Utilising the detailed database assembled by Iraq Body Count, a team of researchers found that, of non-combatant deaths from armed violence during the five-year period from March 2003 through March 2008, one-third were inflicted by execution, 20 percent by small-arms gunfire, 14 percent by suicide bombing, with smaller proportions for vehicle bombs, roadside bombs, mortar fire, and air attacks. Of those who were executed, almost three in ten showed signs indicating torture.

The greatest proportion of victims — 19,706 of 60,481, or 33% — were killed by execution after abduction or capture. Of the bodies of those who were executed, 5760, or 29%, showed marks of torture, such as bruises, drill holes, or burns. (A typical media report about this particularly appalling form of violent death reads: “The bullet-riddled bodies bore signs of torture and their hands were tied behind their backs.”) Iraqi civilians also suffered heavy tolls from small-arms gunfire in open shootings and firefights (20% of deaths), apart from executions involving gunfire, and from suicide bombs (14% of deaths).

In events with at least one Iraqi civilian victim, the methods that killed the most civilians per event were aerial bombings (17 per event), combined use of aerial and ground weapons (17 per event), and suicide bombers on foot (16 per event). Aerial bombs killed, on average, 9 more civilians per event than aerial missiles (17 vs. 8 per event). Indeed, if an aerial bomb killed civilians at all, it tended to kill many. It seems clear from these findings that to protect civilians from indiscriminate harm, as required by international humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions), military and civilian policies should prohibit aerial bombing in civilian areas unless it can be demonstrated — by monitoring of civilian casualties, for example — that civilians are being protected. [footnote omitted]

Women and children were disproportionately represented among victims of attacks using relatively indiscriminate weapons—air strikes and mortar fire. Men tended to be killed using more precise methods—gunfire and executions.

Assyrian International News Agency has an additional tidbit not found in the text of the NEJM article.

One author of the study thinks many of those involving torture “had to do with trying to get people to move out of their houses” because they were from rival Muslim sects.

The article lists six co-authors, three from Iraq Body Count; two from Royal Holloway College, University of London; and one from King’s College, London.

The analysis encompassed only victims of short-duration events (two days or less). Civilians killed in prolonged violence, i.e., the two sieges of Fallujah and some episodes during the initial stage of the invasion (20 March-30 April 2003), were excluded from consideration. This was necessary because deaths occurring in those situations could not be reliably linked with type of weapons used to kill. Thus, the overall number of civilian deaths—91,358—was reduced to 60,481 included in the analysis.

h/t: personal communication from Michael Spagat

In her memory, the International Campaign Against Honour Killing has nominated 7 April as the international day against honour killings. Several news stories about her are linked here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeoOV-IyAzI[/youtube]

I look around our church and most of our members (over 2,000) are women and children because our men have been killed or kidnapped. All of our members apart from me are Iraqis and all have suffered terribly. Last year alone, 93 of my people were killed. This year already, five of my people have been killed. All of my original church leaders were killed in 2005 and all Christians in the country who had the means have left and gone to Jordan, Syria or Sweden so that those left behind tend to be the poorer members of the community.
[…]
Hundreds of Christians have been killed, forced to convert or made to pay jezerah tax. On the whole people have not even heard of these problems. I stand in church each week and look at the widows and children without parents. They are my people and I have to provide for them. There is no social security, they need food, clothes and healthcare. They have no money so we have to provide it. I thank G-d that by his grace through our supporters, I have always been able to do this. I might be an Anglican but we do not just give to our own we also give to the Assyrian, Armenian, Chaldean, Syrian Orthodox and to some of the Protestant groups. What we can give though is minuscule compared to the extent of the needs.

Christians have been in Iraq for almost 2000 years, but today they are an imperiled minority.

When asked to provide several basic facts about this research, Burnham refused,” the council said in a statement. It noted that the group’s Code of Professional Ethics and Practices calls for researchers to disclose their methodology when survey findings are made public so they can be independently evaluated and verified.

