Peace Pundit

My previous postings about civilian war-deaths have all been about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Unfortunately, civilians are often casualties of wars in other countries as well.

Below are excerpts of four news reports of civilian casualties in Somalia, where a civil war (with Ethiopian involvement) has been raging for many years. The last report-excerpt gives a human-rights organizations’s estimate that, through the end of 2007, about 6500 civilians had died in Somalia’s conflict.

As elsewhere, civilian casualties in Somalia have been caused by both insurgents and government troops. However, several reports indicate that government retaliation to insurgent activity can be heavy-handed and indiscriminate, too often hitting people who had the misfortune of being near where the insurgents were.

San Francisco Chronicle, 30 March 2008

Ten Civilians Killed as Somalia Shells Rebels

At least 10 civilians were killed in Mogadishu, Somalia’s chaotic capital … after government troops shelled a market area known to be an insurgent hideout.

According to witnesses, the fighting started when insurgents fired mortars at Villa Somalia, the presidential palace and seat of the transitional government. At the time, Somalia’s President, Abdullahi Yusuf, was meeting with Ethiopia’s foreign minister, Seyoum Mesfin. It was not immediately clear if any government officials or Ethiopian troops, who are helping guard the palace, were hit.

The government and Ethiopian forces then responded, sending a barrage of mortar or artillery shells back toward the direction where they had been fired, witnesses said. The shells landed in the crowded Bakara market, which insurgents have used as a base to attack government troops.

PressTV.ir, 18 April 2008

Seven civilians killed in Somalia

Ethiopian troops have killed seven civilians in fresh round of attacks on Buulo Burde town in central Hirran region in Somalia.

The victims were forced out of their homes and shot to death, eyewitnesses told the Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu. They said Ethiopian troops have also taken some others into an unidentified place.

“The victims were suspected of creating panic among residents and provoking the displacement,” the witnesses said.

Hundreds of civilians have evacuated their homes and begun fleeing the town after the victims had said that the Islamic Court Union members (ICU) were approaching the city.

…

Associated Press, 23 Feb 2008

Three civilians killed by roadside bomb in Somalia’s capital

MOGADISHU, Somalia: A roadside bomb killed three civilians and wounded five others Saturday in an attack apparently meant for a passing convoy of Ethiopian troops in Somalia’s war-battered capital, witnesses said.

“There were limbs and flesh everywhere,” said resident Abdulkadir Barre, who said he saw three bodies in the middle of the street.

Among the dead were two sisters who ran a shop near the site of the explosion, he said. Another witness, Isse Osman, said he saw five others with serious injuries, one of them a student.

Thousands of people were killed last year in Somalia, many of them caught in the crossfire as Islamic insurgents battle government troops and their Ethiopian allies.

Those who saw the explosion said the bomb went off just after a convoy of Ethiopian soldiers in pickup trucks and other vehicles passed through the area. The site was cordoned off and surrounded by troops in the afternoon.

…

Reuters, 31 Dec 2007

Mogadishu violence kills 6,500 in past year

MOGADISHU - Conflict in Somalia killed 6,501 civilians in the capital Mogadishu in 2007 and wounded 8,516 more, a local human rights group said on Monday.

The Elman Peace and Human Rights Organisation said it had recorded 1.5 million people uprooted from homes in the city during a year that began with the toppling of an Islamist movement, spawning an insurgency.

The group’s chairman, Sudan Ali Ahmed, blamed Ethiopian forces supporting the interim Somali government for many of the civilian deaths. Residents are often caught in the crossfire as Ethiopian soldiers battle Islamist-led guerrillas.

“The international community must intervene in Somali affairs to force the Ethiopians to get out. At the same time they must bring a joint international peacekeeping force to secure the country,” Ahmed told a news conference.

He said he believed the United States was funding Ethiopia to keep its troops in Somalia, and must take some of the blame.

The Horn of Africa nation has been mired in lawlessness since warlords ousted dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in 1991. The transitional government is the country’s 14th attempt at restoring central government since then.

