You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Iraq-Jordan
Iraqis soldier on without power, water, jobs, sewers
2005-05-14
Hat tip Instapundit . You can get the UN report here as a series of PDF files. EFL on the Times article.
THE invasion of Iraq and its aftermath caused the deaths of 24,000 Iraqis, including many children, according to the most detailed survey yet of postwar life in the country.

The UN report paints a picture of modern Iraq brought close to collapse despite its oil wealth. Successive wars, a decade of sanctions and the current violence have destroyed services, undermined health and education and made the lives of ordinary Iraqis dangerous and miserable.

The survey for the UN Development Programme, entitled Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, questioned more than 21,600 households this time last year. Its findings, released by the Ministry of Planning yesterday, could finally resolve the debate over how many Iraqis were killed in the war that overthrew the regime of Saddam Hussein in April 2003.
No word on whether it will resolve the debate over how many Iraqis were dumped into mass graves by Saddam.
The 370-page report said that it was 95 per cent confident that the toll during the war and the first year of occupation was 24,000, but could have been between 18,000 and 29,000. About 12 per cent of those were under 18.

The figure is far lower than the 98,000 deaths estimated in The Lancet last October, which said that it had interviewed nearly 1,000 households. But it is far higher than other figures.

Some of the findings will come as no surprise to Iraqis, who have grown used to poverty, unemployment, power cuts, open sewers and an overwhelmed healthcare system.
And that was before liberation.
The report said that unemployment was now more than 18 per cent, compared with just over 3 per cent in the 1980s. Basic services have also collapsed. Some 85 per cent of households complained of electricity cuts and 29 per cent relied on generators. Only 54 per cent of Iraqi families had clean water. Only 37 per cent were connected to a sewage network, compared with 75 per cent in the 1980s. "If you compare this to the situation in the 1980s, you will see a major deterioration," said Barham Salih, the Iraqi Planning Minister, who described life for Iraqis as tragic.
If only the Iraqi government then had paid attention to basic services.
The report highlighted falling standards of education and healthcare, which had been among the highest in the Arab world but were now among the lowest. The number of Iraqi mothers who die in labour reached 93 in every 100,000 births, compared with 14 in Jordan and 32 in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Salih said that the condition of his country was particularly tragic given its huge oil wealth and access to water. He insisted that the blame lay with Saddam's regime, which had embarked on two wars against its neighbours, persecuted its population and provoked sanctions. "Undeniably, from the perspective of many, the former regime's aggressive policies, its wars, its repression and mismanagement of the economy are an important part of why we are here today," he said.
Wonder if WaPo and the NYT will report that quote.
But he vowed that the new Government would address the formidable problems highlighted by the report. "I hope we will be able to bring a model into Iraq that will turn Iraq from the land of mass graves, lack of development, child mortality and illiteracy into a land of peace, stability and prosperity," he said.
Posted by:Fred

#4  This report is indeed heavily flawed. What was the cut-off date, April 2004? October, 2004? It can't have been any time in the last three months.
According to Arthur Chrenkoff, almost 2,000 megawatts of new electrical production has come online in the last month. Construction continues on more than a dozen additional power plants that will increase electrical generating capacity to three times prewar level. There are almost 700 sewer and sanitation projects in the works, and another 400+ water projects, ranging from new wells to city water supply products for Basra, Mosul, and Tikrit. One of the biggest problems slowing development in Iraq is the constant barrage of assaults from the old Baathists and Al-Qaida.

Another question the UN failed to ask is how many of that 24,000 were killed by terrorists and their IEDs, VBIEDs, and just plain murder. BIG questions that weren't asked, or at least not reported. The UN strikes again - from the back, with poor aim and no judgment.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2005-05-14 16:58  

#3  They mention The Lancet's 100,000 death count but fail to note how absurdly flawed The Lancet's methods were:
http://www.chicagoboyz.net/archives/002543.html

They note the deaths of 24,000 Iraqis "including many children" but then wait three paragraphs to say that "About 12 per cent of those were under 18". Do they think 12 percent is shockingly high? It is actually shockingly low! 51 percent of the population is 19 or under! See the last table here:
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbsum.pl?cty=IZ

And how does 24,000 dead compare to the 400,000 dead unearthed from Saddam's mass graves to date? It appears to me that Saddam's thugocracy was on average putting about 15,000 to 20,000 people a year into mass graves -- for over 20 years! And his supporters continue their homicidal rage to this very day.
http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/legacyofterror.html

This report is yet another piece of UN crap. We need to stop funding this crap.
Posted by: Tom   2005-05-14 16:30  

#2  If you look for the worst, expecting to find it, you surely will.*

*UN motto, yes?
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut   2005-05-14 15:27  

#1  The report is crap. They have more power generation now in terms of MWs than pre-invasion. The large metropolitan (Baghdad, Mosul, Bosra, etc.) have expanded and fully operational H20 treatement and Waste Water Treatment plants at high availability and reliability. Lets not forget the major port and waterway rehabilitation, the renovation and modernization of the railroad and rebuilding of all major bridges. The infrastructure is there and working. There are also more cell phones working now than pre-invasion as well as more businesses and small enterprises operating. Then you have all the new media - print and electronic. But then the report is 2004 and based on interviews. Think about the poll results you would get if you asked people in Florida after the hurricans about electricity, water and transportation effectiveness.
Posted by: Jack is Back!   2005-05-14 14:00  

00:00