How many dead, wounded, or displaced Iraqis in Iraq?

[Dominus Atheos]

There are so many different estimates out there, some of which are really old, and they all have wildly different numbers. I was just curious how many Iraqis were dead, or wounded, or displaced from there homes due to the Iraq war, or the aftermath, including the civil war currently going on, and the voluntary foot soldiers in said civil war. Basically I'd like the numbers on how many casualties, fatalities, and refugees there are now that wouldn't exist if this war had never started. I'd like different numbers for each category if possible.

[Mr Bean]

There are so many different estimates out there, some of which are really old, and they all have wildly different numbers. I was just curious how many Iraqis were dead, or wounded, or displaced from there homes due to the Iraq war, or the aftermath, including the civil war currently going on, and the voluntary foot soldiers in said civil war. Basically I'd like the numbers on how many casualties, fatalities, and refugees there are now that wouldn't exist if this war had never started. I'd like different numbers for each category if possible.

The Iraq Heath Minstry says 151,000 dead to violence to 400,000 total dead for other reasons since the war started. Lancet(Which we never had a problem with until they did Iraq) says 601,027 dead to violence to 654,965 total dead for other reasons since the war started and the ORB study(Using the Lancet methodoly) produced just over 1 million dead Iraq's.

The Lancet study methodology has been used in Bosina, the Congo and various other African conflicts with no issues, in fact the Bush administration (HW and W) and the Clinton administrations praised their work and accurasy. Until they got to Iraq and produced the intial 250,000 dead Iraq numbers which was much higher than the 10,000-30,000 numbers being tossed around at the time.

Since then both they and ORB went back(Lancet in 2006, ORB in 2007)
No 2008 studies have been done yet so we don't know how bad it's gotten.

Luckily the refugee figures are not such a huge issue, it's estimated there are two point four million refugee's running around Iraq and seeking asylm in nearby countries. Most neighboring countries have at least a 100,000 Iraq refugee's along with 1.8 million who are displaced inside Iraq, which can mean anything from Baghdad citizens living in another city to avoid the violence or out in the countryside, to actual refugee's who lost everything staying in an internal camp.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Was there a reason for the disparity in numbers?

[banquetbear]

...there is one casualty rate that as far as I am aware has almost never been discussed by any media: how many Iraqi soldiers died in the 2003 invasion.

The invasion was considered relatively "bloodless", with less than 220 deaths of coalition troops in the first 3 months of the war. On the Iraqi side, some could consider it a slaughter. In a transcript published in "Plan of Attack" by Bob Woodward, General Tommy Franks estimated 30,000 Iraqi soldiers died defending Iraq. Thats 136 Iraqi soldiers killed for every coalition soldier.

CITE.

[SirNitram]

Was there a reason for the disparity in numbers?

IBC counts bodies that are found. Lancet and ORB investigate how many people report deaths. Tell me: How many bodies are simply missing? IBC is the minimum lower limit.

[Dominus Atheos]

There are so many different estimates out there, some of which are really old, and they all have wildly different numbers. I was just curious how many Iraqis were dead, or wounded, or displaced from there homes due to the Iraq war, or the aftermath, including the civil war currently going on, and the voluntary foot soldiers in said civil war. Basically I'd like the numbers on how many casualties, fatalities, and refugees there are now that wouldn't exist if this war had never started. I'd like different numbers for each category if possible.

The Iraq Heath Minstry says 151,000 dead to violence to 400,000 total dead for other reasons since the war started. Lancet(Which we never had a problem with until they did Iraq) says 601,027 dead to violence to 654,965 total dead for other reasons since the war started and the ORB study(Using the Lancet methodoly) produced just over 1 million dead Iraq's.

The Lancet study methodology has been used in Bosina, the Congo and various other African conflicts with no issues, in fact the Bush administration (HW and W) and the Clinton administrations praised their work and accurasy. Until they got to Iraq and produced the intial 250,000 dead Iraq numbers which was much higher than the 10,000-30,000 numbers being tossed around at the time.

Since then both they and ORB went back(Lancet in 2006, ORB in 2007)
No 2008 studies have been done yet so we don't know how bad it's gotten.

Luckily the refugee figures are not such a huge issue, it's estimated there are two point four million refugee's running around Iraq and seeking asylm in nearby countries. Most neighboring countries have at least a 100,000 Iraq refugee's along with 1.8 million who are displaced inside Iraq, which can mean anything from Baghdad citizens living in another city to avoid the violence or out in the countryside, to actual refugee's who lost everything staying in an internal camp.

What do the "dead for other reasons" numbers mean?

[SirNitram]

What do the "dead for other reasons" numbers mean?