In the latest violence, a mortar strike killed eight members of a family at a refugee camp north of Mogadishu on Sunday. …

…

Recently I attended a talk on ways to protest paying income taxes that fund wars, particularly the Iraq war. The speaker was a longtime Quaker peace-activist who decided that although he supports income taxes when they are used for peaceful purposes, he could no longer in good conscience pay the portion of his income-tax bill that funds war.

The War Resisters League’s analysis of the U.S. government’s FY-2009 budget (see links at end of post) shows that about 54% of federal spending is for military purposes. The total budget is $2.65 trillion, so 54% is about $1.45 trillion.

The speaker made several noteworthy points about war-tax resistance:

• War-tax resisters are not opposed to taxes. They believe that as citizens of a democracy, they have a responsibility to pay their share of national costs for education, infrastructure, poverty reduction, etc. However, they are opposed to paying for violence and destruction, i.e., war. They strongly distinguish and distance themselves from people who are opposed to paying income taxes in general.
• Pay non-war taxes. According to the War Resisters League, 46% of your tax bill pays for things other than war. Pay that.
• Pay for military pensions. Some military expenses provide pensions and health services to veterans. Many war-tax resisters count this as “non-war” spending because they believe our veterans earned our support for the sacrifices they have made. Taking military pensions out of the 54% mentioned above, reduces it to somewhere around 40% of the total U.S. budget.
• You won’t go to jail. Many people don’t like paying for war, but do it because they worry they will go to jail or prison. That won’t happen. The IRS doesn’t want to incarcerate people; it just wants the money.
• The IRS moves slowly. If you stop paying war-taxes, the immediate response will be… nothing. For a long time — sometimes years — you’ll hear nothing from the IRS. Then they will send you letters asking you to pay back-taxes and accrued penalties. The letters will continue for a while, then the IRS will threaten to attach your bank accounts. Eventually, they will do that and collect the money you owe. All this moves very slowly: over a period of years — sometimes many years.
• Most war-tax resisters don’t hide their money. They don’t stash it in offshore accounts or mattresses. They keep it in normal accounts, where the IRS can find it and, sometimes, collect it. The point is not to pay war-taxes willingly.
• The IRS won’t take your property. The IRS wants the money you owe them; not your property. In the past, the IRS occasionally grabbed resisters’ property, but found that homes, land, cars, furniture, etc. are too hard to convert into money, so they basically stopped doing that. (The speaker told a story in which the IRS years ago took a war-tax resister’s furniture and sold it at auction, and the war-tax resister’s friends and family went to the auction, bought it back, and gave it all back to him.)
• There are legal ways. There are many ways to protest paying war-taxes, some of which incur no legal liability at all. Two such ways are:
• Don’t make enough. Reduce your income below the taxable level. Many war-tax resisters live this way.
• Pay under protest. Include in your tax return a letter saying you are paying your taxes under protest (see sample letter below). Such letters are filed by the IRS with your tax records but have no legal consequences whatsoever.
• Support a Peace Tax. Join the campaign to create a Peace Tax Fund, so that taxpayers who are opposed to war-taxes can allocate their tax payments into a fund that will not be used for military purposes.

Sample Letter for Paying Taxes Under Protest (PeacePundit version)

Date

To whom it may concern:

I am determined to fulfill my responsibilities as a citizen of the United States. One such responsibility is paying income taxes. Income taxation is a valid way for a democratic nation to spread the costs of education, infrastructure development, community development, poverty alleviation, environmental protection, and other constructive causes fairly among its citizenry.

One of my responsibilities as a citizen is to let my government know that I believe it to be seriously misguided in using violence and destruction as a means of addressing international problems.

I am opposed to paying taxes to support the United State’s involvement in wars. In particular, the U.S.-led wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were poorly conceived and have been even more poorly executed. They have caused many deaths and injuries that would not otherwise have occurred. They have caused incalculable damage, and have increased, rather than diminished, anti-U.S. sentiment and the threat of terrorism.

