Web-based effort to chronicle casualties of the U.S. invasion and war in Iraq
Iraq Body Count project (IBC) is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion. As of February 2019, the IBC has recorded 183,249 – 205,785 civilian deaths. The IBC has a media-centered approach to counting and documenting the deaths. Other sources have provided differing estimates of deaths, some much higher. See Casualties of the Iraq War.
The project uses reports from English-language news media (including Arabic media translated into English), NGO-based reports, and official records that have been released into the public sphere to compile a running total. On its database page the IBC states: "Gaps in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths from violence." The group is staffed by volunteers consisting mainly of academics and activists based in the UK and the US. The project was founded by John Sloboda and Hamit Dardagan.
According to Jonathan Steele, writing in "The Guardian", IBC "is widely considered as the most reliable database of Iraqi civilian deaths". But some researchers regard it at best as a floor, or baseline for mortality, and that it underestimates actual mortality by potentially several factors.
Project statement.
The IBC overview page states:
"This is an ongoing human security project which maintains and updates the world's only independent and comprehensive public database of media-reported civilian deaths in Iraq that have resulted from the 2003 military intervention by the USA and its allies. The count includes civilian deaths caused by coalition military action and by military or paramilitary responses to the coalition presence (e.g. insurgent and terrorist attacks). It also includes excess civilian deaths caused by criminal action resulting from the breakdown in law and order which followed the coalition invasion."
The project quotes the top US general in Iraq, Tommy Franks, as saying "We don't do body counts". Franks gave this terse answer ("You know we don't do body counts") at Bagram Air Base in answer to journalists’ questions on counting casualties during Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan.
Method.
The IBC overview page states: "Deaths in the database are derived from a comprehensive survey of commercial media and NGO-based reports, along with official records that have been released into the public sphere. Reports range from specific, incident based accounts to figures from hospitals, morgues, and other documentary data-gathering agencies."
Project volunteers sample news stories to extract minimum and maximum numbers of civilian casualties. Each incident reported at least by two independent news sources is included in the Iraq Body Count database. In December 2007, IBC announced that they would begin to include deaths reported by one source, and that the number of deaths provided by such reports would be openly tracked on its database page. Between 3.3 and 3.5 percent of deaths recorded by IBC are currently listed on the database page as derived from a single source.
IBC is purely a civilian count. IBC defines "civilian" to exclude Iraqi soldiers, insurgents, suicide bombers or any others directly engaged in war-related violence. A "min" and "max" figure are used where reports differ on the numbers killed, or where the civilian status of the dead is uncertain.
IBC is not an "estimate" of total civilian deaths based on projections or other forms of extrapolation. It is a compilation of documented deaths, as reported by English-language media worldwide. See the sources section farther down for more info on the media and their sources.
Some have suggested bias of sources could affect the count. If a number is quoted from an anti-coalition source, and the Allies fail to give a sufficiently specific alternate number, the anti-coalition figure is entered into IBC's database as both a maximum and a minimum. The same works vice versa. The project argues that these potential over- and undercounts by different media sources would tend to balance out.
IBC's online database shows the newspaper, magazine or website where each number is reported, and the date on which it was reported. However, this has been criticized as insufficient because it typically does not list the original sources for the information: that is, the NGO, journalist or government responsible for the number presented. Hence, any inherent bias due to the lack of reliable reports from independent or Allied sources is not readily available to the reader.
Sources.
The IBC overview page states that its sources include "public domain newsgathering agencies with web access". They include sources that are from sites updated at least once a day, are "separately archived on the site, with a unique URL", are "widely cited or referenced by other sources", are in English, and have "fully public (preferably free) web-access"
Primary sources used by the media are listed in the 2003 to 2005 IBC report. The sources are followed by the number of deaths reported from that source.
Web counters.
The IBC overview page states: "Results and totals are continually updated and made immediately available here and on various IBC web counters which may be freely displayed on any website or homepage, where they are automatically updated without further intervention."
Body counts change over time.
Civilian deaths in the Iraq war (cumulative):
The figures above are those that appeared in real time on the IBC counters on or around those dates. However, those in the first line were increased radically in the following days and weeks. IBC's current Max figure for the entire invasion phase, up to 30 April 2003, now stands at 7,299. Because IBC performs analyses (e.g., accounts for multiple reports, eliminates overlaps, etc.), there is always a delay between the date on which incidents occur and the addition of their numbers to the IBC database. Another factor is that some reports emerge weeks or even months later - for instance the emergence of Baghdad city morgue reports for 2005 in early 2006. The 6 December line above was taken from the IBC total as it stood on 6 December 2005, but the emergence of the morgue figures later increased IBC's figures for that period to 31,818–35,747. The majority of civilians death from 2003 to 2011 were attributed to unknown actors.
Cumulative updated body counts table.
