant to go back due to lack of security, the creation of ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, and poor government services." Read the report
ABC News poll in Iraq shows continuing civilian distress, opposition to U.S. invasion
An ABC News survey (March 2009) in Iraq conducted by D3 Systems shows improvement in some categories, such as belief in democracy and overall security, but some surprising levels of discontent and lack of basic human services. As NGOs like Oxfam have reported, access to clean water, medical care, and other basic amentities exists for only 30-40% of the population. More than half believe the 2003 U.S. invasion was wrong, 70% believe the U.S. has "carried out responsibilities" badly during the war; and only 18 percent believe the U.S. is now playing a positive role in Iraq. One-quarter of all Iraqis, and much higher numbers of Arabs, said they witnessed "unnecessary violence" against Iraqis by U.S. forces recently.
Ethnic tensions persist: More than half of Sunnis say their lives are bad today; among Arabs, more than 40% still say insecurity is their major concern; dramatically growing numbers live in ethnically "pure" neighborhoods; and overwhelming percentages of Arabs oppose Kurdish control of Kirkuk.
The survey had a relatively low response rate, 62%, indicating that the responses they did receive do not reflect broader discontent, and Sunni populations appear to be under-represented, but neither ABC News nor D3 released all relevant sampling data. The data they did release and its analysis is here.
Iraq War widows in distress, says N.Y. Times, and number 740,000
"As the number of widows has swelled during six years of war, their presence on city streets begging for food or as potential recruits by insurgents has become a vexing symbol of the breakdown of Iraqi self-sufficiency," reports the New York Times (Feb. 23). "As the war has ground on, government and social service organizations say the women’s needs have come to exceed available help, posing a threat to the stability of the country’s tenuous social structures." There are some 740,000 war widows, the report says, including those from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and Desert Storm in 1991.
That is one of every eleven women from the age of 15 to 80. Given the population bulge in the 20-40 age range that would be affected by the current war, and the high numbers of young men killed who are not married, the estimate of widows translates into a very high mortality figure. For example, if half the widows are from the current war, and one-third of those who have died as a result of the war are not married--both conservative assumptions--then more than 555,000 have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent violence. That figure would not include the number of women and children who have died as a result of the war's privations or from direct violence.
The Times has generally been quite cautious in its reporting on the war's human costs, so this article represents a breakthrough in its journalism. Read it here.
Two weeks later the Times reported on mental health studies done in Iraq among women, finding that 17 percent of those surveyed are suffering from serious, war-related mental illness. Read the March 7 article. It is based in part on a large household survey conducted by the World Health Organization. Asecond report, by Oxfam, notes that 75% of widows are not getting pensions owed to them. Read more.
Claims of "victory" and the human cost in the Bush years
A new analysis of the total fatalities in the Iraq war during the presidency of George W. Bush demonstrates that the likely number is between 800,000 and 1.3 million. The analysis appears in The Nation (Feb. 16, 2009) and can also be read here. It has been translated into four languages and has appeared in more than 3,000 publications and on-line websites.
Reporter Tom Ricks adds that the war seems far from over. Read his commentary.
Iraq "reconstruction" a failure, says U.S. report; corruption probe widens
A New York Times investigation(February 15) finds that deep corruption of U.S. military officers in Iraq may be responsible for wasting tens of millions of dollars and taking bribes of $10 million. Some 35 Americans have already been convicted in the probe, which is now reaching up to higher levels in the U.S. army. "Several criminal cases over the past few years point to widespread corruption in the operation," says the investigation. Read more.
Separately, a comprehensive history of the U.S. experience in Iraq finds that the rebuilding effort was "crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure." The report, by a special U.S. inspector general, depicts chaotic, incompetent management and partisan politics as undermining the more than $100 billion spent. At best, it concludes, the reconstruction will merely replace what the U.S. invasion destroyed in infrastructure. Read the report. The Dec. 14 New York Times story on the report is here.
New videos show the drama of human insecurity
Filmmakers are increasingly posting new videos of the plight of Iraqis and the conduct and consequences of the U.S. war. These accounts go well beyond conventional news sources, which have been downplaying news from Iraq and never covered the human cost adequately. Among the independent videos recently found is one from the "Winter Solider" conference (from the American News Project, which has several from Iraq); a treatment conveying the misery in Iraq in graphic imagery; an in-your-face rendition of U.S. operations challenging the usual narrative form; and one dissecting the "pre-jaded" soldiers and the cultural conditioning to be in combat.
Detention centers unchecked, says parliamentarian
Iraq's notorious detention centers---frequently a place of torture and disappearances---may be more numerous than previously thought. An Iraqi Member of Parliament, Mohammad Al-Dainy, has told the ICRC and others that the detention centers number 420. The State Department's human rights report on Iraq has charged the Interior Ministry, the overseer of the detention centers, with mutliple violations of human rights in those facilities. See the State Department's report. Human Rights Watch has also decried the situation, repeatedly, and has called on the Bush administration to take action. Some 17,000 Iraqis now in U.S. detention centers will be handed over to Iraqi authorities---possibly the Interior Ministry---in January, and concern for their safety runs high. A U.S. general says 12,000 of the 17,000 are essentially harmless and should be released.
