The Costs of Cooperation

Civilian Casualty Counts in

Claire Lauterbach Department of Political Science Duke University email: [email protected]

© Claire Lauterbach, 2005 - 2007*

(5,917 words)

This article is a revised version of a paper originally written for PS158/PPS181, "Non-State Actors in World Politics," in Fall 2005. It has been accepted for publication in International Studies Perspectives, one of the peer-reviewed journals of the International Studies Association, and is currently slated to be forthcoming in the November 2007 issue. Claire Lauterbach will receive her B.A. in political science (international relations) from Duke University in May 2008. She is a recipient of a University Scholarship for interdisciplinary academic merit, and a member of the inaugural class of the Baldwin Scholars, a women's leadership initiative. She has served as a research assistant for the National Security Archive, and was awarded a fellowship by Humanity in Action for research on minority rights in Poland.

* Author's note: I thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers of International Studies Perspectives for their constructive comments. I am grateful to Tim Büthe and Alex Downes at Duke University for their advice and assistance. I also thank my interview subjects for providing the insights and comments central to this study.

ABSTRACT

Non-state actors—including a wide variety of non-governmental organizations, international organizations, research institutions, and groups of concerned citizens—have offered estimates of the destruction of human life during the most recent war in Iraq.

Since 2003, these groups have independently produced widely divergent estimates of the human cost of war, provoking a storm of political controversy and doubts about the validity of their work that undermines the stated objectives of many of the groups.

Building upon theories of transnational issue advocacy, this study seeks to address the empirical and theoretical puzzle of the lack of active cooperation among this set of normatively-motivated transnational political actors. The nascent civilian casualties regime reveals that commonality of purpose among non-state actors within a regime cannot simply be assumed, demanding a more nuanced analysis of how "frames of meaning" must be actively constructed.

Key terms: civilian casualties, non-state actors, Iraq

INTRODUCTION

In the wake of World War II, the Geneva Convention of 1949 explicitly established the norm that civilians deserved to be protected during war (Chesterman,

2001). Implicitly reaffirming the salience of the norm of protection of civilians during war, Lt. Col. Jim Cassella, a Pentagon spokesperson, recently commented that "we never target civilians," though he also noted that "[we] have no reason to try to count such unintended deaths" (Cassella, quoted in Yacoub et. al., 2003). In fact, despite repeated expressions of concern over the loss of innocent life, the United States has never had a policy of tallying the civilian deaths that result from its military endeavors abroad. The stalemate and violence that characterized the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and ensuing years of military occupation has led to renewed calls for accountability, or at least accounting, for civilian deaths resulting from military campaigns. Non-state actors— including a variety of non-governmental organizations, international organizations, research institutions, and groups of concerned citizens—have taken up the burden of tallying deaths and offering estimates of the destruction of human life.

The security situation in most of Iraq makes reliable data collection logistically difficult. Furthermore, as Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives argues, "the noncombatant status of civilians cannot be simply assumed" (Conetta, 2003) in a zone of guerilla war in which combatants lack an effective central command and are interspersed in residential areas. A door-to-door survey of civilian casualties would not only be very difficult to implement, but would also require copious amounts of funding.1 Despite the

1 Such tactics form the methodologies of several prominent groups, such as the Campaign for Innocent Victims of Conflict (CIVIC), who also express concern about chronic funding shortages.

1 acute logistical difficulties caused by the lack of security, a collection of non- governmental and international organization actors conducted at least nine distinct studies involving the collection of data on civilian casualties in Iraq between March 2003 and

July 2005. The discrepancies in the reported number of civilian casualties left the studies vulnerable to accusations of political bias and faulty methodology, inadvertently fueling the argument that an estimate of civilian dead was not feasible. In commenting on the accuracy of various studies of civilian casualties, military spokespersons frequently highlighted the perceived impossibility of assessing the accuracy of independent surveys

(NPR 2005b) by citing one study's tally against another to highlight the potential inaccuracies of both (BBC 2005).2

The organizations tallying civilian deaths in Iraq thus had strong incentives to band together and pool their resources in joint body count initiatives. Joint efforts would have made it easier for them to overcome logistical difficulties and therefore might have allowed them to arrive at a more precise or more comprehensive count. Arriving at and presenting a single joint estimate of the number of civilian dead, might have allowed the groups to increase their collective influence and enabled them to counterbalance the de- legitimizing comments of military spokespersons and the popular media. Moreover, these normatively-motivated groups appear to share a common goal, namely to create an accurate death toll for the conflict, so their failure to cooperate on joint initiatives is a genuine puzzle.

