WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 (UPI) -- Iraq's insurgents were stepping up their campaign of assassination again against the new Iraqi armed forces even before they triggered nationwide civil strife with their attack on the Golden Mosque in Samara last Wednesday.
According to the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, 83 Iraqi policemen and soldiers were killed by insurgent action in the 16 days from Feb. 7 through Feb. 22, an average rate of more than five killed per day. This was more than 50 percent worse than the trend recorded in the first six days of this month when only 21 of them were killed by insurgent action, an average rate of 3.3 killed per day.
Therefore, in the first 22 days of February, only 104 Iraqi troops and police were killed. If maintained for the whole month of February, this would still yield a projected figure of around 130 Iraqi police and troops killed in the month, less than half the figures for May through August. This would yield the lowest casualty figure per month for such attacks since February. And as we noted in this column on Feb. 10, "If these figures could be maintained through February, they would mark a trend of great positive significance."
By contrast, 89 Iraqi police and troops were killed in the 16 days from Jan. 17 though Feb. 1, an average of just over 8.5 per day, according to the Iraq Index Project. That was a significant increase from average rate of 7.75 per day killed during the eight-day period from Jan. 9 through Jan. 16. These rates of fatalities inflicted were far worse than the five-per-day figure of the most recent 16-day period.
The latest figures were also only about 55 percent the daily rate of fatalities inflicted on Iraqi forces during the seven-day period from Dec. 27 through Jan. 2 when 65 Iraqi police and troops killed, an average of just below 9.3 per day. The total number of Iraqi police and military killed from June 1, 2003, to Feb. 22, 2005, was 4,162, according to the Iraq Index Project figures.
However, the insurgents were able to maintain their rate of inflicting multiple bomb fatality (MFB) attacks on Iraqi civilians. There were 19 such attacks in the 16 days from from Feb 7 through Feb 22, according to the Iraq Index Project figures, an average of just under 1.4 per day. This was almost exactly the same rate at which such attacks were carried out in the first six days of February when there were eight of them.
This remarkable statistical consistency suggests that the insurgents retain the resources and organizational capabilities to carry out such attacks virtually at will, and that they have been carrying them out at a set rhythm.
The rate of MFB attacks in the first 22 days of February was therefore more than four times the rate of such attacks during the Jan. 9 to Jan. 16 period.
On Feb. 10, we predicted in this column that according to our projections on the available data then, "If the insurgents can manage to keep up that rate of MFB attacks through February, they will manage more than 37 of them, a significant rise over the 30 such attacks they carried out in January and the 21 such attacks recorded in December. This could bring the February figures close to the record rates of 46, 39 and 41 MFB attacks in October, November, and December."
With data now available for the 16-day period up to and including Feb. 22 as well, that assessment appears justified. In the first 22 days of this month, or more than 75 percent of it, the insurgents had managed to carry out no less than 27 multiple fatality bomb attacks. If they can maintain this rate for the rest of February, they will manage about 36 such attacks, not far below the October, November and December figures and well above the 30 of them that they carried out in January.
Judged from this overall pattern, the figure of "only" 21 MFB attacks carried out in December was an anomalously low figure, almost certainly attributable to the relatively restraint that the insurgents exercised during the run up to and immediate aftermath of the Dec. 15 parliamentary elections in Iraq. However, it is clear that even before the explosion of civic strife across Iraq last week after the Golden Mosque bombing, the elections and their results had failed to have any impact whatsoever on the number of insurgent attacks against Iraqi civilians.
In the 16 days from Feb. 7 through Feb. 22, no less than 118 people were killed in such attacks and 186 wounded, making a total of 156 killed and 323 wounded in such attacks for the first 22 days of the month. If maintained to the end of February, this rate of attacks would yield casualties of casualties of 208 killed and more than 420 injured. But it should be noted that these figures do not cover the explosion of violence following the Golden Mosque bombing.
Through the month of January, 305 people were killed in MFB attacks and another 397 wounded. In December, MFB attacks killed 155 people and wounded 174.
According to the Iraq Index Project figures up to Feb. 22, 5,493 people have been killed in MFB attacks since the start of the insurgency and another 10,631 wounded. However, MFB statistics do not include killed and injured in bombings where less than three people were killed.