Refugee policy a "failure" as displaced Iraqis fear returning home -- new reports
An October 2008 article from a Los Angeles Times correspondent reports that there is still a net outflow of professionally skilled Iraqis. This confirms earlier reports and analyses of the continuing refugee crisis.
(1) The millions of Iraqi refugees in the region "remain stranded, jobless and deprived of essential services, while the Iraqi government and the wider international community have failed in their responsibilities and are ill prepared to cope with a new refugee crisis, should it occur," says a new assessment from the International Crisis Group (July 10). Up to 5 million Iraqis have been displaced by the war. Two million or more are in Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Facing increasing poverty, says the report, and "with little to lose and nothing to look forward to, refugees could become radicalized and more violent; crime, which already has reached worrying levels in host countries, could rise. "
(2) The reduced violence in Iraq has not resulted in large-scale returns of refugees and internally displaced persons, because Iraqis do not regard their homeland as safe. This first-hand report by foreign correspondent Anna Badkhen (July 29) provides some insights on this lack of confidence in Iraq's security situation.
(3) A comprehensive analysis of the issue of Iraqi displaced and security from the Brookings Institution, The Looming Crisis: Displacement and Security in Iraq, released in August 2008.
(5) The International Organization for Immigration has been interviewing returnee families, 212 in all from abroad, and has this comprehensive report on who they are.
(6) Roberta Cohen provides a analytic overview of the displaced persons issue in the American University International Law Review , Autumn 2008.
"We were hiring terrorists": report on the Awakening militias
The quandary of what to do with the Sunni militias supported by the U.S. is becoming acute--the U.S. will stop payments to them this autumn, and the Iraqi government is unable or unwilling to absorb more than a handful into the police or army. As a result, tens of thousands of former insurgents will essentially be on the loose again, with arms and anger at the ready. Read journalist Anna Badkhen's eyewitness report.
New assessment shows gross under-reporting of war deaths
A worldwide survey of war deaths in 13 different countries from 1955 - 2002 shows that mortality accounts from "passive surveillance"--e.g., newspaper reporting--capture only one-third of actual deaths. The research, published in June in the British Medical Journal, thereby confirms that "active surveillance"--household surveys of the kind produced bythe Iraq Mortality Study--are more reliable. Read the article, and this report from the science journal Nature.
Polling analyst: Iraqis want U.S. troops out
In July 23 testimony before a U.S. House subcommittee, University of Maryland pollster Stephen Kull reviews the surveys done in Iraq that ask Iraqis about the U.S. occupation and potential troop withdrawal. "It is clear that the Iraqi people are quite eager for the US to lighten its military footprint in Iraq," Prof. Kull concluded. "More importantly, it appears that they are eager to regain their sense of sovereignty. As long as they do not have this sense, they are likely to continue to have a fundamentally hostile attitude toward all aspects of the US presence in Iraq." Read his testimony.
Juan Cole on "The Real State of Iraq"
A leading scholar of the Middle East, Professor Juan Cole of the the University of Michigan, provides a succinct overview of the situation in the country today from his June 22 blog, Informed Comment. Cole, a historian, is also a Research Affiliate of the MIT Center for International Studies.
Special munitions used by U.S. may be having deadly effects on children, say Iraqi doctors
A report from Fallujah adds to the health care crisis afflicting war-torn Iraq: the mortality rate for children seems to have risen, possibly as a result of special munitions used there. Read the story. The effects of depleted uranium are widely debated and as yet not fully understood, but there is evidence of deleterious effects on those closely exposed. See WHO fact sheet, and this article reporting a study of Gulf War veterans. The other substance in the Fallujah report is white phosphorous, which the U.S. military acknowledged was used in Fallujah. The extreme toxicity of white phosphorous is not disputed.
Huge scale of suicides and PTSD among U.S. soldiers gets new attention
The alarming rate of suicides and suicide attempts by American soldiers who are serving or have served in Iraq is finally receiving new attention. A RAND study published in April estimates the number of those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at 300,000. Reports by CBS News and others peg the suicide rate at 120 per week in 2005, with 1000 attempts per month for those in medical care facilities of the Veterans Administration. (For more, read this report.) The question is, why is this rate so high, higher even than the Vietnam War? Is there something in the Iraq War that is creating more trauma, and how does this relate to the human cost of the war for Iraqis? One explanation is the violence itself. Watch this PBS "News Hour" report. (May 2008) And see the TIME magazine cover story, June 5, 2008.