2 I thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting the inherent difficulty of counting civilian deaths by highlighting the continued disagreement over the death tolls of the 1991 intervention in Kuwait and World War II. The current disagreement over civilian death tolls for Iraq is not a historical exception. However, this study offers an explanation of what may otherwise be dismissed as random disagreement in the case of the Iraq civilian casualties regime.

2 My study seeks to explain this cooperation failure. Specifically, I analyze the factors involved in each group's decision to undertake its initiative to provide an estimate or a tally of civilian casualties of war in Iraq—and to do so by itself—in order to explain the lack of coordination between various organizations dealing with civilian casualties. I examine a variety of potential explanatory variables. For instance, I examine each organization's sources and amount of funding. The theory of non-governmental issue advocacy articulated by Cooley and Ron (2002) posits that non-cooperation among non- governmental actors (in their case humanitarian NGOs) reflects competition among them for the same pool of public resources, necessary to cover their operating costs. Yet, the operating costs of "body count" initiatives can be an impediment to effective gathering of data. The material constraints of limited funding sources could also imply a further incentive for like-minded groups working within the same sphere of issue advocacy to pool their resources and jointly produce studies of civilian casualties, thus reducing transaction costs. It is therefore not clear theoretically whether funding competition could explain the apparent lack of coordination among the disparate groups conducting casualty counts, and I will show empirically that many of them were not even competing for the same resources.

I also examine several further potential explanatory variables beyond sources and amount of funding: geographical location, structure and level of institutionalization, political stance regarding the war, and methodology. I find none of these to be a necessary and/or sufficient explanation for non-cooperation between the various groups that sought civilian casualty counts in Iraq. Instead, I find that in the case of civilian casualty counts for Iraq, actors who appeared to have comparable objectives in fact

3 harbored differing conceptions of their epistemic goals—some, for example, viewed their work as producing tallies of actual deaths, others as representations of the breakdown of health infrastructure in a country at war, or as estimations of total deaths from a variety of causes over a period of time. In this respect, the different actors view themselves as providing fundamentally different contributions to the body of knowledge regarding the state of civilian deaths in Iraq. The actors often reject comparison and the active pooling of resources that has characterized collaboration between actors within many issue- oriented advocacy networks, such as the transnational human rights networks (Keck and

Sikkink, 1998:97-102). Consequently, theories that root non-cooperation among non- state actors in purely material constraints—such as competition over funding from the public sector—ignore vital ideational concerns that in turn engender differences in methodology, financing, and other logistical aspects of the different non-state actors' works. The sources and amount of funding sought out by the body count initiatives often reflect the diverse goals they hold in conducting the research and corroborate the epistemic roles that they have defined for themselves within the broader context of the war in Iraq. Dominant explanations for NGO non-cooperation are not necessarily incorrect. Funding, for instance, is an important consideration in the operation of such a project. Yet in many of these cases, direct competition over funds is minimized by evidence that suggests that the organizations view themselves as epistemically distinct and serving different purposes, leading them to largely differing sources of funding and ultimately differing estimates. The phenomenon they describe—civilian deaths—is essentially the same, but it is these self-perceptions that often hinder more substantive collaboration.

4 Despite the widespread domestic salience of the norm of protection of civilians during war, disagreements over such a vital element as the epistemic goal of the casualty counts (including the identification of an appropriate target of international pressure) inhibit functional cooperation among the groups involved in counting the casualties and impede "effective"3 advocacy. Thus, evidence from the nascent civilian casualties regime4 reveals that commonality of purpose among non-state actors in a given regime cannot simply be assumed, demanding a more nuanced analysis of how "frames of meaning" (Keck and Sikkink, 1998:7) must be actively constructed.

DEFINING COOPERATION

The theory of transnational human rights advocacy networks advocated by Keck and Sikkink relies upon the "boomerang pattern" of issue advocacy. In seeking to affect change in a particular issue area, "NGOs bypass their state and directly seek out international allies to try to bring pressure on their state from outside" (1998:11).

