Before being Killed Aid worker uncovered America's secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths
/A week before she was killed by a
suicide bomber, humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military
commanders to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by
US forces. Tommy Franks, the former head of US Central Command,
famously said the US army "don't do body counts", despite a requirement
to do so by the Geneva Conventions. But in an essay Ms Ruzicka wrote a
week before her death on Saturday and published yesterday, the
28-year-old revealed that a Brigadier General told her it was "standard
operating procedure" for US troops to file a report when they shoot a
non-combatant. She obtained figures for the number of civilians killed
in Baghdad between 28 February and 5 April, and discovered that 29 had
been killed in firefights involving US forces and insurgents. This was
four times the number of Iraqi police killed. "These statistics
demonstrate that the US military can and does track civilian
casualties," she wrote. "Troops on the ground keep these records
because they recognise they have a responsibility to review each action
taken and that it is in their interest to minimise mistakes, especially
since winning the hearts and minds of Iraqis is a key component of
their strategy." Sam Zia-Zarifi, deputy director of the Asia division
of Human Rights Watch, the group for which Ms Ruzicka wrote the report,
said her discovery "was very important because it allows the victims to
start demanding compensation". He added: "At a policy level they have
never admitted they keep these figures." [more] and [more]
Exactly how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last two years is unclear.
Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors casualty reports, says at least 17,384 have died. But the group bases its totals only on deaths reported by the media, and says it can therefore only "be a sample" of the total actually killed. Its website says: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war." Ms Ruzicka, from California, was killed in Baghdad after her car was caught in the blast of a suicide bomber who attacked a convoy of security contractors on the road to the city's airport. She was in Iraq heading, Civic, the organisation she set up to record and document civilians killed or injured by the US military, and to seek compensation. She carried out a similar project in Afghanistan. A peer-reviewed report published last year in The Lancet and based on an extrapolation of data suggested that 100,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion and its aftermath. One of the report's author, Dr Richard Garfield, professor of nursing at Columbia University, said: "Of course they keep records and of course they pretend they don't. Why is it important to keep the numbers of those killed? Well, why was it important to record the names of those people killed in the World Trade Centre? It would have been inconceivable not to. These people have lives of value. "Until people have names and are counted they don't exist in a policy sense." [more] and [more]
Exactly how many Iraqi civilians have been killed in the last two years is unclear.
Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors casualty reports, says at least 17,384 have died. But the group bases its totals only on deaths reported by the media, and says it can therefore only "be a sample" of the total actually killed. Its website says: "It is likely that many if not most civilian casualties will go unreported by the media. That is the sad nature of war." Ms Ruzicka, from California, was killed in Baghdad after her car was caught in the blast of a suicide bomber who attacked a convoy of security contractors on the road to the city's airport. She was in Iraq heading, Civic, the organisation she set up to record and document civilians killed or injured by the US military, and to seek compensation. She carried out a similar project in Afghanistan. A peer-reviewed report published last year in The Lancet and based on an extrapolation of data suggested that 100,000 civilians may have been killed during the invasion and its aftermath. One of the report's author, Dr Richard Garfield, professor of nursing at Columbia University, said: "Of course they keep records and of course they pretend they don't. Why is it important to keep the numbers of those killed? Well, why was it important to record the names of those people killed in the World Trade Centre? It would have been inconceivable not to. These people have lives of value. "Until people have names and are counted they don't exist in a policy sense." [more] and [more]