Oil price explosion due in part to Iraq war, says World Bank expert
The colossal run-up in oil prices worldwide---with devastating impacts on the developing world---are mainly due to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says an oil economist and World Bank adviser. Read this report. If true, the world food crisis and fears of a global recession are also attributable to the war. The human cost of the war is, as a result, global in scope. As Michael Klare of Hampshire College explains, it is a trend that has been unfolding for years.
Child welfare remains parlous, says UNICEF
An early May situation review by UNICEF's Radikha Coomaraswamy finds that 50 percent of children cannot attend school and only 40 percent have access to safe water. "We can’t wait for a stable security environment to deliver humanitarian aid because it’s at crisis point,” says Coomaraswamy, the special representative for children and armed conflict, noting that violence is particularly troublesome for children, some of whom are now soldiers. See her comments on video. Read UNICEF's report on children in Iraq, 2007.
After 5 years of war, "no let-up in the humanitarian crisis"
"Despite limited improvements in security in some areas, armed violence is still having a disastrous impact," says a new report from the International Committee for the Red Cross. "Civilians continue to be killed in the hostilities. . . Millions of people have been forced to rely on insufficient supplies of poor-quality water . . . Many families include people who have been forced by the conflict to flee their homes, leaving those left behind with the daily struggle of trying to make ends meet. A sustained economic crisis marked by high unemployment further aggravates their plight." Read the Red Cross report. From the International Rescue Committee, one of America's major NGOs dealing with refugees, a 5-year report says the "crisis is largely hidden from the public and ignored by the international community." Read the IRC report
New report: 2.77 million internally displaced in Iraq; "returns" a trickle
A March 24 report from several government ministries, U.N. agencies, and major relief NGOs estimates the current IDP population at 2.77 million in Iraq. More than one million do not have adequate shelter and 300,000 have no access to clean water, says the report, and "at present, large-scale return movements have not been noted"--less than 2 percent. Read more. This comes on the heels of a survey from the Red Crescent stating that " most Iraqis returning home after fleeing to Syria were doing so not because they felt Iraq was safer but because they could no longer afford to live abroad." News report
An April 29 briefing from the U.N. High Commission for Refugees states that only 3% of Iraqi refugees in Syria intend to return.
Perspectives on the "surge" in Iraq: Why it could make things worse
Nir Rosen's lengthy report from Baghdad questions the ultimate outcome of the "surge" in this February 2008 article. "'We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority,'" says former US ambassador Chas Freeman. Read more And see this gripping report by Michael Schwartz, "The Battle of Baghdad." Nir Rosen's April report in The Nation provides additional insights, such as discussion of 23,000 prisoners in Iraq. Read it here.
Jan. 2008 mortality survey from Iraq - "excess mortality" in hundreds of thousands
The Iraq Ministry of Health conducted a household survey in Iraq in 2006 that estimates 151,000 dead by violence; some 400,000 deaths are due to the war overall, according to the study's data. The authors acknowledge this is an undercount, and close scrutiny suggests that violent deaths are a larger proportion than reported. Still, this estimate is in league with four other surveys. Read the article - Analysis
Number of widows in Iraq 1-2 million, says government
The massive numbers of new widows in Iraq, some from Saddam's era, present a significant problem of social and economic distress. The large numbers also tend to confirm the high mortality figures of the five major surveys. Read the story And see this May 10 report from Agence France Presse: one in six married women under 50 are widows.
Trauma high among 1.5 million Iraq refugees in Syria: U.N.
A recent survey of the Iraqis who fled the Iraq war to Syria finds "that many of the Iraqi refugees that come . . . are suffering from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder." The study was produced by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees . Read more
Report
The Human Cost of the War in Iraq: a Mortality Study 2002-06
Random killings, human bombs, dozens of violent groups, and a deepening sense of insecurity gnaw Iraq. The evidence of pervasive and persistent mayhem is everywhere, from the formal statistics of mortality to broader estimates of numerical outcomes. The deadly violence is omnipresent, but without a visible front or an apparent strategy—and for those reasons, among others, it is poorly understood.
It is for this reason that the mortality study conducted by Burnham et al was commissioned by the MIT Center for International Studies. Understanding the scale, the sources of violence, the demographical profiles of the victims, and the geographic dispersion of killing—all recorded in the household survey of the Iraq mortality study—provides an indispensable tool in coming to terms with the violence in Iraq. Read the full report in PDF
Eyewitness
An Iraqi Woman Regards the Human Cost of the War
Huda Ahmed is the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow at the MIT Center for International Studies. She has worked as a journalist in her native Iraq, and is also now working at a public radio station in Boston. Read the report in English and Arabic 
"Inside Iraq" - Bloggers tell their stories
From the McClatchey News site, several Iraqis tell their unedited tales of life in a war zone. Highlighted in Michael Massing's articles (see Further Discussion). Link to the blogs
See also the N.Y. Times' Baghdad bureau blogs and videos here. Medea Benjamin's April 2008 blog on refugees in Syria and Jordan here.
