Terrorist incidents in Iraq

I mainly want to bookmark here, for future reference, the US government’s own count of the number of terrorist incidents in Iraq in calendar 2005, as released last week by the National Counter-Terrorism Center. Okay, I also want to comment on it.
The NCTC’s count is here, (PDF file– go to page 8.)
What we see counted there are 3,474 incidents of terrorism in Iraq in 2005, resulting in 20,711 “victims”, counting those killed, injured, or kidnapped as a result of the counted incidents.
I was trying to look at trend lines. If you go to this page on the NCTC’s Worldwide Incidents Tracking System, you’ll find it’s the first of 176 linked web-pages there that list and give some info about all the counted terrorism incidents in Iraq between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2005.
So the total for those two years was 4,413 incidents involving 30,643 victims.
So in 2004, there had been 939 incidents involving 9,932 victims.
So in 2005, the number of incidents increased by 270 percent over its counted 2004 rate, and the number of victims increased by 109 percent.

What a truly terrible record for the US occupation regime there, all round.
You have to know, too, that the counting system used was extremely partial, and doesn’t convey the total amount of “terror” inflicted on Iraqi civilians through politically motivated violence (which is what the NCTC purports to count). Crucially, it fails to count all incidents of violent actions that inflicted death and other harms on Iraqi civilians that were carried out by the US military and forces allied with it including the Iraqi “security” forces. If we add in those incidents, we can see that the total amount of terror inflicted on the Iraqi citizenry in 2004, 2005, and until today is almost unimaginably high.
Just think how terrifying everyone in Israel finds it if, say, three Israeli civilians are subjected to politically motivated violence. And multiply that by many thousands over the course of a year. (Guess what, Iraqi people are just as much human as Israeli people; and they have the same capacity for inter-human empathy, solidarity, and feelings of pain.)
And of course it is not just the counted individuals who are impacted when anti-civilian violence occurs. It is their families, those who love them, and everyone who lives in that same community.
… Sometimes, Bush administration officials and their apologists have argued, with quite unpardonable cynicism and disregard for human life, that “it is better to fight the terrorists ‘over there’ than ‘over here’.” I find this argument revolting, and racist (in the global definition of that term, not the skin color-related US definition of it.)
Indeed, the US occupation presence in Iraq has not only attracted and helped to motivate the actions of new generations of Sunni-extremist terrorists there; but it has also inflicted its own often wanton violence on the Iraqi citizenry, and has empowered and trained some of the Shiite-extremist and Kurdish militias that have inflicted even more violence on the Iraqi citizenry. Nearly all the manifestations of those forms of violence– including the US military’s violence– are “politically motivated”, in the sense that that they’re not motivated by, say, hopes of personal gain or outright thievery. (Though that happens too.)
Certainly, if Iraq is ever lucky enough to have something like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, then acts of rights-abusing violence undertaken by the occupation regime and its allies would come under exactly the same public microscope as similar acts undertaken by anti-occupation forces.
Quite rightly so, from the human rights perspective.
… And meantime, the Taliban are steadily making a comeback in many parts of southern Afghanistan.
So what on earth kind of a “counter-terrorism” policy has the Bush administration been running?
Anyone?

9 thoughts on “Terrorist incidents in Iraq”

  1. I have always been deeply offended by the notion that our ongoing occupation of Iraq is justifiable on the basis that “it is better to fight the terrorists ‘over there’ than ‘over here’.”
    Thank you for remarking on the racist undertones to this tired and objectionable talking point and for shining a light on the suffering that this strategy has brought to the Iraqi people.
    BTW, I followed a link here from Juan Cole’s Informed Comment and I’m sure I will be back to visit your site again.
    Thank you, Mitch

  2. Isn’t it a bit gratuitous to single out the Israelis to make the point that Iraqi civilian lives have worth?…Many English, Spanish, Aussies (2 Balis), Americans, Egyptians, Russians, etc., have also been victims of extreme terrorism the past 5 years. All such nihilistic acts are grotesque, inhuman and to be deplored regardless of the nationalities of the victims.

  3. but the US press makes a MUCH bigger deal out of terrorism attacks on Israelis than they do for Iraqis or Palestinians… or just about anywhere short of the USA.
    I think that is why Helena used that example. We are blind to the suffering in other countries, thanks to our corporate press.

  4. Well, with Joe Biden and now David Broder signing on, I guess the disintegration of Iraq into feuding tribal enclaves now has full bipartisan support among the political ruling class here in the US. They are providing plenty of cover for Bush to assert that this has been his goal all along, that this was what he meant by “democracy,” that Iraq is now a republic just like the US (Kurdistan = Kansas), and anyway strong central governments just stifle freedom and initiative, as every good Republican knows.
    Of course, the feuding Iraqistans will need US peacekeepers to hang around indefinitely, making sure nobody gets enough power to actually control anything. And of course, it would be inefficient for local warlords to control oil resources, so those will have to managed by a central authority, which will of course need to rely heavily on advisers supplied by US oil companies. No need for Iraqis to get involved in trying to figure out the finance and accounting side of all that – we’ll handle everything for a reasonable fee.
    “Biden would retain control of defense, foreign policy and oil resources for the central government now on the way to formation, but he would let the regional governments largely run their own affairs,” says Broder. They would be just like real governments, except they wouldn’t have any means of dealing with other governments, defending themselves, or raising money.
    “It is [the sectarian] violence that poses the main threat to Iraq’s security now and that makes it impossible for the American forces to set a departure date.” We can’t stop the war while there’s a war going on.
    Is Broder ever going to retire?
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050302201.html

  5. I wrote an email to Broder today and called Biden’s office also.
    What a bunch of jerks.
    What a day – Cheney is lecturing China about human rights, somebody is telling Mexico how to write their laws and now the DC idiots are deciding the future of Iraq.
    Like I pointed out to Biden and Broder – the events in New Orleans last August clearly showed we don’t know how to run our own country.
    Unless running the USA into the ground is the overall goal.

  6. May I recommend Stephen Colbert’s views on the kind of policies Bush is running, and the way he is running them? Watch Colbert’s speech during the White House Correspondents Association Annual Dinner 2 days ago. He didn’t take any prisoners, especially not when their name is George W. Bush, who sat almost right next to him.
    Warning: video is 20 minutes long:
    Stephen Colbert makes mincemeat of Bush

  7. helena- sorry I wasn’t aware of the rule. Are you not familiar with buchanan outside of his controversial moral stances? His anti- Iraq war / neo con stuff is highly respected and read. antiwar.com carries 90 percent of his columns. I think he’s just stating the situation as he sees it. He’s the anti-fear mongerer.

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