British Prime Minister Tony Blair departs No10 Downing Street. Blair rejected a call for an independent inquiry into civilian deaths in Iraq, saying 'terrorists and insurgents' were to blame for fatalities in the run-up to elections.(AFP/Jim Watson)
UK's Blair challenged to tally Iraq war dead
Updated: 2004-12-08 14:52
British diplomats and peers joined scientists and churchmen on Wednesday to urge Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a death toll in the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
In an unusual open letter to the premier made available to Reuters, the 44 signatories said Blair had rejected other death counts from the war -- figures span 14,000 to 100,000 -- without releasing one of his own.
Any totaling of the Iraqi war dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected in months in a country that opposed the U.S.-led war.
The group urged Blair to commission an urgent probe into the number of dead and injured and keep counting so long as British soldiers remain in Iraq alongside their American allies.
"Your government is obliged under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population during military operations in Iraq, and you have consistently promised to do so," they wrote in the letter to be published on Wednesday.
"However, without counting the dead and injured, no one can know whether Britain and its coalition partners are meeting these obligations."
The inquiry, they added, should be independent of government, conducted according to accepted scientific methods and subjected to peer review.
Signatories included Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden, who spent 32 years in the military; Sir Stephen Egerton, a former British ambassador to Iraq; human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger and the Lord Bishop of Coventry, Colin Bennetts.
Britain and the United States have suffered around 1,070 losses in the war so far. The Iraq-wide casualty count is not known, and a high tally could wreak political damage in Britain, where Blair is expected to win a 2005 election but with a reduced majority.
HOW MANY DEAD?
The writers, also including philosophers and lawyers, said their letter reflects "an influential and growing body of opinion that the government's failure to provide estimates of Iraqi casualties is unacceptable."
Former Foreign Office legal adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst signed up, along with Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, writer Gillian Slovo and experts in public health.
The toll of the 20-month U.S.-led war is highly contentious.
In a report released in October by the Lancet medical journal, days before the U.S. election that returned President Bush to power, a group of American scientists put civilian deaths at 100,000.
But the Iraq Body Count (IBC) -- an Anglo-American research group tracking civilian deaths via numerous sources -- has come up with a much lower toll of about 14,000-16,000.
The IBC has now joined forces with Medact, a charity that says the war has crippled Iraq's medical system, to launch a new campaign challenging the government to publish casualties.
"No figures in a war zone are going to be perfect -- but that's no excuse for not trying," said John Sloboda, IBC co-founder.
Medact director Mike Rowson said: "Without information, everyone is working in the dark. The overstretched Iraqi health system should not be left to do this job alone. Britain and its coalition partners have a responsibility."
This is their civil war
Charles Krauthammer
Tuesday December 7, 2004
The Guardian
In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the American presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?
In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilised, three states (and not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?
There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense. The election should be held. It should be open to everyone. If Iraq's Sunni Arabs - barely 20% of the population - decide that they cannot abide giving up their 80 years of minority rule, which ended with 30 years of Saddam Hussein's atrocious tyranny, then tough luck. They forfeit their chance to shape and to participate in the new Iraq.
Americans are dying right now to give them that very chance. The US is making a costly last-ditch effort to midwife a new, unitary Iraq. The Falluja offensive and related actions are designed to reduce the brutal intimidation of the Sunni population by the dead-end Ba'athists and others seeking to retake the power that they enjoyed under Saddam. But when those offensives are over, the Sunnis themselves - ordinary people who, out of either fear or sympathy, have been giving refuge and support to the terrorist insurgents - will have to make a choice. Either they join the new Iraq by participating in the coming election, or they institutionalise the civil war that their side has already begun.
People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war. It is raging before our eyes. Problem is, only one side is fighting it. The other side, the Shias and the Kurds, are largely watching as their part of the fight is borne primarily by the US. Both have an interest in the outcome. The Shias constitute a majority of Iraqis and will inevitably inherit power in any democratic arrangement. The Kurds want to retain their successful autonomous zone without worrying about new depredations at the hands of the Sunni Arabs.
This is the Shias' and the Kurds' fight. Yet when police stations are ravaged by Sunni Arab insurgents in Mosul, American soldiers are rushed in to fight them. The obvious question is: why don't we unleash the fierce and well-trained Kurdish peshmerga militias against them? (Mosul is heavily Kurdish and suffered a terrible Kurdish expulsion under Saddam.)
Yes, some of the Iraqi police/national guard units fighting alongside our troops are largely Kurdish. But they, like the Shias, fight in an avowedly non-sectarian Iraqi force. Why? Because we want to maintain this idea of a unified, non-ethnic Iraq. At some point, however, we must decide whether that is possible, and how many American lives should be sacrificed in its name.
In April I wrote in these pages that, while our "goal has been to build a united, pluralistic, democratic Iraq in which the factions negotiate their differences the way we do in the west", that goal "may be, in the short run, a bridge too far... [We] should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalisation as a useful tool."
For example, we (and the British) have been spearheading a new counteroffensive against Sunni guerrillas south of Baghdad. Where are the Shias? I understand Shia wariness about fighting alongside us. It is not, as conventional wisdom has it, because of some deep-seated Iraqi nationalism. In 1991 the Shias were begging the US to intervene during their uprising against Saddam. They were dying, literally, for the American army to help them. Unfortunately - and this misfortune haunts us to this day - they were betrayed. Having encouraged the Shias to rebel, we did not lift a finger as Saddam slaughtered them by the thousands.
Given that history, the Shias are today understandably wary about American steadfastness and intentions. If the Shias do go out on a limb and pick up the fight against the insurgent Sunnis, will we leave them hanging again?
Our taking on the Sunnis is a way of demonstrating good faith. As is our intention to hold the election no matter what. Everyone knows that the outcome of the election will be a historic transfer of power to the Shias (and, to some extent, to the Kurds). We must make it clear that we will be there to support that new government. But we also have to make it clear that we are not there to lead the fight indefinitely. It is their civil war.