Following are the yearly IBC Project violent civilian death totals, broken down by month from the beginning of 2003. Table below is copied irregularly from the source page, and is soon out-of-date as data is continually updated at the source. As of June 12, 2023 the top of the IBC database page with the table says 186,901 – 210,296 "Documented civilian deaths from violence". That page also says: "Gaps in recording and reporting suggest that even our highest totals to date may be missing many civilian deaths from violence."
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2006.
The Iraq Body Count project states for the week ending 31 December 2006: "It was a truly violent year, as around 24,000 civilians lost their lives in Iraq. This was a massive rise in violence: 14,000 had been killed in 2005, 10,500 in 2004 and just under 12,000 in 2003 (7,000 of them killed during the actual war, while only 5,000 killed during the 'peace' that followed in May 2003). In December 2006 alone around 2,800 civilians were reported killed. This week there were over 560 civilian deaths reported."
From the above quote here are IBC yearly death totals (not counting the initial 7000 invasion deaths):
March 2003 to March 2005 report.
The IBC released a report detailing the civilian deaths it had recorded between 20 March 2003 and 19 March 2005. From page 26: "The analyses in this dossier cover the first two years of the military intervention in Iraq from 20 March 2003 to 19 March 2005, and are based on data which was available by 14 June 2005."
The report says the US and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths. The remaining deaths were attributed to anti-occupation forces (9%), crime (36%), and unknown agents (11%).
Who did the killing?
Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.
Who was killed?
When did they die?
What was the most lethal weaponry?
How many were injured?
Iraq War Logs.
In October 2010, the group "WikiLeaks" released the Iraq War Logs, a set of nearly 400,000 classified US military documents on the Iraq war. IBC was among several media organizations and NGO's given pre-release access to the documents, and IBC co-founder John Sloboda delivered a speech at the press conference for the release by "WikiLeaks".
IBC published three pieces on their website detailing their analysis of the war logs. Among the main findings were that the war logs, "contain an estimated 15,000 previously unknown civilian deaths," and that addition of the new material would suggest that, "over 150,000 violent deaths have been recorded since March 2003, with more than 122,000 (80%) of them civilian."
Academic publications.
Between 2009 and 2011, IBC published three papers in peer reviewed academic journals, co-authored with researchers from King's College London and Royal Holloway, University of London. Each paper uses IBC data to evaluate different aspects of civilian casualties during the war.
The first paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in April, 2009, analyses civilian deaths between 2003 and 2008 according to weapon types used. Among the findings were that, "execution after abduction or capture was the single most common form of death overall," and that, "events involving air attacks and mortar fire were the most dangerous" to Iraqi females and children.
The second paper, published in "PLoS Medicine" in February, 2011, analyses civilian deaths between 2003 and 2008 according to perpetrator, weapon, time, and location. The paper found that most deaths during the period were, "inflicted by unknown perpetrators, primarily through extrajudicial executions." The paper also utilized what the authors refer to as the "Dirty War Index" which evaluates the behavior of different perpetrators or weapon types in terms of the proportion of women and children killed, with higher DWI ratios suggesting tactics or weapons that are more indiscriminate toward civilians. The study found that unknown perpetrators firing mortars had the highest DWI ratio, followed by Coalition Forces air attacks, leading the authors to advise that such weapons should not be used in populated areas.
The third paper, published in September, 2011, in a special edition of "The Lancet" for the 10 year anniversary of the September 11 attacks of 2001, focused on casualties of both civilians and Coalition soldiers specifically by suicide bomb attacks in Iraq between 2003 and 2010. This paper found that there had been at least 12,284 Iraqi civilians and 200 Coalition soldiers killed in at least 1,003 suicide bombings during the period. The study also found that these bombings had "injured no fewer than 30,644 Iraqi civilians," and that, "children are less likely to survive their suicide bomb injuries than adults."
Criticisms and counter-criticisms.
The IBC has received criticism from many sides. Some critics have focused on potential bias of sources. Others have raised concerns about the difficulty of distinguishing civilians from combatants. Others have criticized it for over or undercounting.
Some critics, often on the political right, claimed that the IBC numbers were an overcount, and that the numbers were suspect due to the antiwar bias of the IBC members. For example; 26 July 2005 "National Review" article, "Bad Counts. An unquestioning media."
Others, often on the political left, criticized media and government willingness to quote IBC figures more approvingly than the much higher estimate coming from the Lancet study that came out in October 2004.
Journalists included Lila Guterman, John Pilger, and George Monbiot
In a 27 January 2005 article in "The Chronicle of Higher Education" Lila Guterman wrote:
The Lancet released the paper on 29 October, the Friday before the election, when many reporters were busy with political coverage. That day, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune each dedicated only about 400 words to the study and placed the articles inside their front sections, on Pages A4 and A11, respectively. (The news media in Europe gave the study much more play; many newspapers put articles about it on their front pages.) In a short article about the study on Page A8, The New York Times noted that the Iraq Body Count, a