CEOSI. US Occupation: over 1 million Iraqis killed & 5 million Iraqi refugees

CEOSI Campaña Estatal contra la Ocupación y por la Soberanía de Iraq = Spanish Campaign Against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq ) opposes US occupation of Iraq (see: http://www.nodo50.org/iraq/index.html ).

CEOSI statement for the Brussells Tribunal Messages for the People on the 5th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq (March 2008): “... One million Iraqis dead and five million Iraqi refugees and displaced

A new study published in January 2008 by the British company Opinion Business Research (ORB), in collaboration with the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies (IIACSS), an independent Iraqi institution, estimated that over one million Iraqis have been killed since the beginning of the occupation, a figure 10 times higher than official figures. The new study confirms the assessment made by two previous studies conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, USA, and published in the medical journal The Lancet, and that the occupiers and their allies have sought to discredit. All studies consider the actions of occupation forces as the main cause of violent death in Iraq, both in absolute and relative terms.

In addition to over one million dead, the US occupation of Iraq has created the largest and fastest growing global refugee crisis in post-World War II memory, inclusive of the Palestinian exodus and the genocide in Rwanda. In terms of numbers, Iraq is first in the world, and ahead of Colombia. At least 2.5 million Iraqis have been internally displaced —2,000 per day— while 2.2 million more are refugees in neighbouring countries, particularly in Syria, representing a burden on host state resources that inevitably generates tension.

The causes of the exodus of the Iraqi population are overlapping: massive military operations of the occupation and the systematic destruction of infrastructure; the deterioration of basic living conditions due to the destruction of the state; rampant corruption and the strengthening of local mafias; and sectarian violence instigated from 2005 by the security services, militias and death squads linked to forces comprising the collaborating government in Iraq with the encouragement —or at least consent— of the occupation...” [1].

[1]. CEOSI statement for the Brussells Tribunal Messages for the People on the 5th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq (March 2008): http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Messages190308.htm .