“Dr. Burnham provided only partial information and explicitly refused to provide complete information about the basic elements of his research,” said Mary Losch, chair of the association’s Standards Committee.

More from AAPOR’s press release:

AAPOR’s President, Richard A. Kulka, added “When researchers draw important conclusions and make public statements and arguments based on survey research data, then subsequently refuse to answer even basic questions about how their research was conducted, this violates the fundamental standards of science, seriously undermines open public debate on critical issues, and undermines the credibility of all survey and public opinion research.  These concerns have been at the foundation of AAPOR’s standards and professional code throughout our history, and when these principles have clearly been violated, making the public aware of these violations is in integral part of our mission and values as a professional organization.”

The AAPOR did not address the accuracy of Burnham’s findings but, since his stonewalling renders impossible an impartial scientific scrutiny of the study’s methods, no credence can be given to its purported results.

Burnham and his co-authors contended that, between March 2003 and July 2006, over 650,000 Iraqis died who would not have died had the invasion not occurred.  When released in October 2006, the study received massive worldwide publicity.  Many experts in statistical survey methodology and other fields immediately questioned its soundness.

Last December, an analytical paper challenging the study’s methodology was named article of the year by the Journal of Peace Research.

Here are links to some posts on the Lancet study at my former blog Magic Statistics:

• Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable
• A specification of the Lancet study’s “Main street bias”
• In the spotlight again: Lancet study of Iraqi deaths
• Lancet study: Serious ethical lapses, data quality problems

h/t: personal communication from Michael Spagat

Philip Jenkins, author of The Lost History of Christianity, outlines the story in Christianity Today online.

[U]nderstanding the history of Iraq’s churches should make us still more keenly aware of the tragedy we see unfolding. Not only are these churches — Chaldean, Assyrian, Orthodox — truly ancient, they are survivals from the earliest history of the church. For centuries indeed, the land long known as Mesopotamia had a solid claim to rank as the center of the church and an astonishing record of missions and evangelism. What we see today in Iraq is not just the death of a church, but also the end of one of the most awe-inspiring phases of Christian history.
[…]
When the Roman Empire became Christian, Mesopotamia became the main refuge for those theological currents that the empire now labeled heretical: the Monophysites or Jacobites, and the Nestorians. Ultimately, most of the Christians of modern Iraq look to one of these movements as their spiritual ancestor.
[…]
These Mesopotamian monasteries were also the base camps for one of the greatest missionary enterprises in Christian history. Especially between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Church of the East was establishing bishoprics and metropolitans across Asia — through Afghanistan and Turkmenistan, into Tibet and Kyrgyzstan, and as far as India and China.

Looking at the world in 850 or so, few observers would have doubted that the Christian future lay in the Middle East and Asia, rather than in the barbarian-ravaged lands of Western Europe.

But it was not to be. Muslims began systematically persecuting Christians in the 13th and 14th centuries, obliterating the church across the Middle East and Central Asia. That persecution has continued to the present day, even intensifying during the 20th century, thus bringing us to what appears to be the impending destruction of Christianity in Iraq.

h/t: Sanctus

In early 2008, Sweden and Iraq signed an agreement under which the Iraqi government pledged to protect religious minorities and returning refugees from ethnic and religious cleansing. Since then, Iraq failed to prevent Islamists from driving thousands of Assyrian (Chaldean and Syriac) Christian families from Mosul. The city is reportedly on the verge of being emptied of non-Muslims.

After being denied asylum by the Migration Board, the family (identified only by the father’s name, Harout) went to Sweden’s Migration Court, which found that the family is not safe anywhere in Iraq and granted permanent residency.

