A Odd Way to Describe Progress
A September 8th New York Times story, carrying Paul von Zielbauer’s byline, describes the continuation of sectarian violence and civilian death in Baghdad.
Based on reports from the Baghdad morgue, the writer concludes:
The August total of violent deaths, if accurate, contradicts the sense among many Baghdad residents and claims by American officials, after a lull early in August, that death rates had ebbed.
There are a number of problems with this assertion. First, there was no lull in early August. The initial rollout of Operation Forward Together (OFT) – a defensive strategy based on checkpoints — failed to control insurgent violence against civilians. In July, the Baghdad morgue reported a post-Saddam record of 1,855 violent deaths.
The second rollout of OFT, built around an offense-based “clear and hold” strategy, began August 10th. The new strategy picked the most violence-racked areas, and sent in more cops and soldiers to kill and capture the bad guys, then maintain security. It was this operation that achieved striking results in some of Baghdad’s bloodiest neighborhoods, including al Doura.
The overall impact of this latest version of Operation Forward Together (OFT) has been the subject of debate, as we have described in previous posts. Officials of the Iraqi government claimed that Baghdad murders, including sectarian killings, had dropped 45 percent between mid-July and the end of August.
Others described OFT as an exercise in futility: an insurgent relocation program. The vehemently anti-coalition site icasualties.org recorded a July-to-August decline in Iraqi civilian casualties of only 6 percent.
The one reality that serious critics and proponents of OFT shared was the direction of civilian casualties: they declined in August.
And oddly, von Zielbauer accepts this too. Citing statistics from the Baghdad morgue, he records a reduction in violent deaths from 1,855 in July to 1,535 in August – a month-to-month decline of 17%.
Our question for von Zielbauer and the NY Times is this: How does a 17% August decline in civilian casualties, quote, “contradict the sense among many Baghdad residents and claims by American officials… that death rates had ebbed.”?
Von Zielbauer points to a spike in civilian casualties at the end of August. That is true. But it hasn’t carried over into September, as one might expect if the insurgents had merely regrouped.
Extrapolating the civilian death rate of the Sept 1-thru-13 (as recorded in icasualties.org), for the entire month, September killings in Baghdad are running 26% below the August rate, which was, in turn, 17% below the July rate.
Why not simply report that the civilian death rate has ebbed?