Take a city. It's hospitals, it's AC(Iraq is hot), it's water treatment, and all it's power demands that are essential to life, or could cause someone to die if they failed.

Now give the city one hour of power a day.

This is but a sample of how the war is basically obliterating the population. We're not even getting into the effects of trash piling up, on the cascade effect every doctor whose a fatality is..

[Dominus Atheos]

So 1 million is a good number to use when talking about total dead from the Iraq war?

[Sea Skimmer]

Remember, sanctions where killing an estimated 50,000 people a year before the invasion began, and since the health and water system hasn’t improved since its safe to assume that that many kept dieing from the same causes, so your looking at potentially 250,000 people who would gave been killed by the sanctions had it not been an invasion.

[Mr Bean]

As Sea-Skimmer notes, the lack of good drinking water and reliable electricity has gone UP since the Invasion, the things we decry the Saddam government for have gotten even worse since we moved in. And while we don't have Saddam's secret police killins added to each month's dead in Iraq total, we still have the various Merc company's shooting up civilians

So you can't say we are not trying.

OAN:The Iraq body count website only counts media reports. When people fish bodies out of the rivers and turn them over to the local tribal chief, that does not make news unless theirs allot of them. So "Sucide bomber kills 12" adds to the count. When Mohammad is gunned down in his hut out in the countryside, it does not get added. 80k is the minimum low end number we have pictures to ID.

Note that undertaker numbers are not inculded, the Lancet study found many people who had death certificates and areas to show where the bodies were buried.

Which is why 1 million is a good number, it's a likely low-ball estimate of everyone killed since 2003.

[Elfdart]

Another thing to keep in mind is that many people in the Middle East insist on burying their dead privately before the next sundown, and are not likely to risk their lives just to take a family memeber to a morgue. Nor are they going to be caught informing a government they don't trust that there's a death in the family. More so when they blame that government for the death in the first place, or are afraid of being construed as being in league with the government, which could carry a death sentence from those who oppose the state.

[Simplicius]

As for displaced persons, the numbers I saw were ~2.4 million internally displaced and ~2 million refugees, the largest part of them in Syria. Though I might not be remembering them exactly right.

[18-Till-I-Die]

So the ballpark estimate is "A-Fucking-Lot", is basically what you're saying.


Anyway, i heard the 600,000 number from the Lancet and pretty much everyone says they're reliable and have done such unpopular but necessary "corpse counts" before, so while it may seem like an appeal to authority i tend to go with their number for the base estimate. I always figured we could add another, oh so, two hundred thousand on that just from lack of sanitation, medicine and internecine warfare. IOW the 1 million number doesnt really shock me.

Don't get me wrong, it's horrifying, but unsurprising considering what's going on over there on a daily basis. And frankly, the government has blown smoke up our asses so much i cant imagine why anyone would believe their "30,000" estimate AT ALL. Especially since more people than that died in the Civil War, the devastation from which was peanuts compared to this fiasco-slash-genocide.

[Dominus Atheos]

I completely forgot about this thread, sorry.

So 600,000 dead from violence and 650,000 dead from other things adds up to 1.25 million. As Sea Skimmer points out, Iraq wasn't very well off even before we got there, so probably 250,000 would be dead regardless, so that comes out to just about 1 million people who would still be alive if Bush's war had never happened. Plus about 2 million refugees who would still have places to live. Unfortunately it looks like no one has bothered to keep track of people who are "just" injured and not killed, so what do you think would be a good estimate here? 4 injured for every dead? But it would only be an estimate without a source, so best to not include that when discussing the topic.

So about 1 million dead as per the Lancet study and 2 million people who for whatever reason can't go back to their homes, almost none of which supported Saddam Hussein or Al-Qaeda. Is that about right?


PS what's the source for the 2-2.4 million refugees?

[Mr Bean]

As of 2008, doing a bit of extrapolation even accounting for the less violence months the estimate is right around 1.2 million dead Iraq's with as much or less dead from other causes. The current rate of Injured to killed is 3.1-4.8(FYI) so, 3.7 million to 6 million wounded by violence.


This is one of those areas were a simple record keeping would have us know pretty accurate numbers, if anyone did an aggregate of all Iraq hospitals and ask them if they were wounded because of violence then keep a running tally. Much like how there are 30,333 wounded Americans to just over 4,000 killed.

[Simplicius]

PS what's the source for the 2-2.4 million refugees?

Sorry about that.

The UNHCR 2008 Iraq Situation Supplementary Appeal gives 2 million refugees and 2.2 million IDPs. (PDF) These are estimates only, though.

There may have been a 2008 State Department Weekly Update that showed similar numbers, but I don't recall which one at the moment.