Therefore, I am filing my IRS 1040 form and paying my taxes under protest.

I support the establishment of the proposed Peace Tax Fund, which if enacted into law would allow conscientious opponents of war to direct their tax payments into programs that support community life and constructive efforts in the U.S. and around the world.

Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Social security number:
Address:
Copies to: (congressional reps, newspapers, etc.)

War-Tax Resistance Resources

• National War-Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee
• War Resisters League (W.R.L.)
• W.R.L. Pie-Chart of Where Tax Dollars Go
• Legal Method to Not Owe Any Income Tax: Limit Earnings
• Calculate Your War Tax
• Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund
• Cost of War counter

Below are excerpts from two recent newspaper reports of civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The first reports the killing of six Afghan civilians by a Taliban suicide bomber. The second reports the killing of several civilians in Pakistan by a U.S. missile strike from across the border in Afghanistan.

Suicide Bomber Kills 6 Afghan Civilians, Injures Dozens

San Francisco Chronicle, 14 March 2008

Kabul, Afghanistan — A suicide bomber targeting U.S. troops instead killed six Afghan civilians Thursday (3/13)…

[The] attack in Kabul, near its international airport, was aimed at a two-vehicle U.S. military convoy. In addition to at least six civilians killed, more than a dozen were wounded.

Western news agencies reported that the Taliban claimed responsibility.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai called the bombing a cowardly attack, one of many he said was meant to harm innocent civilians. However, public anger over such attacks by militants often rebounds against Karzai’s government and the presence of more than 50,000 foreign troops.

…

U.S. coalition’s strike in Pakistan said to kill civilians, not Taliban

Associated Press, 14 March 2008

Tangrai, Pakistan — U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan fired across the border into Pakistan in a strike targeting Taliban militants, and the Pakistani army said Thursday that civilians were killed.

The attack illustrates American concerns that the Taliban and al Qaeda are using Pakistan’s lawless frontier as a base for attacks in Afghanistan.

But anger at civilian deaths could lead to a review by the incoming Pakistani government of the country’s counterterrorism strategy and its U.S.-backed policy of using military force to root out militants.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan said troops used “precision-guided munitions” to strike a compound about a mile inside Pakistan on Wednesday.

Maj. Chris Belcher said that the troops were responding to an “imminent threat” and that the coalition informed Pakistani authorities after the strike. “We received reliable intelligence indicating senior Haqqani network members were in the compound at the time of the strike,” Belcher said Thursday in Kabul.

Siraj Haqqani is a prominent Afghan militant. On Wednesday, a coalition statement accused him of organizing a suicide attack that killed two NATO soldiers at an Afghan government office March 3. It said Haqqani “has become the most dangerous Taliban leader in Afghanistan.”

In Tangrai, a village of about 40 houses surrounded by fields and mountains, residents led an Associated Press reporter to the rubble of the house hit in the attack. Only one of its four walls was standing amid a tangle of mud bricks, bedding and cooking pots.

“We are innocent, we have nothing to do with such things,” said Noor Khan, a grocer who said the wrecked building had been his family home. He said six of his relatives - four women and two boys - died in the attack. “We are poor people just trying to earn a living,” he said.

The Pakistani army said four civilians — two women and two children — died. There was no way to resolve the discrepancy between the numbers.

It was not clear whether the coalition forces fired from the ground or the air or what weapons were used. Belcher said he could not detail the threat and had no information on casualties.

Pakistan’s army, which has received billions of dollars from Washington to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban, initially said the incident was an accident.

…

There have been several incidents in the past of coalition fire landing in Pakistani territory.

Some may be due to the poor demarcation of the long, rugged border. Last June, a rocket fired during a battle between U.S.-led NATO forces and insurgents in Afghanistan struck a home in North Waziristan, killing 10 civilians.

