Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: Human Security and the Emergence of Body Counts
- 1 The Long Journey to the War on Terror
- 2 The Rising Violence: Writing the War 2006– 2007
- 3 The Beginning of the End of Sectarian Violence? Writing the War 2008– 2009
- 4 Iraq 2010– 2013
- 5 Iraq 2014– 2017: Obama and the Banality of Killing
- Epilogue: Iraq and Its Casualties Today
- References
- Index
Epilogue: Iraq and Its Casualties Today
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Foreword
- Introduction: Human Security and the Emergence of Body Counts
- 1 The Long Journey to the War on Terror
- 2 The Rising Violence: Writing the War 2006– 2007
- 3 The Beginning of the End of Sectarian Violence? Writing the War 2008– 2009
- 4 Iraq 2010– 2013
- 5 Iraq 2014– 2017: Obama and the Banality of Killing
- Epilogue: Iraq and Its Casualties Today
- References
- Index
Summary
The original sin of the Iraq war was, perhaps, the neo-con belief that the invasion would be welcomed as liberation and a pro-US ‘democracy’ readily imposed.
Hinnebusch, 2015, p 262On 2 January 2020, a US airstrike killed a high-profile commander of Iran's secretive Quds Force, Qassim Suleimani, a commander of Iran's military forces in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. Another man, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy of the militias known as the Popular Mobilization Units and a close adviser to Suleimani, was also killed in the airstrike near Baghdad's airport. Al-Muhandis and Suleimani were killed when their vehicle was hit on the road to the airport. The Popular Mobilization had been fighting Islamic State forces alongside Iraqi government forces for years, and had increasingly come under attack themselves, with dozens of their fighters losing their lives in Iraq every year. Three days before the assassination of Al-Muhandis and Suleimani, 25 Popular Mobilization fighters had been killed by a US airstrike in Western Anbar. On 30 December 2019, Al-Baghdadiya reported the mass killing:
The Popular Mobilization Directorate announced, on Monday, the outcome of the American bombing of the crowd camp, which rose to 25 dead and 51 wounded. ‘The death toll from the martyrs and the wounded as a result of the American aggression that targeted the locations of the Popular Mobilization Forces in western Anbar is 25 dead and 51 wounded’, Rabiawi said in a statement to the Popular Mobilization website. He added, ‘The number of martyrs can be increased due to the presence of wounded people in critical condition and severe injuries’. (Al-Baghdadiya, 2019)
Suleimani's Quds Force was a division of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, widely believed to support many Iran-backed terrorist groups, such as Hezbollah. This strike was aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans, the Defence Department claimed. ‘The United States will continue to take all necessary action to protect our people and our interests wherever they are around the world’ (BBC, 2020).
This book has looked at what those interests are and what their protection has meant for the Iraqis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Body CountThe War on Terror and Civilian Deaths in Iraq, pp. 181 - 192Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2020