Iraqi Security Forces: Declining Death Rate
The Daily Dispatch has covered, in some detail, the decline in coalition casualties, both deaths and wounds, since 2004. This trend represented, in part, strategic changes by both the coalition and the insurgents. President Bush announced that the U.S. would “stand down” as the Iraqi democracy “stood up.” And as the emphasis of U.S. policy shifted from protecting elections to training the institutions that could protect their results, insurgent strategy changed accordingly.
The development of indigenous Iraqi security forces (IDF) – army and police – threatened both the Saddam recidivists and the Jihadi terrorists far more than the Multi-National Forces ever had. If the Iraqi democracy were to become the dominant military power in the post-Saddam era, the “anti-imperialist” pretense of the insurgency would collapse. Insurgents proceeded to target Iraqi soldiers and police, hoping to terrorize their fellow citizens from enlisting.
So the question must be asked: Are the insurgents killing fewer coalition soldiers simply because they are killing more Iraqi troops?
Well, no.
In January of 2005, 109 members of the 125,000 IDF were killed. The attacks escalated, peaking in the summer of 2005. The IDF lost 296 to terrorist violence in June of 2005, 304 in July, and another 282 in August. But since then, the numbers of Iraqi police and soldiers killed have declined.
In May of 2006, 149 IDF members lost their lives – out of a force of 265,000. In other words, the casualties had been halved while the size of the force had doubled. In May of 2006, the attrition rate in the IDF was one-third of what it had been in January of 2005.
The total failure of the insurgency to block the development of an indigenous Iraqi security force, serving at the command of the Iraqi democracy, has been largely ignored by MSM. The Western press has preferred to focus its coverage on the ability of armed insurgents to slaughter unarmed civilians in Baghdad.