In what may turn out to be a significant move, the United Nations has sharply criticized the Iraqi government for refusing to provide detailed figures for the killed and wounded in the worsening conflict. The Malilki administration has for its part deplored past UN figures as exaggerated.
The first thing to be said about this row is that the collection of accurate data on anything at all in Iraq is difficult, even for the government. UN figures on the dead and injured come in large part directly from the remaining doctors in hospitals and officials in the Red Crescent or Red Cross. There is virtually no independent verification. Nor indeed do all the dead make it to a morgue. Thus the latest appalling figures put out by the UN are likely to be an underestimate. As it is, they do not make good reading. This January the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) reported that 34,452 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. These figures were considerably greater than official estimates, which have often been confined to noting percentage movements in the number of victims. In response to Iraqi government anger at their report, UNAMI asked to be given the administration’s figures. These have not been provided.
It is hard to avoid the growing feeling that the Premier Nuri Al-Maliki’s administration is losing touch with reality. The repeated insistence that the security “surge” is indeed having an impact, when the daily toll of violence says otherwise, is further disturbing evidence of this lack of realism. It is not hard, however, to see why anxious ministers and officials should be pretending security is getting better. President George Bush is making his final throw before Congress and the American people are forcing his administration to begin the abandonment of its Iraqi disaster. Bush needs the Iraqi government to be talking about slow but steady success, even if it is untrue. But the Maliki administration is taking a big risk by going along with this almost certainly doomed strategy.
The risk is it will endanger its legitimacy as a multiparty government. Despite the defection of Moqtada Sadr’s ministers, Maliki can still claim to head a unity government. There may be legitimate fears about security after a Coalition withdrawal but these must be balanced against the need to assert its independence as a sovereign government. Fudging the statistical truth about Bush’s calamitous intervention, merely to help the US president save a little face is not a good idea. Nor is picking a fight with the UN.
When Iraq is no longer occupied, it will need the UN to help restore stability and rebuild. Iraqis themselves will have to bring their conflict to an end but it will be their neighbors and the international community who will have to render invaluable assistance. Parroting Washington propaganda about how well everything is going not only reinforced a popular view that the Maliki government is a puppet of the neoconservatives in the White House, it also does nothing to help build important new relationships in a post-occupation Iraq.