Successful uses of the "boomerang pattern" depend on the ability of the transnational network, and particularly the domestic and international human rights organizations, to identify a target against which the collective weight of economic leverage (such as sanctions), moral leverage (such as public questioning of the legitimacy of a particular

3 The concept of effectiveness, which can be defined in terms of broader ideational impact as well as accomplishment of more pointed goals, is discussed at length in O'Neill et al. (2004). 4 The literature on the rise of international regimes provides many definitions for the term. In reference to the Iraq case, I will employ the term "civilian casualties regime" though the extent to which the differing actors' initiatives represent a cohesive regime is doubtful, according to definitions emphasizing a "set of principles, norms, rules, and procedures around which actors' expectations converge" (emphasis added). This definition draws upon the work of Puchala and Hopkins (1982).

5 regime), or other forms of leverage can be exerted in order to bring about change in a situation in which human rights are being violated.

As a point of comparison, the cases of the "disappeared" in the Argentinean and

Mexican dirty wars serve as examples of successful non-state actor cooperation within the international human rights regime, utilizing politics of shame to mobilize both moral outrage and economic sanctions against the government in order to secure an accounting for civilian disappearances and deaths.5 In Argentina, this resulted in the military junta's invitation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to the country in 1978, after which the rate of disappearances decreased significantly. Between 1988 and 1994, the Mexican government began to respond more systematically to the increased pressure of an international human rights network alleging undue use of force for political repression by the regime, particularly against dissidents in the Chiapas region (1998:114-

116). In both these cases, Keck and Sikkink acknowledge the paramount importance of

"the fact that international pressures did not work independently, but rather in coordination with national actors" (1998:107). Despite sharing many conceptual parallels, the Latin American cases differ from the case of civilian casualty counts in Iraq in the degree of successful mobilization of transnational networks and cooperation on campaigns. This is largely because of the differing roles that they fulfill that render their results largely incompatible, though the media continues to draw comparisons among the

5 I believe that comparison of these cases with the civilian casualties case is valid for a variety of reasons. For example, the Iraq civilian casualties case shares the emphasis on bodily harm, which Keck and Sikkink identify as a frequent hallmark of "successful" campaigns. In addition, actors in the Latin American cases attempted to extract information from their respective states about the disappeared, which parallels the goal of some of the organizations seeking to pressure the U.S. military to keep track of civilian casualties in the Iraq case. See also Franklin (2003).

6 results while failing to acknowledge their differing goals. An analysis of the lack of

"common frames of meaning" (Keck and Sikkink 1998:11) for the case of civilian casualty initiatives resulting from the war in Iraq demonstrates that a more accurate explanation of the linkages that are formed or missing between actors necessitates a closer examination of how such "frames of meaning" must be actively constructed.

Keck and Sikkink's work highlights the primacy of linkages to the success of human rights campaigns against powerful state actors. However, there are a variety of factors that affect the ways in which NGOs cooperate. These include but are not limited to sources and amount of funding, geographical location, structure and level of institutionalization, political stances and affiliations, and campaign methodology, all of which I examine in the context of civilian casualty counts in Iraq. Such factors provide the framework for the theory of cooperation, which identifies "rules and resources, recursively implicated in the reproduction of social systems" (Giddens, 1984:377) as universal constraints upon the types of agency that can be asserted by non-state actors attempting to bring about behavioral change consistent with their norms. The more agency-centered approach outlined by Vogler, which includes as "criteria for 'actorness' volition, autonomy, ability to employ policy instruments, and recognition by other actors," minimizes structural constraints and sees the potential for agency as a function of non-state actors' ability to shape norms and ideas despite the relatively little impact they have upon the material elements of structure (Vogler, quoted in O'Neill, 2004:155).

Alexander Cooley and James Ron take a materialist approach to non-state actor cooperation by arguing that the most important factor impeding cooperation among non- governmental organizations within a particular issue area is competition over the scarce

7 financial resources of the public domain. The logic of such an argument appears fairly straightforward—human rights campaigns are costly and often complicated, requiring the mobilization of generous donors and staff (often paid) to publicize endeavors and gather data to be used as points of leverage against an identified target. Lack of necessary financial backing presents financially overstretched NGOs with a severe obstacle to a successful campaign, particularly when the target is a well-funded government or other institutionalized group, and may well render all other potential sources of inter-NGO non-cooperation moot. "As a general rule," Cooley and Ron posit, "the transnational environment is pushing INGOs and IOs toward greater competition, regardless of their normative starting points or orientations" (2002:8, emphasis added).

