Though heralded by the US and Iraqi governments as signs of improving security, preliminary reports that violence in Baghdad had dramatically declined in the month of August appear to be incorrect.
The ABC News blog "From The Frontlines" reports that they received a phone call from an official at the Baghdad morgue who said the official toll of violent deaths in August nearly triple the figure originally reported by officials.
It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total ...this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August – heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working – apparently didn't exist.
Operation Together Forward, the main thrust of the new strategy, involves establishing pockets of security in select neighborhoods and then slowly adding more. These latest numbers add substance to fears Together Forward creates a whack-a-mole effect: that is, secure one area and the violence will pop up somewhere else. Violent deaths now appear roughly in line with the earlier trend: 1855 in July and 1595 in June. Officials at the Baghdad morgue have no good explanation for the dramatically revised number. We'll see what the US military has to say.
The Associated Press reports that while Iraq's Deputy Health Minister Hakem al-Zamly confirmed the higher figures this week, a US spokesman "referred The Associated Press to a statement on a U.S. military Web site which said the murder rate in Baghdad dropped 52 percent from the daily rate for July." AP also writes that the widely differing figures show that, after three years of war, officials still have no reliable way to count casualties.
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More broadly, however, accurate figures are difficult to obtain in a country where government institutions barely function. Poor phone lines and shortages of trained staff and computers can result in delays in entering death reports into ministry databases, which means the preliminary count may have lagged sharply.
Accurate figures are important because Iraqi and US officials – anxious to demonstrate progress as support for the war declines in the US – have used death figures to claim that a security crackdown in Baghdad is working.
The dramatic increase in violent deaths calls into question the success of Operation Together Forward, the large security sweep being carried out by joint US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad. In late August, the Los Angeles Times reported that US Army Maj. Gen. James D. Thurman, commander of military forces in Baghdad, "attributed the capital's declining violence to a sweep involving 8,000 US soldiers and 3,000 Iraqi troops aimed at stopping sectarian violence."
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the Iraqi legislature had extended by a month a state of emergency across the country that "allows the government broad powers to combat the raging insurgency, including declaring curfews, detaining suspects and conducting cordon-and-search operations."
Despite the affirmation of the government's emergency powers, violence continued to roil Iraq. The American military announced on Tuesday that two marines and a sailor had died Monday "due to enemy action" in Anbar Province, the desert region of western Iraq that is home to the Sunni-led insurgency. At least 2,656 American troops have died since the invasion of 2003, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks deaths and casualties.
The pace of deaths at the start of September has quickened compared with that of the preceding months. At least 14 American and 2 British troops have died in the first five days of this month, according to the Web site. At least 63 American and foreign troops died in June, 46 in July and 66 in August.
Reuters reports that the speaker of the Iraqi parliament told fellow legislators that the had "only three or four months" to settle their differences, or they would see their country collapse.
Finally, AP reports the Iraqi military was set to take to take control of its armed forces command Thursday, "a major move towards independence."
"This is such a huge, significant event that's about to occur tomorrow," Major General William Caldwell, US military spokesman, said yesterday of the shift in the Iraqi command. "If you go back and you map out significant events that have occurred in this government's formation in taking control of the country, tomorrow is gigantic."
The highly anticipated ceremony, which will put the prime minister in direct control of the military, occurs five days after it was originally scheduled. The government abruptly called off the original ceremony at the last minute. The United States and the Iraqis did not publicly disclose many details of the disagreement, other than to say it was more procedural than substantive.
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Feedback appreciated. E-mail Tom Regan.
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