Thread by @iraqbodycount

.@iraqbodycount begins a series of posts marking the 20th anniversary with a version of its timeline at iraqbodycount.org/database indicating #civilians killed not as an additive but an aptly subtractive graph, with bars showing the loss in civilian lives each month. #Iraq #IraqWar

The violent #civilian death toll of the 20 year old #IraqWar continues to grow. @iraqbodycount has monitored this from the beginning, giving totals and continuous updates on a public website detailing the incidents and individuals killed in them. iraqbodycount.org/database/incid…

Credible records now bring the combined total of violent deaths, both civilian and combatant on all sides, to over 300,000. Some three-quarters of this number are civilian (which includes some not yet processed from the #WikiLeaks war logs and more recent mass grave discoveries).

The daily civilian death toll has never approached the intensity of the first three weeks of the invasion, with 315 civilians killed per day on average. This then plunged #Iraq into destabilising and deadly cycles of violence from which it has yet to fully recover.

In 2003 the West essentially thrust its terrorism problem onto Iraq, which has since seen 1,760 suicide attacks alone, killing 19,965 civilians and 2,550 non-suicide car bombs killing 15,427, all leaving at least another 50,000 injured. So much for the “War on Terror”.

Perpetrators have come from all sides, from state actors (including the USA, the UK, Iraqi forces) and anti-state militia (including Isis). Even worse, the toll of the invasion and subsequent brutal occupation spawned new kinds of conflict spreading terror in Iraq and beyond.

US withdrawal did not end state violence, including by Iraq. The little-noted death toll caused by Turkey in Kurdish Iraq is the subject of a report produced with IBC by @Icssiproject & @cptiraq, properly humanising the victims—a subject we will return to. bit.ly/3AAqRKz