Word: civilian
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...United States prepares to launch what is ostensibly the final chapter in the U.S. military occupation of Iraq on January 1, a new report confirms a significantly lower civilian causality count for 2008 - along with a few caveats...
...report, released on Saturday by Iraq Body Count (IBC), an independent project that tallies statistics from NGOs and other groups, says that between 8,315 and 9,028 Iraqi civilians were killed in 2008. That compares to over 22,671 civilian deaths in 2007, and over 25,774 in 2006, according to the organization's tally. IBC has kept track of such numbers along with details of each incident since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Even so, the report cautions that the decline is only low in relative terms, and that attacks against civilians remain a serious problem. (See pictures...
...report contains another caveat: the 1,106 civilian deaths this year that relate directly to U.S. troop presence - meaning Iraqis killed by U.S. troops or those civilians killed in attacks carried out by insurgents targeting U.S. troops - has remained relatively unchanged since 2006. "While deaths caused by Unknown perpetrators [e.g. car bombs in marketplaces] have plummeted by 87% from the peak year of 2006, civilian deaths [caused by "Coalition military or those who violently oppose them"]... have remained relatively constant throughout the last three years," the report states. "What remains certain is that Iraq under occupation is fraught with dangers...
...down the violence in the last two years. This past fall, they were taken from U.S. military sponsorship and put under Iraqi government control. They are increasingly replacing Iraqi police as targets, despite the overall decline of violence, the report said. This year also marks the first in which civilian deaths outside of Baghdad outnumber those within the capital, a shift that Iraqi officials say reflects the fact that Iraq's largest city has become vastly more secure...
...Guineans who poured into the streets to cheer the soldiers know too well, they never had democratic rule - challenges to Conté's civilian government were squashed by ruthless force. Guinea expert Peter Pham, director of the Nelson Institute for International and Public Affairs at James Madison University, told the Associated Press this week that Western leaders should not blindly trust in a constitution which the now-dead president Conté drafted largely to keep himself in power for decades. It was "not the result of any democratic process," he noted. After such a sorry history, even a coup...