Iraq's silent bombers

Over at Tomdispatch (a site I can’t recommend highly enough), Nick Turse presents one of the most important pieces of writing about the Iraq war I’ve seen in a long while; an in-depth analysis of the ongoing use of coalition air power.

According to a mortality survey conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, 13% of Iraqi deaths with an identifiable cause since the 2003 invasion were due to coalition air-strikes, which according to the survey’s results would equal around 78,000 deaths up to June last year.

Recall that in a counterinsurgency war, the coalition is not fighting an enemy spread out and exposed on an open battlefield and far from any population centres. It is fighting an enemy that resides within and indeed grows out of those population centres. With that in mind, the sheer tonnage of ordinance rained down on Iraqi cities, towns and villages, as described by Turse, is startling. For example, according to figures released by US Central Command, in 2006, 162 500-pound bombs and fifteen 2000-pound bombs were dropped on Iraqi targets.

These attacks are increasing, as snipers and roadside bombs drive the US out of the streets of Iraq and into the skies. In Asia Times, Pepe Escobar reports that the doomed US-led “surge” offers “the dire prospect … of a devastating air war over Baghdad …. as counterinsurgency fails”. Turse points out that the escalation of the air war may already be underway:

“For example, on January 9th, the U.S. unleashed its air power on Baghdad's Haifa Street, a "mostly Sunni Arab enclave of residential buildings and shops." According to the Washington Post, "F-15 fighter jets strafed rooftops with cannons, while the Apache[ helicopter]s fired Hellfire missiles." Elsewhere in Iraq that day, according to Air Force reports, F-16s strafed targets near Bayji with cannon fire, while others dropped GBU-38s on targets near Turki Village; and F-15Es provided "close-air support" to troops near Basrah.”

“That same evening, back in the U.S., a broadcast of Fox News Channel's "Special Report with Brit Hume" offered a brief glimpse of the air war in a story by reporter David Macdougall who was, said Hume, "embedded with the Air Force in a location we cannot identify, where not only fighter jets, but bombers roared into the air headed for other targets in Iraq." Macdougall reported that the B-1B Lancer, the long-range bomber that carries the largest payload of weapons in the Air Force was, for the first time in over a year, again being employed in combat in Iraq.”

"These B-1 bombers were central to the raid. We're told they flew a ten-hour mission, and by the looks of their empty bomb bays, these planes dropped thousands of pounds of munitions. They bombed 25 targets deep inside Iraq,"”

For those of us in Britain, focusing on the involvement of our own forces is of yet more importance than focusing on the conduct of our principle ally. So its worth noting that, for example, Royal Air Force Tornado jets provided cover for the US Air Force in what is increasingly looking like a massacre of Iraqi tribesmen in Najaf last month. Whilst the precise nature of these events remain unclear, what is clear is the large proportion of Iraqi deaths caused by ongoing coalition air strikes, the ongoing use of air power, and its necessarily indiscriminate nature. Of course it should also be noted that all this occurs within the context of, and in defence of, a foreign occupation of Iraq which the population itself explicitly rejects.

And yet, despite both its ongoing use and substantial human cost, you will struggle to find any media reporting specifically on the use of coalition air power. It is, in effect, a story within the Iraq war that has been not so much forgotten as ignored altogether (though admittedly not by Iraqis, who don’t enjoy that luxury). What Turse reports is more or less the sum total of what little is known about the use of US air power, and I’m certainly not aware of any major reporting into the current role of the RAF, though apparently it does have some involvement. To appreciate the gravity of this, its sufficient to imagine any violent offensive carried out by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas or al-Qaeda that left an estimated 78,000 people dead over 3 years and yet received effectively no western media coverage.

So I have a suggestion: get in touch with the editor of your newspaper or TV news programme of choice and politely ask them the following questions:

1. Are you aware that, according to research done by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, coalition air strikes have caused 13% of Iraqi casualties since March 2003?

2. Are you aware that the use of coalition air power is both ongoing and appears to be increasing as part of the US-led military “surge”?

3. What reports have you carried recently that focus on the use of coalition air power in Iraq and its effects on civilians?

4. Specifically, what reports have you carried on the involvement of the RAF?