Analysis of violent deaths of Iraqi civilians between 2003-2008

(Press-News.org) A paper published in this week's issue of PLoS Medicine provides the most detailed assessment thus far of civilian deaths in the course of the recent Iraq war. Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks from King's College London, UK and colleagues analyzed data from Iraq Body Count (IBC), a nongovernmental project that collates media reports of deaths of individual Iraqi civilians and cross-checks these reports with data from hospitals, morgues, nongovernmental organizations, and official figures.

The authors studied 92,614 Iraqi civilian direct deaths from the IBC database that occurred as a result of armed violence between March 20, 2003 and March 19, 2008. The authors found that most Iraqi civilian violent deaths during this time were inflicted by unknown perpetrators, primarily through extrajudicial executions that were disproportionately increased in Iraqi governorates with greater numbers of violent deaths. Unknown perpetrators also used suicide bombs, vehicle bombs, and mortars that had highly lethal and indiscriminate effects on Iraqi civilians. Deaths caused by Coalition forces of Iraqi civilians, of women and children, and of Iraqi civilians from air attacks, peaked during the invasion in 2003.

Detailed analysis of civilian deaths during wars can improve the understanding of the impact on vulnerable subgroups in the population, such as women and children. In order to assess this impact further, the researchers calculated the proportion of women and children among civilian deaths identified as men, women or children. This proportion is termed the "Dirty War Index" (DWI), and indicates the scale of indiscriminate killing in a conflict. The most indiscriminate effects on women and children in Iraq were from unknown perpetrators firing mortars (DWI = 79) and using nonsuicide vehicle bombs (DWI = 54), and from Coalition air attacks (DWI = 69). Coalition forces had a higher DWI than anti-coalition forces for all weapons combined, and for small arms gunfire, with no decrease over the study period.

The authors conclude that "Our findings on civilian deaths from perpetrators and their weapons during 5 years of the Iraq war illustrate the feasibility as well as the public health and humanitarian potential of detailed tracking of war's effects on a civilian population."

In a Perspective article published the same day in PLoS Medicine, Robert Muggah from the Small Arms Survey at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland (uninvolved in the research) discusses the costs of war and this new analysis by Hicks and colleagues documenting the number of Iraqi civilian violent deaths during 2003-2008.

### Funding: The Sigrid Rausing Trust supported the expansion of Iraq Body Count's original database. No direct funding was received for this study. GGS was personally salaried by Royal Holloway and Yale University, MS by Royal Holloway, and PMB by Iraq Body Count during the period of writing (though no specific salary was set aside or given for the writing of this paper). No funding bodies had any role in the study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing Interests: MHH is an unpaid non-executive director, HD and JAS the unpaid co-founders, and PMB the software architect of the NGO Iraq Body Count.

Citation: Hicks MH-R, Dardagan H, Guerrero Serdan G, Bagnall PM, Sloboda JA, et al. (2011) Violent Deaths of Iraqi Civilians, 2003: Analysis by Perpetrator, Weapon, Time, and Location. PLoS Med 8(2): e1000415. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000415

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000415

CONTACT:

Dr. Madelyn Hicks
Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London
Section of Community Mental Health

Health Service and Population Research Department
De Crespigny Park
London, London SE5 8AF
United Kingdom
Email (preferred contact): MJHHicks@aol.com.

Cell phone (GMT): 07806 265506

Landline (GMT): 44 1483 814144

Perspective article by Robert Muggah

Funding: No specific funding was received to write this piece.

Competing Interests: The author has declared that no competing interests exist.

Citation: Muggah R (2011) Measuring the True Costs of War: Consensus and Controversy. PLoS Med 8(2):e1000417. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000417

IN YOUR COVERAGE PLEASE USE THIS URL TO PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE FREELY AVAILABLE PAPER: http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000417

CONTACT:

Small Arms Survey
Geneva, Switzerland
robert.muggah@graduateinstitute.ch