"The death rate in Iraq in the past 12 months has been the second highest in any year since the invasion, according to figures that appear to contradict American claims that the troop 'surge' has dramatically reduced the level of violence across the country", the British Independent daily reported on January 7.
The figures were compiled by the US-based Iraq Body Count (IBC) research group from official sources. The IBC was able to document a maximum of 24,159 Iraqi non-combatant deaths due to war-related violence in 2007, compared with 27,519 such deaths in 2006 and 14,324 in 2005.
The IBC reported on its website on January 1 that Iraqi "civilian death rates stayed consistently high (at around 2,500 per month) for the first eight months, changing fairly suddenly to around 1,000 per month over the last four months to the end of the year 2007".
Commenting on the data, the IBC observed: "If some of this reduction in violence has been obtained through the US-led security initiative, then this has also been at the price of an increase, compared to 2006, in the number of non-combatants killed directly and solely by US fire, most often from the air." According to the IBC's research, Iraqi civilian deaths from US air strikes in 2007 were twice those of 2006.
The White House and the Pentagon — parroted by most of the Western corporate media — have attributed the decline in the Iraqi civilian death rate since August to US President George Bush's US troop "surge". This boosted the size of the US occupation force in Iraq from 132,000 troops at the beginning of 2007 to 164,700 by September — largely by extending US troops' tours in Iraq from 12 to 15 months.
The declared aim of the US troop "surge" was to defeat and disarm Sunni and Shiite "sectarian militias" in Baghdad.
The US military attempted to do this by turning Baghdad into a patchwork of sectarian ghettos surrounded by 4-metre-high concrete walls and then launching large-scale raids. This strategy only led to a "surge" in US troop deaths — from 83 in January to 126 in May.
US combat deaths began to fall significantly during the last four months of 2007 — 65 in September down to 23 in December — as the US military ceased carrying out large-scale raids into Sunni and Shiite neighbourhoods, which also led to a sharp decline in Iraqi civilian deaths.
Nonetheless, total US troop deaths in Iraq in 2007 — 901 — was the highest for any year since the war's beginning.
At a December 30 press conference, General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, claimed that the number of "violent attacks" during the last quarter of 2007 was down 60% on the June level. However, this only means they had dropped to a monthly average of 2100 — the 2005 average level.
The decline in both Iraqi civilian and US troop deaths since August has coincided with a turn in the US military's strategy away from trying to defeat the Iraqi Sunni anti-occupation resistance groups toward funding and arming Sunni neighbourhood militias to fight the Sunni fundamentalist Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) group.
By the end of December, these anti-AQI Sunni militias, dubbed the "Awakening forces" by US officials, were reported to have about 175,000 members, with each member being paid US$375 a month. According to a July Oxfam report, almost half of Iraq's 26 million people were living on $30 or less a month.
This shift also coincided with the declaration in August of a unilateral cease-fire by anti-occupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, and the US occupation forces' tacit acceptance of this truce offer from the leader of the 60,000-strong Mahdi Army militia.
Agence France Presse reported on January 7 that the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI), "the main Sunni insurgent group in Iraq, is adamant it will not make common cause with the Sunni militias tackling al-Qaeda with US support, and will instead fight the Americans 'to the end'".
However, AFP reported that "French academic Jean-Pierre Filiu, an expert on the Iraqi insurgency, says there are signs of cross-membership between the Awakening and the Islamic Army".
"On the evidence, the Islamic Army has a foot in these militia", Filiu told AFP. "And in any case, they do not fight them."
Shimmari told AFP that Awakening forces had emerged due to the "misconduct" of AQI — its attempts to impose by force its Sunni fundamentalist ideas on Sunni communities in which it operated, its indiscriminate killing of civilians through suicide bombings of market places and its attacks on the mainstream resistance groups.
AFP reported that the IAI "represents the nationalist wing of the country's 'resistance'. It is responsible for many attacks against US and Iraqi [government] forces, and posts videos of its lethal exploits on the internet almost daily. Since 2006, its fighters have been battling with al-Qaeda jihadists who have tried to rule over the Sunni insurgency in Iraq."
"Our fighters are often the target of al-Qaeda attacks, forcing us to respond", Shimmari told AFP. The Iraqi resistance movement, he added, is a "continuous and the natural response to the violence of the occupation forces. But we are against killing any innocent people. Our policy is not to target innocent people but to defend them."
Much of the Western corporate media, taking its cue from Pentagon officials, has described the Awakening militias as made up of "former insurgents". However, Inter Press Service correspondents Ali al Fadhily and Dahr Jamail reported from Baghdad on January 15 that many of the Awakening forces have been recruited from neighbourhood criminal gangs.
The decline of Iraqi civilian deaths in the last four months of 2007 has not reduced Iraqis' hostility to the US occupation.
The December 19 Washington Post reported that "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of 'occupying forces' as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the US military last month …
"Dated December 2007, the report notes that 'the Iraqi government has still made no significant progress toward its fundamental goal of national reconciliation'. Asked to describe 'the current situation in Iraq to a foreign visitor', some groups focused on positive aspects of the recent security improvements. But 'most would describe the negative elements of life in Iraq beginning with the 'US occupation' in March 2003', the report says."
According to the Post, "Few mentioned Saddam Hussein as a cause of their problems, which the report described as an important finding implying that 'the current strife in Iraq seems to have totally eclipsed any agonies or grievances many Iraqis would have incurred from the past regime, which lasted for nearly four decades — as opposed to the current conflict, which has lasted for five years.'"