But there also have been several cases where unmanned U.S. drones have fired missiles at suspected militant hideouts in Pakistan’s border regions…

A sad milestone has been reached: today, March 23, 2008, the official count of U.S. military dead in the Iraq war reached 4000 (icasualties.org).

Omitted from that count are deaths of private security “contractors” (aka mercenaries) and deaths of troops from other Coalition countries.

The number of Iraqi dead also continues to grow, with estimates ranging from 88,000 (IraqBodyCount.org) to almost 1,000,000 (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health).

Another significant milestone is that, at five years and counting, the war on Iraq has lasted longer than the U.S.’s participation in WWII.

SF Veterans’ Peace Vigil in Response to the Milestone

On Monday, March 24, Veterans for Peace in San Francisco, along with other veterans/military-related groups, will hold a solemn candlelight ceremony to mark the milestone. It will take place at SF Civic Center, on the Polk Street side of SF City Hall.

Participants should arrive at Civic Center by 6 pm. The ceremony will begin at 7 PM.

The organizers need help setting up, especially lighting the candles. Call (415) 255-7331 for more information or to volunteer. The Veterans for Peace office is in the Veterans War Memorial Building at 401 Van Ness, Room 125. The organizers need 5-6 people from 5 pm. Please notify the organizers beforehand if you will be able to help set up.

This will be a solemn event: please no banners/posters other than those of VFP, its affiliated American Legion Post 315, and other Posts along with a board with all the U.S. casualties in Iraq. Organizers will read the 1,000 names of servicemen and women who died in Iraq since the last reading (”Ties to Remember”, January 1, 2007).

Below is a sampling of photos I took at the Anti-War rally and march in San Francisco on March 19, 2008, the fifth anniversary of the war against Iraq. The SF Chronicle reported that about 4000 people participated. The rally organizers estimated the crowd at about 7000. The true number is almost certainly somewhere between those two estimates. My own judgement is that about 6000 people participated.

March 19 2008 is the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which initiated the U.S.-led war that continues to rage in that country, costing hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of Iraqi lives, almost 4000 U.S. soldiers lives, many thousands more people with injuries, and over 2.8 trillion dollars.

Express your opposition to the Iraq war at any of the following events:

SF Bay Area

• Sun March 16, 5 pm. Peace Vigil, SF Unitarian Universalist Church, Franklin & Geary, San Francisco. Speakers: Sean Penn, Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Gregory Stewart, and more.
• Wed March 19, 7 am - 4 pm. Peace Vigil, outside Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office, Montgomery BART station. We will read the names of the more than 600,000 Iraqis and 4,000 Americans killed in the senseless war as we leaflet commuters during the morning. We invite everyone to join us in a nonviolent spirit as we set a solemn tone. Bring flowers. Poets and musicians are encouraged to blend their work with the reading of the names. Join us for part or all of the morning and into the afternoon. At some point during the lunch hour, numbers of us will take nonviolent direct action and invite you to join us.
• Wed March 19, noon. Peace vigil, Market and Powell St.
• Wed March 19, 5 pm. San Francisco, March and Rally, SF Civic Center. This is the big one.
• Fri March 21, 12-1 pm. Mission District vigil, corner of Mission and Virginia.
• Fri March 21, 2-4 pm. Berkeley Vigil, University & Acton St.
• Fri March 21, 6-7 pm. Bernal Heights Vigil, Cortland Ave & Andover St.

Anti-War Events Nationwide

• MoveOn.org
• IraqMoratorium.org.
• IraqMoratorium-sfbay.org.
• International A.N.S.W.E.R.

I highly recommend the movie “Lions for Lambs”. I saw it on a recent plane flight. It was so good that I watched it twice. It is one of the most powerful anti-war films I have seen.

Produced by Robert Redford, it stars Redford, Merryl Streep, and Tom Cruise. Streep plays a news reporter, Cruise plays an ambitious pro-war Republican Senator, and Redford plays a political science professor. Their performances are outstanding, but they are almost upstaged by several unknown actors — Ernest Rodriguez, Peter Berg, Derek Luke, Andrew Carfield, and Kevin Dunn — who play other important roles.

