By 2008, the UNHCR raised the estimate of refugees to a total of about 4.7 million, with 2 million displaced internally and 2.7 million displaced externally (UNHCR, 2008). But the death toll was to halve, then halve again the following year as Table 3.1 shows.

The numbers, despite being high, suggested a marked improvement, perhaps the beginning of the end of sectarian violence. The ‘surge’ appeared to have worked, but Iraqis were still far from secure.

2008: Iraq after the surge

Over 10,200 Iraqi civilians lost their lives in 2008, still a shockingly high number, although a substantial drop on the preceding two years: on a per-day rate, representing a reduction from 81 per day (2006) and 72 per day (2007) to 25 per day in 2008. The most notable reduction in violence was in Baghdad. For the first time since the US-led occupation of Iraq began, fewer deaths were reported in the capital than in the rest of the country (from 54% of all deaths in 2006– 2007 to 32% in 2008).

While the US used a variety of means in its surge strategy, military force has remained central, with the predictable outcome of new civilian lives lost. Airstrikes – the most frequent mode of US military attack involving civilian victims – continued with regularity throughout the surge, killing close to 400 civilians in 2008. Roadside bombs killed 1,106 civilians. During 2008, 928 policemen were reported killed. Some three quarters of the reported civilian killings had no clearly distinguishable perpetrator.

As well as extracting the daily data on civilian deaths, I followed the developments that revealed more human misery, its causes and its place in the larger context.

The vulnerable

3 Feb 2008

The rules of war are founded in 3 principles: discrimination, necessity and proportionality. They dictate that only combatants may be targeted (discrimination), that the tactics used should only be those necessary to achieve a certain military objective (necessity), and that the cost of the tactics used is not higher than the benefit of the objective itself (proportionality).

The basis and aim of all 3 principles can be summed up in a single phrase: the protection of the vulnerable. During any war civilians are the most vulnerable to attack, and it is the lives of civilians that any army, government, state or group has the responsibility to defend, protect or spare.