62,006 - The Number Killed In The "War On Terror"

This has been extracted from the The Independent on Sunday
By David Randall and Emily Gosden Published
10 September 2006

The "war on terror" - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.

If estimates of other, unquantified, deaths - of insurgents, the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion, those not recorded individually by Western media, and those dying from wounds - are included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000.

The extraordinary scale of the conflict's impact, claiming lives from New York to Bali and London to Lahore, and the extent of the death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, has emerged from an Independent on Sunday survey to mark the fifth anniversary of 11 September. It used new, unpublished data supplied by academics and organisations such as Iraq Body Count and Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire, plus estimates given by other official studies.

The result is the first attempt to gauge the full cost in blood and money of the worldwide atrocities and military conflicts that began in September 2001. As of yesterday, the numbers of lives confirmed lost are: 4,541 to 5,308 civilians and 385 military in Afghanistan; 50,100 civilians and 2,899 military in Iraq; and 4,081 in acts of terrorism in the rest of the world.

The new figure on civilian deaths from Iraq Body Count, a group of British and US academics, is especially telling. Just two and a half years ago, its estimate of the number of civilian dead in Iraq passed 10,000. Today, it says, that figure has gone beyond the 50,000 mark - a huge leap largely attributable to terrorist acts and the breakdown of civil authority.

Iraq Body Count's careful methodology - of recording a death only when it appears in two independent media reports - almost certainly produces a substantial underestimate. Even the Iraqi Health Ministry reports a slightly higher figure, and President Bush's much-quoted figure of 30,000 civilian dead dates from December 2005, when it tallied with the then IBC figure. Insurgent deaths are not included in the IBC figures, and neither are those of Iraqi police when engaged in combat-style operations.

Estimates of the former are, together with the number of Iraqi military killed in the battle phase of the Iraq occupation, the biggest unknown of the conflict. One US news report guessed the insurgent dead in Iraq at 36,000 since 2003, while the number of Iraqi military killed during the invasion phase remains unknown and unknowable.

Neither category is included in our figure of 62,006 confirmed directly killed. Nor does it include any figures for people later dying from wounds received, or the increased mortality owing to lack of health care. Estimates for one or the other ranging up to 130,000 have been produced, but are based on little more than educated (and uneducated) guesswork or, as with the controversial Lancet estimate of 98,000 deaths due to extra mortality, by amplifying a survey of 988 households into a nation-wide conclusion.

What is certain is the wretched state of health care in Iraq. In March 2006 the campaign group Medact reported that 18,000 physicians have left since 2003; an estimated 250 of those that remained have been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed. Medact also said that "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths", and that "of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none has been opened". In May, a survey by the Iraq government and Unicef reported that a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition.

In Afghanistan, the most reliable recorder of civilian deaths is Professor Marc Herold, whose latest figures range from 4,541 to 5,308. He does not include those who die subsequently from their injuries or in refugee camps.These "indirect" deaths have been put at anything from 8,000 to 20,000. More accurate are estimates of refugee numbers. In July, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said there were 2.2 million Afghans who had fled abroad and at least 153,200 displaced internally. For Iraq, there were 888,700 external refugees, and 1.3 million people displaced inside the country. An estimated 40 per cent of the Iraqi middle class have left Iraq.

Beyond the blood price, there is a dollar and sterling cost. In July it was reported that the US Congress had approved $437bn (£254bn) for costs related to the "war on terror". This, a sum greater than those spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars, compares to the $375bn that Make Poverty History says is needed to clear the debts of the world's poorest nations. The British Government has spent £4.5bn on Iraq and Afghanistan.