Carnage and despair: Iraq five years on
Source: Amnesty International (via ReliefWeb)

Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the country is still in disarray. The human rights situation is disastrous, a climate of impunity has prevailed, the economy is in tatters and the refugee crisis continues to escalate.

A new Amnesty International report, Carnage and Despair: Iraq five years on, says that, despite the heavy presence of US and Iraqi security forces, Iraq is one of the most dangerous countries in the world, with hundreds of Iraqi civilians killed every month.

Armed groups, including those opposed to the Iraqi government and the US-led Multi-National Force (MNF), have been responsible for indiscriminate bombings, suicide attacks, kidnappings and torture.

Since early 2006, violence has intensified and become more sectarian, with Sunni and Shi’a armed groups targeting followers of opposite faiths and driving whole communities out of mixed neighbourhoods. This has contributed to the displacement of over four million people. Two million of these are now refugees in Syria and Jordan.

+ Full Report (PDF; 296 KB)

Iraq: The War Card
Source: The Center for Public Integrity

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

+ Keyword searchable database of transcripts and documents (380,000 words)

Is Iraqi Kurdistan a Good Ally?
Source: Middle Eastern Outlook (American Enterprise Institute)

On a strictly emotional level, U.S. support for Iraqi Kurdistan makes sense. In the wake of World War I, the Kurds missed their opportunity for statehood when other peoples gained their independence. Today, they remain the largest ethnic group without a country. They have suffered greatly at the hands of others. But while Iraqi Kurdistan has come far, the unreliability of its leadership makes any long-term U.S.-Kurdish alliance unwise. Rather than become a beacon for democracy, the current Iraqi Kurdish leadership appears intent on replicating more autocratic models. Rather than become a regional Nelson Mandela, Iraqi Kurdish president Masud Barzani now charts a course to become a new Yasser Arafat. Despite lofty rhetoric about its suitability as an ally, Iraqi Kurdistan’s actions suggest that it is far from trustworthy.

Also available in Kurdish and Turkish.

The Evolving Security Situation in Iraq: The Continuing Need for Strategic Patience
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

Data are now available from MNF-I and the Iraqi government that provide a much clearer picture of the trends in violence and casualties in Iraq. The attached report provides maps and graphics on the levels of killings in Iraq, the levels of violence by type, and the trends in terms of violence in key provinces and in Baghdad. It presents both MNF-I and Iraqi data through early January 2008.

+ Full Report (PDF; 4.4 MB)

The Patterns in Violence and Casualties in Iraq 2007: The Need for Strategic Patience
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

The attached report summarizes the trends in Iraqi violence and casualties in graphics and map form. It reflects major progress during the course of 2007. At the same time, it shows that levels of violence remain high, and that many risks remain.

The report contrasts US data with that provided by the Iraqi government. It is important to note that the Coalition counts tend to define violence and casualties in much more narrow ways than the Iraqi government. This is reflected in data used in the December quarterly report on Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, and in data provide more recently by a senior Iraqi official.

The data reflect two clear messages. First, it is premature and irresponsible to claim any kind of victory. Second, the level of progress has, however, been extremely impressive to date. Major risks do remain, and success still depends more on political accommodation than military progress, but there is a substantially better case for US strategic patience than in the spring of 2007.

The data indicate that if Iraqis move towards serious accommodation during the course of the spring of 2008, there will be a strong case for continued US economic and military aid, for linking US troop levels to creating a stable transition from a de facto US lead to one by Iraqi forces, and for a sustained US effort that will last well into the next Administration.

The data also do indicated, however, that the risks remain high, that the military dimension is scarcely over, and Iraqi political and economic progress remains absolutely critical to any US success.

+ Full Report (PDF; 685 KB)

New study estimates 151 000 violent Iraqi deaths since 2003 invasion
Source: New England Journal of Medicine (via World Health Organization)

A large national household survey conducted by the Iraqi government and WHO estimates that 151,000 Iraqis died from violence between March 2003 and June 2006.

The findings, published today on the web site of the New England Journal of Medicine, are based on information collected during a wider survey of family health in Iraq, designed to provide a basis for the Iraqi government to develop and update health policies and plan services.