I’m not sure how timeless this film will be, because it is extremely current. The story takes place in 2007, and concerns the U.S. led wars against Afghanistan and Iraq. President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Secretary of State Rice, and even Colin Powell appear in photographs.

The film weaves together three related stories: a reporter interviewing a Senator about a new development in the war on terrorism, a Special Forces military operation in Afghanistan, and a college professor trying to convince his students to do something meaningful with their lives.

The dialog is not the usual clever Hollywood banter. It is so natural and realistic that it almost seems that the actors were given loose scripts and told to improvise their lines based on what they really think (although I don’t know if that was how it was done). Even Tom Cruise, who plays the pro-war Senator, has important, thought-provoking things to say.

Highly recommended.

Links to further information about the film:

• Official “Lions for Lambs” website
• IMDB entry about the movie
• Wikipedia entry about the movie
• Movie trailer at YouTube
• Winner of film-sponsored “Take a Stand” video contest

The race for the presidency dominates the headlines these days, driving the Iraq war off of the front page, but two recent news stories about the war deserve mention. One describes the high costs in civilian lives and loss of goodwill; the other describes the high monetary cost.

In Iraq, More Bombing Creates New Enemies

By Ali al-Fadhily and Dahr Jamail
Inter Press Service
Friday 08 February 2008

Baghdad - Now that the smoke has cleared and the rubble settled, residents of a group of bombed Iraqi villages see the raid as really a U.S. loss.

Many Iraqis view the attack Jan. 10 by bombers and F-16 jets on a cluster of villages in the Latifiya district south of Baghdad as overkill.

“The use of B1 bombers shows the terrible failure of the U.S. campaign in Iraq,” Iraqi Major General Muhammad al-Azzawy, a military researcher in Baghdad, told IPS. “U.S. military and political tactics failed in this area, and that is why this massacre. This kind of bombing is usually used for much bigger targets than small villages full of civilians. This was savagery.”

The attack on Juboor and neighbouring villages just south of Baghdad had begun a week earlier with heavy artillery and tank bombardment. The attack followed strong resistance from members of the mainly Sunni Muslim al-Juboor tribe against groups that residents described as sectarian death squads.

“On Jan. 10, huge aircraft started bombing the villages,” Ahmad Alwan from a village near Juboor told IPS. “We took our families and fled. We have never seen such bombardment since the 2003 American invasion. They were bombing everything and everybody.”

Residents said two B1 bombers and four F-16 fighter jets dropped at least 40,000 pounds of explosives on the villages and plantations within a span of 10 minutes.

“The al-Qaeda name is used once more to destroy another Sunni area,” Akram Naji, a lawyer in Baghdad who has relatives in Juboor told IPS. “Americans are still supporting Iranian influence in Iraq by cleansing Baghdad and surroundings of Sunnis.”

The cluster of Sunni villages was bombed just weeks after the U.S. military encouraged families to return to their village after heavy bombing earlier in which scores of people were killed. Many residents had fled fearing sectarian death squads, which they say were backed by the U.S.

Few people in the village now talk the language of reconciliation of U.S. President George W. Bush and of some Iraqis in the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad.

“We have no alternative but to fight this occupation and its allies,” a former army officer in Baghdad speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. “We can see clearly now that Americans came with the idea that we, Sunni Arabs, are the enemies they have in mind no matter what we do to please them. We will fight for our existence, and this massacre will not go unpunished.”

“It was a miracle that I could evacuate my family at the last minute,” said Omar Hussein, who fled for Dora in Baghdad from the bombarded area. “My house and farm are on the outskirts of the village. I took my family out the minute I saw the aircraft in the sky. Apache helicopters later fired at the trucks that were carrying the families out of the area, and killed so many civilians. They took some wounded people to their military base. I am sure hundreds of people would have been killed. It is just like the Fallujah crime.”