From the court’s decision:

Harout and his family belong to the Christian minority in Mosul, which according to country reporting in the case is a group subject to a high risk of threats and assaults. It has htrough [sic] the investigation come to light that Harout was running a garage and at a few occasions repaired military vehicles belonging to the American forces. After this he became victim of telephone threats and was accused to be a Christian traitor on three different occasions. The person or persons who threatened him urged him to leave the country instantly or else he would be killed. Besides this, Harout’s garage was destroyed in a bomb attack. It has, however, not been possible to establish whether the attack was attempted towards Harout personally or not. The Migration Court nevertheless finds the threats towards Harout are to be considered as severe assaults in terms of what is dictated by the Aliens Act and it is probable that he and his family, if they are forced to return home, will experience well-founded fear for repeated assaults. Futhermore, [sic] the Migrationsdomstolen [Migration Court] finds that they cannot profit from the protection the authorities in the country. It is neither a reasonable to expect them to be able to settle down in another part of Iraq. Harout, his wife and two children as people in need of protection are therefore granted permanent residency according to Chap 4, paragraph 2 first part 2 Alien Act.

The ruling would appear to imply that no threatened Iraqis can be deported, apparently rendering the Swedish-Iraqi agreement a dead letter.

From a report by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHRC), datelined 31 December:

For any refugee, the chance to begin a new life in Canada is a coveted prize. But for Hiba [not her real name], wearing a huge smile as she approaches the departure gate at Damascus airport, the plane she’s about to board means leaving behind the unimaginable horror of rape, exploitation, human trafficking and prison – a lifetime of torment lived by the age of 17.

Hiba’s fate seemed to have been sealed when her mother left her with her father in Baghdad when she was just seven. When she was 15, he forced her into a mutaa marriage, or temporary marriage, with a cousin.

Under this traditional local custom, Hiba was informally married to her cousin for 48 hours, but he abandoned her after satisfying his lust. Her father refused to take her back.

Hiba’s father tricked her into going to Syria where, unbeknownst to her, he had sold her to a stranger who forced her into prostitution. When she became pregnant, she was tossed out on the streets of Damascus. She wound up in a rehabilitation centre for minors and then came to the attention of the UN Refugee Agency.

When the UNHRC sought a country to take Hiba in, Canada responded. That makes me proud to be a Canadian.

The story doesn’t specify anyone’s religion but mutaa, or temporary, marriage seems to be a custom unique to Islam. So, apparently, Hiba’s father is a Muslim.

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor’s house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. “I do this in the name of Allah!” she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan’s genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan’s mother smiled with pride.

“This is the practice of the Kurdish people for as long as anyone can remember,” said the mother, Aisha Hameed, 30, a housewife in this ethnically mixed town about 100 miles north of Baghdad. “We don’t know why we do it, but we will never stop because Islam and our elders require it.”

Your elders may require it, but Islam apparently does not. The barbaric practice is not accepted in most Muslim states, nor does it occur among Iraqi Arabs. Also, some African tribal groups practice FGM for reasons unrelated to religion.

Pakshan Zangana, head of the women’s committee in the Kurdistan parliament, has been pushing for a law carrying a maximum ten-year sentence for anyone involved in FGM. A see-no-evil cabinet minister, however, says this is not necessary.

The Kurdish region’s minister of human rights, Yousif Mohammad Aziz, said he didn’t think the issue required action by parliament. “Not every small problem in the community has to have a law dealing with it,” he said.

FGM a “small problem”? Kurdistan needs a minister of human rights who actually knows something about human rights.

Despite having very strong Christian traditions, the US and the UK did not take seriously the invasion’s effect on the security of Christians. Bp James accuses them of “religious illiteracy”.

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein an estimated 300,000 Christians have fled the country. The Christians, who have lived in Iraq for 2,000 years, survived the Muslim invasion in the 7th century and the Mongol onslaught in the 13th.

Their churches are now routinely bombed and members of their faith hunted down and killed along with other minority faiths, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International.

Christians were tolerated under Saddam Hussein whose Deputy, Tariq Aziz, was a Christian.
[…]
“A significant minority of the Iraqi population were Christian. There’s been at least two-thirds that have either left or been marginalised and in some circumstances killed.”

Christian communities in Iraq have suffered terrible persecution in recent years, but their lot under Saddam Hussein was not problem-free. Saddam destroyed hundreds of Christian towns and villages in an ethnic cleansing campaign.

