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BBC MUNDO RADIO
By TIM ARANGO
BAGHDAD — When gunmen ambushed Iraqi security checkpoints in a large Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad last Thursday, terrorized residents said the attack reminded them of the worst days of the war. The United States military said it was unaware of any gunfighting.
Mohammed Ameen/Reuters
In Baghdad, an Iraqi soldier stood guard on Sunday in Adhamiya, three days after a shootout.
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On Sunday, when The Associated Press reported that July was the worst month for Iraqi casualties in more than two years, the United States military denied it. Yes, Iraqis are still dying, the American command said, but in strikingly fewer numbers than Iraqi government ministries have told the news media.
As American forces exit Iraq, with only 50,000 to remain by the end of this month and all to be withdrawn in a year, the American military command is accentuating the positive. The Americans also say they are increasingly relying on Iraqis for information they use in the story they tell, that the country they are leaving behind is steadily improving and on the path to becoming a safe and stable democracy.
But it is also an axiom of conflict that competing stories emerge about the same events. The “fog of war” still shrouds this country more than seven years after the American-led invasion, at a time when America’s war is largely complete, even as its legacy remains unfinished.
This was apparently the case Thursday in the Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad, a Sunni enclave that once symbolized sectarian bloodletting. Witnesses on the street and a local hospital recounted a brazen assault by gunmen on Iraqi security posts that recalled the not-too-distant past.
“I saw the attackers shooting the soldiers at the checkpoint using silencers. There were three or four armed men and then I was shocked when a big explosion happened,” recalled one witness, a shop owner named Kahlil Asmaeel. “I was very afraid, and I had to hide to protect myself from the shooting.”
Noman Hospital in Adhamiya received the bodies of three soldiers killed by gunshots, and was treating four wounded traffic police officers who had been shot, according to an official there who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Adhamiya residents awoke the next day to a ghost city of barricades and empty streets, and they lined up outside the few shops that were open to buy bread in anticipation of an early curfew. An Iraqi newspaper declared, “curfew cripples life in Adhamiya.” The Iraqi government said it found a video that showed insurgents burning soldier corpses in the street.
An American military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as ground rules for the conversation, explained that “we got all our information from the Iraqi police and we had no reports of firing weapons.”
In the Adhamiya attacks, the American military official said, the Americans were informed only of roadside bombs, not gun battles, but he said, “We believe we got a very full story.”
The Americans are not always passive absorbers of Iraqi information, however.
Last Monday morning, a couple of hours after the Al Arabiya satellite news channel was bombed, Col. Roger Cloutier, commander of the Third Infantry Division’s First Brigade in Baghdad, immediately got a telephoned update: two killed, eight wounded, so far, and an American explosive ordnance disposal unit was on the scene at the request of the Iraqis.
In some instances, as in the release of casualty statistics, the Americans publicly showcase their own data, which consistently show many fewer violent deaths than figures released by the Interior Ministry.
Since the war began, the numbers of dead and wounded have been bitterly contested among the press, the American military and the Iraqi government. In the latest episode on Sunday, the United States military contested figures released by The A.P. on Iraqi casualties in July.
In a news release, the military said it “refutes the reported figures of violence” that indicated that July 2010 was the deadliest month in Iraq since 2008. The A.P., citing statistics compiled from the Health, Defense and Interior Ministries, reported 535 deaths in July. The Americans said the number was 222.
According to an official at the Interior Ministry, 391 were killed, excepting the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north.
In June the United States military announced that deaths of civilians and members of the Iraqi police and army were down by nearly half for the year to that point, compared with the same period of 2009. It said that deaths in April had fallen to just over 200, compared with nearly 450 in April 2009. Statistics provided by the Interior Ministry to The New York Times showed 583 deaths from violence in Iraq in April, excepting the Kurdish region.
The centerpiece of the American narrative these days is that violence is down and that Iraq is becoming safer as the capabilities of the Iraqi security forces improve. Violence is down, when measured by either the American or Iraqi statistics, but they substantially diverge over how much.
The Americans have said that civilian and security force deaths this year are down about 50 percent compared with 2009. Statistics from the Interior Ministry show violent deaths down only half as much — or 25 percent compared with 2009.
While the overall picture remains that violence is down from last year, hundreds of Iraqis still die every month in attacks, and some recent Iraqi data raise questions about the durability of the narrative of steady improvement.
In July, for instance, many more civilians were killed in Baghdad compared with the previous year: 176 last month compared with 108 last year, according to the Interior Ministry. There were more homemade bombs, called improvised explosive devices in Baghdad in July than in any month last year, according to the ministry.
It is impossible to discern who is correct, and the divergence adds to the murkiness here, especially at a time of political paralysis — there is no new government nearly five months after parliamentary elections — and American withdrawal.
Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, an American military spokesman, wrote in an e-mail, “I can say with confidence that our system for tracking is thoroughly reviewed.” He said he “can’t speculate” on how the Iraqi government figures are compiled.
Gen. Ray Odierno, the top American military commander here, said recently, “I’m not going to argue over figures, but what I will tell you is that it’s better than it was.”
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