CIAO DATE: 10/05

The Role of Small Arms during the 2003-2004 Conflict in Iraq

Abstract

Iraq underwent a particularly deadly war with neighbouring Iran during the 1980s with perhaps a million deaths occurring. Following the Persian Gulf war of 1991, more than 60,000 Iraqis were believed to have been killed by the government in retaliation for perceived support of the US-led coalition during the conflict. The level of violence within Iraq has not been well recorded in recent years and, in fact, no survey or census-based estimate of crude mortality has been made in Iraq since 1997 and the last estimate of mortality in children under five years of age was a UNICEF-sponsored demographic survey of 1999.

At present, Iraq is in a situation of extreme insecurity and government health surveillance data is incomplete. Limited morgue-based surveillance data indicates the post-invasion homicide rate is many times higher than the pre-invasion rate. In Baghdad, a city of 5 million people, there were reportedly 3,000 gunshot- related deaths in the first eight months of 2004. The Web site Iraq Body Count (www.iraqbodycount.org) has kept a running estimate of press accounts of the number of Iraqi citizens killed by coalition forces. At present the estimated range is 14,000 to 16,000. Aside from the likelihood that press accounts are incomplete, this source does not record deaths that are the indirect result of the armed conflict. Other sources place the death toll much higher.

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