Nevertheless, for the Christians of Iraq, the 2003 invasion made a difficult situation infinitely worse.

h/t: Persecution Blog

The third JPR Article of the Year Award goes to Neil F. Johnson, Michael Spagat, Sean Gourley, Jukka-Pekka Onnela & Gesine Reinert for ‘Bias in Epidemiological Studies of Conflict Mortality’, Journal of Peace Research 45(5): 653–663.

A jury consisting of Lars-Erik Cederman (ETH Zürich), Jon Hovi (University of Oslo) and Sara McLaughlin Mitchell (University of Iowa) has awarded the third Journal of Peace Research Article of the Year Award to Neil F. Johnson (University of Miami), Michael Spagat (University of London), Sean Gourley (University of Oxford), Jukka-Pekka Onnela (University of Oxford and Helsinki University of Technology) and Gesine Reinert (Oxford University). In its assessment of all research articles published in volume 45 of JPR, the jury paid attention to theoretical rigour, methodological sophistication and substantive relevance. According to the jury, the prize-winning article, ‘Bias in Epidemiological Studies of Conflict Mortality’, Journal of Peace Research 45(5): 653–663, provides an important advance in the methodology for estimating the number of casualties in civil wars. The authors show convincingly that previous studies which are based on a cross-street cluster-sampling algorithm (CSSA) have significantly overestimated the number of casualties in Iraq. Using a model that divides the underlying population in two groups (those that can and those that cannot be sampled under the CSSA methodology), the authors estimate the exposure to violence for each group, and quantify the potential bias resulting from the CSSA. Furthermore, they suggest and justify plausible values for the model’s parameters, provide a sensitivity analysis on the parameter values to help readers form their own judgements, and derive a simple formula that can be used to gauge and adjust for the bias. The prize-winning article is highly policy relevant and provides a sophisticated and innovative analysis of casualty estimates that have already attracted attention from policymakers.

The abstract of the award-winning article is posted here.

Prof Michael Spagat, one of the authors of the award-winning article, has a website on “Conflict Mortality Surveys” at Royal Holloway College, University of London.

Here are links to some posts on the Lancet study at my former blog Magic Statistics:

• Lancet study of Iraqi deaths is statistically unsound and unreliable
• A specification of the Lancet study’s “Main street bias”
• In the spotlight again: Lancet study of Iraqi deaths
• Lancet study: Serious ethical lapses, data quality problems

She stabbed Sayeed Mohammed in self-defence in July 2006. The altercation followed years of family conflict over her father’s conversion to Christianity in 1998. Maria, her mother, and a brother were baptised in 2003. Other family members are Muslim.

The case underscored concerns over the Christian minority in the country. Tensions in Maria’s family began in 1998 when Maria’s father, identified only as Kurdish man known as Ahmed, became a Christian and soon started encouraging others to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, Open Doors said. “In 2003 Maria en [sic] her mother were baptized, which added to anger among other family members,” the group added.

“Ahmed’s brother Sayeed tried five times to kill Ahmed…In 2006 Sayeed also attacked Ahmeds wife and children. Maria managed to take a knife and stabbed her uncle just once, killing him instantly,” said Open Doors.

Maria’s family went into hiding while she served her time in a juvenile facility. They remain fearful that relatives are still seeking revenge against her.

Even more perplexing is the seeming silence of Christian leadership around the world as their fellow Christians are being viciously attacked in India and Iraq. The press reports on the persecution of Christians in India and Iraq did not report any statements of condemnation by Christian groups in the United States. At press time, the St. Louis Jewish Light has been unable to find any such statements issued on behalf of many of the “mainstream” Protestant churches in the United States, some of which have adopted resolutions calling for “divestiture” from companies doing business with the State of Israel to protest its alleged mistreatment of the Palestinians. We hope that the various denominations within national and world Christianity will speak out forcefully and vigorously on behalf of their fellow-Christians being so horribly savaged in foreign lands.

The Jewish Light editorial concludes with a call to act for the relief of persecuted Christians around the world.

h/t: Christian Persecution Blog