ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Nearly half-a-million Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 US-led invasion, according to a new academic study whose figures are more than twice larger than previous estimates which were not as comprehensive.
An estimated 405,000 total deaths were a direct result of the war and an additional 55,805 were attributed to Iraqi refugee deaths as people fled violence in the country according to the study, which was done by US, Canadian and Iraqi researchers and published in a PLOS Medicine journal.
“Approximately a half million deaths in Iraq could be attributable to the war,” the study concludes. “Previous estimates of mortality in Iraq attributable to the 2003 invasion have been heterogeneous and controversial, and none were produced after 2006. The purpose of this research was to estimate direct and indirect deaths attributable to the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011,” it adds.
The death rate from 2003 to 2011 was “beyond expected rates,” according to the study, and most of the deaths could be blamed on direct violence, while a third could be attributed to “indirect causes (such as from failures of health, sanitation, transportation, communication and other systems),” the journal says.
It adds that gunshots caused 63 percent of violent deaths, car bombs accounted for 12 percent and other explosions 9 percent. Gunshots death were prevalent from March 1, 2003 to December 31, 2008, and dropped “precipitously thereafter,” the journal says.
US-led coalition forces were responsible for 35 percent of violent war-related deaths and militias were responsible for 32 percent; coalition forces were responsible for killing the most women and militia were responsible for most adult male deaths.
The study was conducted in 2011, which gave researchers more access to areas due to the end of the war. But the methodology has been criticized by some social scientists who have been working on the widely contested death toll of the war.
Other organizations have come up with much lower numbers.
For example, the Costs of War Projects estimates that 176,000 to 189,000 Iraqis died in the war, the Iraq Body Count Project estimates 113,000 deaths, the Iraq Family Health estimates 151,000 deaths and the Associated Press estimates a death toll of 111,000.
The Al Jazeera America news organization quoted researchers praising the work, but also criticizing it.
Beth Osborne Daponte of Social Science Consultans told Al Jazeera America, “I can see that over the years in this type of research, they made an attempt to be more rigorous, and that is very good.” But she added that, “There’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty there.”
As studies continue to be released about the death toll of the Iraq war, there still seems to be a great disconnect between public perception of the numbers and actual casualty estimates.
A recent poll commissioned by British Media in July 2013 shows that most Britons believe the death toll was 5,000 or less.
“That figure is so staggeringly, mind-blowingly at odds with reality as to leave a journalist who worked long and hard to bring home the reality of the war speechless,” Alex Thompson, a UK Channel 4 reporter, wrote in May of this year.
Most Americans believe the death toll from the war to be around 10,000.
