Advocate Seeks New Policy on Civilian Deaths in Iraq

The following is a summary of an OSI Forum, "Pushing the U.S. Military to Help Harmed Civilians," that was held on June 2, 2004 at OSI's offices in New York. The summary is reprinted courtesy of EurasiaNet, the news and information website of OSI's Central Eurasia Project.

An American non-governmental sector activist is attempting to quantify the impact on civilians of the U.S. offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The activist, Marla Ruzicka, suggests that formulating a system to account for civilian deaths and economic dislocation can assist U.S.-led reconstruction efforts.

Ruzicka, who founded an initiative called the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC), was the featured speaker June 2 during an Open Forum sponsored by the New York-based Open Society Institute. She expressed hope that her tabulation efforts could make it easier for relatives of wartime civilian casualties to receive compensation. At present, the United States treats civilian deaths during a war as "collateral damage," making it virtually impossible for them to receive compensation.

Beginning in Afghanistan in 2001, Ruzicka began looking into the circumstances surrounding civilian casualties and economic dislocation during the U.S.-led offensive that drove the Taliban movement from power. In 2003, she decided to replicate the effort in Iraq. Arriving in Baghdad in April of that year, Ruzicka assembled a team of 160 Iraqis to conduct a survey. Based on interviews with thousands of Iraqis, her team was able to verify almost 2,000 civilian casualties from March 23, 2003, the first day of the US-led coalition’s invasion, and May 1, 2003, the day President George W. Bush proclaimed combat operations to be over.

Those conducting the survey often were forced to sift through conflicting testimony in making their determinations. "We had to talk to a dependant, see a death certificate and make a case," Ruzicka said.

U.S. occupation authorities have generally not cooperated with the counting effort. "Washington said; ‘we don’t want to count civilian deaths,’" Ruzicka asserted. She went on to argue that acknowledging civilian deaths and suffering during a conflict could help speed reconstruction efforts. When the U.S. government "claims to be giving these nations a new start," she said, it ought to support those who lost loved ones during the fighting.

Though her efforts have focused on Afghanistan and Iraq, Ruzicka believes the system that she has developed could have broader applications. "My long-term goal is to get a desk at the State Department that looks at civilian casualties," she said.

The United States has made what it terms "sympathy payments" to Iraqis, mostly concerning incidents that occurred after May 1, 2003. Payments are determined by judge adjutant-general on a case-by-case basis. In May, 2004, L. Paul Bremer, the head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, unveiled a $25-million plan to compensate Iraqis who suffered abuse at the hands of former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime. Ruzicka argued that, given the pervasive nature of the Hussein regime’s abusive practices, such a fund could prove impossible to administer fairly.