The estimate is based on interviews conducted in 9,345 households in nearly 1,000 neighbourhoods and villages across Iraq. The researchers emphasize that despite the large size of the study, the uncertainty inherent in calculating such estimates led them to conclude that the number of Iraqis who died from violence during that period lies between 104,000 and 223,000.

+ Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to 2006: Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group
+ Q & A about Iraq mortality study (PDF; 42 KB)
+ Download audio and video sound bites (includes transcripts)
+ Iraq Family Health Survey 2006/7 (PDF; 232 KB)

The Record on CURVEBALL: Declassified Documents and Key Participants Show the Importance of Phony Intelligence in the Origins of the Iraq War
Source: National Security Archive

Rafid Ahmed Alwan’s charges that Iraq possessed stockpiles of biological weapons and the mobile plants to produce them formed a critical part of the U.S. justification for the invasion in Spring 2003. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s celebrated and globally televised briefing to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, relied on CURVEBALL as the main source of intelligence on the biological issue.

Today the National Security Archive posts the available public record on CURVEBALL’s information derived from declassified sources and former officials’ accounts.

While most of the documentary record on the issue remains classified, the materials published here today underscore the precarious nature of the intelligence gathering and analytical process, and point to the existence of doubts about CURVEBALL’s authenticity before his charges were featured in the Bush administration’s public claims about Iraq.

Documents in PDF

Iraq, the Surge, Partition, and the War: Public Opinion by City and Region
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

The attached report was prepared with the aid of Gary Langer and the ABC polling unit. It provides a detailed analysis of a recent poll of Iraqi public opinion on the war, sectarian cleansing, the Iraqi government, US forces and the surge, and many of the other issues that show the state of Iraq hearts and minds. It also shows the differences in such public opinion by sect, ethnicity, governorate, and major city where the sample of public opinion was large enough to provide a valid picture that could be broken out into such detail.

The results should be reviewed in detail. Polls do not provide some simply punch line insights, they rather provide a mosaic of the various attitudes Iraqis have towards key issues. Unless they are reviewed in detail, picking out one trend or result can be more misleading than helpful. This is particularly true of the results in this analysis. Some are consistent with the results of previous polls over a period of several years. Some reflect the initial impact of changes in US strategy and the surge at a time when the degree of added security in Baghdad and the impact of the tribal awakening in Anbar was less apparent to most Iraqis than it is today.

The reader should also remember that the results in this report do reflect “hearts and minds” on a broad level. Decision makers often act on their own, very different perceptions. Violence and extremism are also generally driven by the views and actions of small minorities. Broad popular support for violence is rare, but this can have limited impact in a nation where minorities are willing to kill and use extreme violence with or without popular support.

+ Full Report (PDF; 836 KB)

Iraq, Afghanistan, and Self-Inflicted Wounds: Strategic Lessons of Armed Nation Building
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

There has been a great deal of debate about the lessons that should be drawn from Iraq and Afghanistan regarding counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. The attached briefing suggests that the real lessons are far more complex. It suggests that many of the failures in the US approach to both wars came from the fact that the US and its allies approached them as exercises in counterterrorism or defeating a conventional enemy, and failed to properly assess the costs and risks of what were really exercises in armed nation building.

The US not only was unprepared for the aftermath of its initial military intervention, it lacked the tools and skill sets to understand the sheer scale of the effort required, how long a successful intervention would take, and the level of resources that would be required. The Bush Administration mixed an ideological fantasy about the ease with which democratic states could be created with denial of the problems and complexities that emerged once it intervened. The US military not only were unprepared for counterinsurgency, they lacked the civil-military capabilities to support the kind of nation-building efforts required to give victories in counterinsurgency meaning. The State Department and civil agencies that should have been partners to the military were totally unprepared to support nation building of the scale required and to do so in a conflict environment.

The result has been a set of self-inflicted wounds where the US and its allies have been far too slow to understand the level of effort needed to achieve any meaningful degree of security and stability, have been slow to adapt its military tactics to the level of civil conflicts in both nations, have been unprepared to deal with the realities of creating effective governance, and have squandered much of the money they provided in economic aid.