Thousands died in prolonged attacks on Fallujah to the west of Baghdad, particularly in 2004 and 2005.

Taha Muslih al-Joboory, his wife and three sons were among those reported killed in the bombing. Juboory was an Iraqi journalist who lived all his life in the area. Many families were reported buried under the rubble of their houses.

The U.S. military said that the aircraft which bombed the area targeted “suspected militant hide-outs, storehouses and defensive positions.”

“We know they will get away with their crime now, but we will teach our children that America and the whole West are our enemies, so that they take revenge for these crimes,” 35-year-old Nada, a woman who has relatives in the village told IPS.

Congressional Report: US War Costs in Iraq Up

Reuters
Wednesday 23 January 2008

Washington - The Iraq war may not dominate U.S. news reports as the carnage drops, but a new report underscores the financial burden of persistent combat that is helping run up the government’s credit card.

“Funding for U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and other activities in the war on terrorism expanded significantly in 2007,” the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released on Wednesday.

War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

“It keeps going up, up and away,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad said of the money spent in Iraq since U.S. troops invaded in 2003.

“We’re seeing the war costs continue to spiral upward. It is the additional troops plus additional costs per troop plus the over-reliance on private contractors, which also explodes the costs,” said Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who opposed the war.

Since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Congress has written checks for $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such related activities as Iraq reconstruction, the CBO said.

There are around 158,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 27,000 in Afghanistan.

Of the total, the CBO estimated that $440 billion had been spent on fighting in Iraq launched with the goal of ousting President Saddam Hussein from power and securing weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

All of the Iraq and Afghanistan war money — about $11 billion a month — is effectively being put on a government credit card at a time when U.S. government debt has skyrocketed to more than $9 trillion, up from around $5.6 trillion when Bush took office in January 2001.

Bush has opposed paying the cost of waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan with tax increases or other specific offsets.

That means that nearly every penny spent gets added to the U.S. debt. The CBO estimated that just the interest payments on the debt would total $234 billion this year, more than the likely $250 billion budget deficit for the year.

These annual deficits and steep interest payments on borrowing all get rolled into the running tally that is the government’s debt - the more-than-$9-trillion figure.

The debt problem snowballs long-term, especially if the escalating costs of government-run health care and retirement programs are not reined in and if the United States maintains a large long-term military presence in Iraq.

Interest payments on the debt will total an estimated $2.7 trillion over the next decade, the CBO said.

Congress is expected to pass another round of money for the war in May or June, despite repeated attempts by Democrats to bring the fighting in Iraq to an end.

Republicans have defended the costs of the Iraq war, saying it has helped to stave off new attacks on the United States.

But Conrad said the deficit spending on the war was “another negative trend among many negative trends” in the budget.

Recent news from Kenya has been very distressing. After a hotly contested election, Mwai Kibaki, the incumbent squeaked to a razor-thin victory over his primary opponent, Raila Odinga. Accusations of vote-rigging flew, and international observers monitoring the election supported at least some of the accusations. Violence flared in the slums of Nairobi and in western Kenya, where Odinga’s Luo tribe is centered.

Having spent a lot of time in Kenya, I am very concerned about the mayhem and destruction and the secondary problems it will cause. I am concerned about friends and acquaintances there, who span a wide variety of tribal backgrounds. I am also concerned from the future of Kenya as a whole. This concern prompted me to write the following open letter to Kenyans.

Please Stop the Violence

What is happening to Kenya?

News reports indicate that the violence that flared after the recent disputed election is not diminishing and may be increasing. In fact, there are reports that some of the violence is not just young hot-headed men committing spontaneous acts of fury, but instead was planned and instigated before the election. People who just a few months ago lived near each other and co-existed peacefully are now killing each other or talking openly about doing so.

For the good of Kenya and all its citizens, this must stop.

