Baghdad, Iraq – The toll of Iraqi civilian deaths has mounted steadily in the country’s unremitting violence and now takes an average of 120 lives each day, the United Nations reported in its bleakest assessment of noncombatant casualties since the U.S.-led invasion.
October’s toll of at least 3,709 civilian deaths was the highest so far, up nearly 400 from September and 700 more than in August.
The continued slaughter of civilians, as well as increasing poverty, has forced more than 2 million people from their homes, most of them having fled the country. Every month, nearly 100,000 Iraqis flee to neighboring Jordan and Syria, the U.N. found.
That grim portrait comes as U.S. officials and Iraqis approach major decisions on the future of the country. At the White House and the Pentagon, officials have been debating whether a short-term increase in troops might succeed in tamping down Iraq’s increasingly bloody civil war. Administration critics have been pushing for a plan to begin cutting the number of American troops.
As all parties search for a way forward, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is headed for meetings in Iran this weekend that could bring together Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian representatives. Vice President Dick Cheney plans to visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday, and next week President Bush plans to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Rather than risking a meeting in Baghdad, the two will get together in the relative security of neighboring Jordan.
Sectarian killings and insurgent attacks have caused much of the current violence in Iraq, with a majority of deaths taking place in Baghdad, according to the U.N.’s bimonthly report on the violence. Over the summer, thousands of American troops fanned out across the capital in a much-touted effort to bring a degree of calm, but the plan failed to slow the escalating civil war.
The U.N. report details a land of horrors where Iraqi security forces kill those they are meant to protect, gunmen prey upon the weakest, and the judicial system is practically in shambles.
The estimated rate of 120 violent civilian deaths a day would add up to about 44,000 across a full year. The U.N. based the civilian death toll on figures from the Baghdad morgue and the Iraqi Health Ministry. On Wednesday, about 100 Iraqi civilians were reported killed, authorities said. So far this month, 49 American troops have been killed in Iraq, down from the near-record level in October.
Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the U.N.’s human-rights office in Baghdad, presented the world body’s report inside the capital’s high-security Green Zone. He told reporters that while al-Maliki’s government has “taken a number of important steps in protecting human rights,” more should be done to improve the rule of law.
Among other things, Magazzeni highlighted an inquiry into abuses at a secret Interior Ministry detention facility discovered last year in a Baghdad bunker. So far, the Iraqi government has not made public any of its findings.
Recently, the report reveals, American and Iraqi inspectors found 284 prisoners, ages 7 to 22, “in deplorable hygiene and medical conditions with signs of physical and sexual abuse allegedly committed by the prison guards and/or by their fellow inmates” in another prison on the western outskirts of the capital. The juveniles were crammed 70 to each cell and were without enough food or water. Some had not been charged with any crime. At least 41 bore signs of mistreatment, torture and sexual abuse.
“The more there is impudence and no one is punished for their crimes, the more that fuels the cycle of violence and counterviolence,” Magazzeni said.
Bringing people to justice will be key to restoring order in the country, he added.
Arbitrary arrests, allegations of torture and sexual abuse, deplorable prison conditions and a lack of judicial guarantees characterize Iraq’s detention system: In northern Iraq, Kurdish militias allegedly hold detainees in secret prisons without trial for long periods.
The police and army are reportedly infiltrated by Shiite militias and death squads, and absenteeism is widespread.
In the northern city of Kirkuk, the report says, “half of the 5,000 police force and 13,000 army soldiers are not reporting to duty at any given time.” The report also notes that operations by American troops in Anbar province “continued to cause severe suffering to the local population.”
In the capital, entire neighborhoods have been swept according to sectarian affiliation. The report cites one mixed neighborhood where Shiite militias warned Sunni families to leave the area within 24 hours. Gunmen then reportedly burned two houses with the residents still inside.
Assassinations and persecution of women, minorities, journalists, intellectuals, educators, doctors, lawyers, politicians and security forces continued “in an alarming number” during the last two months, the report said.
Attacks against Christians in general are also on the rise, especially following controversial comments about Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI in September. Churches and a convent have been attacked, and clergy have been kidnapped and killed in northern Iraq in particular.
The violence has forced as many as 1.6 million people to leave Iraq.