+ Full Document (PDF; 116 KB)

Pandora’s Box: Iraqi Federalism, Separatism, “Hard" Partitioning, and US Policy
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

The attached report discusses problems with the policy of encouraging “soft” partitioning in Iraq.

+ Full Report (PDF; 1.7 MB)

Political, Military, and Economic Dynamics in Iraq: A Graphic Overview
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies

The attached briefing provides an overview of some of the key charts and maps reporting on the Iraq War. It will be steadily updated over time.

+ Full Document (PDF; 3.2 MB)
Editor’s note: offers excellent, current, informative maps

United States Military Casualty Statistics: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom (PDF; 71 KB)
Source: Congressional Research Service (via Federation of American Scientists)
Also includes Rates of Amputation and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) for American Forces, Rates of Suicide in American Forces, Medical Evacuation Statistics for U.S. Military Personnel.

More than 1,000,000 Iraqis murdered
Source: Opinion Research Business (ORB)

In the week in which General Patraeus reports back to US Congress on the impact the recent ‘surge’ is having in Iraq, a new poll reveals that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have been murdered since the invasion took place in 2003.

Previous estimates, most noticeably the one published in the Lancet in October 2006, suggested almost half this number (654,965 deaths).

These findings come from a poll released today by ORB, the British polling agency that has been tracking public opinion in Iraq since 2005. In conjunction with their Iraqi fieldwork agency a representative sample of 1,499 adults aged 18+ answered the following question:-

Q. How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof.

None 78%
One 16%
Two 5%
Three 1%
Four or more 0.002%

Given that from the 2005 census there are a total of 4,050,597 households this data suggests a total of 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion in 2003. Calculating the affect from the margin of error we believe that the range is a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063.

+ Tables (PDF; 141 KB)
+ Final Dead Numbers Weighted (.xls; 27 KB)

The United Nations in Iraq
Source: The Brookings Institution

Stabilizing Iraq has become an issue of massive global and regional consequence. At stake are the risks of a wider regional conflict between Sunni and Shi’a and perhaps between Arabs and Persians, humanitarian tragedy spreading over multiple states, a platform for international terrorism, and disruptions to oil production and transit from the single most critical region affecting global oil markets. A serious and calibrated United Nations role is both justified and necessary, even if success cannot be guaranteed. U.S. experience in Iraq has demonstrated that a largely unilateral and military-focused approach to stability will not work. Decades of international experience underscore that, first and foremost, a political agreement among the warring Iraqi parties is needed for a sustainable peace, and that long-term multilateral engagement is necessary to create a chance for its successful implementation.1 In the meantime, the humanitarian and security consequences emerging from Iraq threaten the entire region and those with a stake in its security and resources. As much as Iraq has become a domestic issue in the United States, and as much as other nations may want to distance themselves from American failures in Iraq, Iraq is not just an American problem – and there are no viable American unilateral solutions.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 255 KB)

Potentially Constructive Implications of Disaster in Iraq
Source: Center for International and Security Studies, University of Maryland

It now appears likely that the invasion of Iraq will prove to be a seminal event in the evolution of international security generally. Legal order has evidently collapsed throughout the country, and the occupying forces have not been able to control the resulting pattern of predatory violence. The central reason is that the United States forfeited at the outset the critical asset of legitimacy necessary to establish and maintain consensual rule, and its continued presence undermines the indigenous institutions it is attempting to nurture. Similar breakdowns have occurred in other parts of the world, and the consequences have been tolerated over extended periods of time. Because of timing, location and the entanglement of the United States, however, intractable violence in Iraq can be expected to have much stronger global resonance. American forces alone are not likely to be able to master the situation but neither can they be withdrawn without intensifying internal violence and extending it into an already volatile region. The potential consequences of that dilemma are ominous, but for that reason the situation presents opportunity as well as danger. Calamity is sometimes a catalyst for greater wisdom.

+ Full Paper (PDF; 48 KB)

Iraq and Anbar: Surge or Separation?
Source: Center for Strategic & International Studies