WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (UPI) -- As anticipated, insurgent attacks continued at a high level in Iraq in the two weeks before Saturday's referendum vote. U.S. and allied Iraqi troop fatalities were, fortunately, relatively low.
But the number of U.S. troops wounded in action continued at a grimly high level, and the percentage of U.S. troop fatalities inflicted by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, was higher than ever for September and October so far -- an ominous indicator that the technical expertise of the insurgents is steadily advancing.
Up to and including February 2005, IEDs never accounted for more than 43.1 percent of U.S. troops killed per month in Iraq. Since June, IEDs have never accounted for less than 46.2 percent of U.S. military fatalities per month. The percentage of U.S. troops killed by them in September according to figures compiled by the Iraq Index Project (IIP) of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. was 75.5 percent and so far this month up to Oct. 16 it has been 62.8 percent.
The death toll of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq as of Sunday, Oct. 16, the day after the referendum vote, since the start of hostilities in March 2003, was 1,962, a rise of 17 U.S. soldiers killed in the previous 14 days, according to figures from the Department of Defense and the IIP. U.S. soldiers were, therefore, dying in Iraq at a rate of less than 1.25 per day, less than half the rate of the previous eight-day period. That was the lowest rate of fatal casualties suffered since the second week of September.
The number of U.S. troops wounded in action from the beginning of hostilities on March 19, 2003, through Sunday, Oct. 16, was 15,063, the IIP said. That was an increase of 422 in 14 days or an average rate of just over 30 injured, probably about one half of them with incapacitating injuries, a day.
This was a very high rate of injuries suffered, and reflected the continuing widespread and formidable nature of the insurgency. The figure was far worse than the average of 16.3 U.S. soldiers injured per day from Sept. 21 through Sept. 28 and even worse than the 28.5 per day from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2. It was also far worse than the comparable figures for most of August and early September.
The insurgents were clearly seeking to inflict increased levels of attrition on U.S. forces in the build up to the Oct. 15 referendum vote. It remains to be seen if they can maintain this formidable level of activity in the coming weeks or whether it will level off.
It was open season once again on the poorly trained and even more poorly protected new Iraqi security forces. No less than 109 of them were killed in the 14 days from Oct. 2 to Oct. 16, the IIP said.
That was a rate of just under eight per day, far worse than the six per day kill rate the insurgents achieved in the first 13 days of September and even worse than the 7.5 per day kill rate they achieved during the four days from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2.
At that time, it appeared possible that that kill rate might have been a statistical aberration, with the insurgents getting "lucky" or mounting an intensive offensive that they could not sustain for more than a few days. But they have now sustained it for two-and-a-half weeks with no relief in sight. As long as the insurgents can continue to inflict such a sustained heavy level of casualties on the allied Iraqi police and troops, their effectiveness must be judged to almost negligible. They remain far more the hunted rather than the hunters.
The total number of Iraqi police and military killed from June 1, 2003 to Sunday, Oct. 16 was 3,403 according to the IIP figures.
The total death toll for Iraq security forces in the first 16 days of October was 119. If projected for the rest of the month looked likely to be around 240, slightly worse than the 233 killed in September. While still bad, this would still be the lowest for any month since April and well below the record 304 fatalities the Iraqi forces suffered in July or the 296 in June. But it would still be still a grim and unacceptable level of attrition for any effective security force in a nation the size of California with less than half California's population.
The statistics on multiple fatality bombings (MFBs) grimly confirm this conclusion. The number of them remained formidably high in the first half of October, continuing at the peak levels of September, when there 46 of them, the worst month yet. The MFBs continued at almost exactly the same rate during the two weeks from Oct. 2 to Oct. 16 when another 23 of them were recorded, killing 182 Iraqi civilians and injuring another 244, the IIP said.
That is a rate of civilian casualties far higher than anything ever suffered during the entire 25 years of the active Irish Republican Army insurgency in Northern Ireland from 1969 to 2004, or through even the worst months of the Second Palestinian Intifada targeting Israeli civilians from 2001 through to the building of the Israeli security fence last year.
The insurgents, therefore, were able to sustain through the first half of October their very high MFB rate of September and both were vastly worse than the 27 such attacks recorded in August or the 26 in July.
By Oct. 16, multiple fatality bombing had killed 4,357 people and wounded another 9,269 since the start of the insurgency, the IIP said. The number of people killed by them in the two weeks from Oct. 2 to Oct. 16 was 182, significantly down from the 481 killed in all of September but still more than twice as bad as the 170 killed in the also very bad month of August.
These figures clearly document an insurgency that so far has been able to sustain its latest quantum leap in area, intensity and tactical sophistication in terms of the power of the IEDs and the number of car bombs per week it can set off.