Kenya is a country that was rising out of the so-called “Third World”: a popular tourist destination, a thriving multi-cultural democracy, and an economy that rivaled South Africa as a driving force in Africa. One great aspect of Kenya is its rich mix of tribal cultures. What other African country has forty-two tribes living and working together? In large measure it is this cultural diversity that makes Kenya such an interesting and successful nation.

Now all that great potential is being dashed to pieces, as the ongoing violence stops tourism completely, slows Kenya’s economic engine to a crawl, wrecks Kenya’s democracy, and replaces inter-tribal cooperation with suspicion and fear. Furthermore, the violence depicts Kenya in the eyes of the world as a land of violence-prone tribes.

Kenyans: don’t do this to yourself.

Those of you who are committing the violence — attacking longtime neighbors and driving them away because they are the “wrong tribe” — think about this: you may get the property, but what good is that if the value of that property drops to zero? That is what the violence is doing: dropping the value of everything in Kenya to nothing. What good are more cows if you cannot feed them or protect them from other cattle thieves? What good is land if you cannot afford seed or cannot sell your crops? You end up with more, but it is worth nothing.

Furthermore, by attacking your neighbors — people you used to work with, trade with, go to school with — you are losing not only the respect of the world, but your own self-respect. How can you respect yourself once you have killed former neighbors for their property and burned their home? Doing such things is not courageous and virtuous; it is cowardly and depraved.

Be strong; be brave: stand up against the violence.

To Kenyans who are waiting for your so-called “leaders” to stop the fighting: stop waiting for them and stop it yourself. Neither President Mwai Kibaki nor his challenger Raila Odinga are capable of ending the violence. Not only can they not stop it, there is strong evidence that their respective organizations are helping fan the flames. Through their self-serving, power-hungry actions and their unwillingness to negotiate, both Kibaki and Odinga have shown the world that they are unqualified and undeserving to lead Kenya. They are not statesmen.

Kenyan citizens must therefore take control and stop the violence. Stop giving weapons to young angry men and sending them to attack others. Do not allow your towns, villages, and communities to be torn apart by inter-tribal hatred and vengeance. Don’t let your society be wrecked by misguided people who care more about immediate personal gain than about the good of all. Take back power from so-called “leaders” who are “leading” Kenya towards disaster.

If there is no Kenyan Gandhi; each must become Gandhi. It’s up to you: Stop the violence.

A new survey conducted in Iraq by the World Health Organization, working in collaboration with the Iraqi government, estimates the number of Iraqis killed in the war between the 2003 U.S. invasion and June 2006 at about 151,000. The study presents this number as an estimate rather than an exact figure, but says that the margin-of-error of the study suggests that the true number is almost certainly between 104,000 and 223,000.

The WHO estimate differs strongly from two previous well-publicized estimates:

• Iraq Body Count: In June 2006, they estimated the number of civilian deaths as being much lower: under 50,000. (They estimate the current number of civilian Iraqi dead at between 80,585 and 88,004.)
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health: published in the medical journal Lancet in October 2006, gave a much higher estimate of Iraqi war deaths for approximately the same period: about 655,000.

There are two possible explanations of why the Iraq Body Count’s estimate is less than the WHO estimate:

1. The WHO estimate is based on interviews of 9000 Iraqi families, whereas the Iraq Body Count estimate is based on confirmed deaths — reports cross-checked with hospitals and mortuaries. Many deaths in Iraq go unreported.
2. The WHO estimate is an estimate of all Iraqi war deaths, whereas the Iraq Body Count estimate includes only non-combatant (i.e., civilian) deaths.

The reasons for the discrepancy between the WHO study and the Johns Hopkins study are less clear. They both used a survey methodology, and they both supposedly included all Iraqi war-dead. It is true, however, that the Johns Hopkins study was based on a smaller sample: about 1800 families, compared to the WHO study’s 9000 families.

Links to various press reports of the WHO estimate:

• World Health Organization
• Christian Science Monitor
• National Public Radio
• War Victims Monitor