EXAMINING THE CASUALTY COUNTS

An evaluation of the merits of these arguments necessitates an examination of the anarchic nature of the situation in Iraq. Because there are various measures by which one could evaluate "cooperation" between NGOs, I narrow my definition of cooperation to comprise only evidence of pooling of resources and funding among two or more organizations resulting in the production of a published (in print or online) tally of civilian victims or estimate of civilian deaths, complete with details about methodology and citation, to which all organizations involved ascribe their support.6

6 I thank John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count for calling my attention to the Count the Casualties campaign, which was supported by Medact and IBC among other human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. The campaign rests primarily on letter-writing and petitioning tactics calling for an independent inquiry by non-governmental actors on civilian casualties in Iraq to be funded by the UK government. Though the campaign has acquired substantial publicity, it has failed to produce a single, unified tally by its constituent members (notably Medact and IBC) as they continue to conduct their research largely independently of one another.

8 This study is based primarily on interviews with representatives of the organizations studying civilian casualties in Iraq.7 Additionally, I reviewed all available publications by the organizations to further illuminate the organizations' goals and modes of inquiry. The study is contextualized by a brief review of the literature on transnational human rights activism and theories of institutional cooperation.

The interviews that I conducted and my analysis of the literature suggests that there is no evidence of cooperation between any two or more of the organizations analyzed here leading to a joint publication of a count or estimate of civilian casualties, and very little evidence exists that such cooperation was even sought. Carl Conetta of the

Project for Defense Alternatives, for instance, acknowledges little interaction with non- governmental groups conducting similar research (Conetta, 2005). Linkages between groups, such as the link between Medact and International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War or between the United Nations and the International Committee of the

Red Cross and Red Crescent, often predate the conflict in Iraq, but did not lead to cooperation on civilian casualty counts for Iraq. Independent media sources have been instrumental to the dissemination of these numbers, often providing a positive feedback loop for the counts—for example, regularly cites Iraq Body Count, and other news agencies, such as Associated Press, cite their own tallies based on research in Iraq. These estimates are noted by the organizations dealing with the issue of civilian casualties, many of whom base their counts on cross-checking reports of civilian dead. Thus, media reports are both the conduit of counts based on independent research by the organizations, as well as the source of information from which these counts are

7As with most interview based studies, I was unable to contact all potential interviewees, despite repeated attempts. However, the sample interviewed, as well as the literature analyzed regarding these organizations provides a representative portrayal of the main actors in this issue area.

9 constructed. Yet, media reports, too, give no indication of cooperation among the groups analyzed here. What explains this lack of cooperation despite strong incentives to cooperate?

Interest in the number of civilian casualties likely to result from the coalition's intervention in Iraq predated the March 2003 invasion. The actors involved in projecting, counting, or estimating civilian casualties in Iraq are diverse according to the factors I examine— sources and amount of funding, geographical location, structure and level of institutionalization, political stances and affiliations, and campaign methodology (for details regarding these groups and their studies, see Table 1).

The first projection of likely civilian casualties was published under the title

"Collateral Damage" in November 2002 by Medact, an organization of health professionals concerned with the consequences of war in general. The British NGO and its transnational affiliate, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, have since periodically revised their findings, releasing a report of "Continuing Collateral

Damage." The first sources of actual numbers of dead were news agencies involved in extracting estimates and evidence of deaths from Iraq's hospitals. In May 2003, a small non-governmental agency named Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) began a door-to-door survey of households in Iraq in an attempt to establish the extent of the damage imposed by the war in Iraq. Aided by a small group of Iraqi researchers and relying on public donations and support from prominent political figures such as

Democratic Senator , CIVIC faced chronic security and financial impediments to its work (Wright, 2003). That same month, spokespersons from the Iraqi

Red Crescent Society (a subsidiary of the International Committee of the Red Cross)

10 began estimating that "thousands are dead," but were reluctant to publicize more concrete numbers, for fear that they would be misinterpreted (Ford, 2003). This also speaks to the reaffirmation of the image of neutrality that the ICRC has cultivated since its inception in

1863 (ICRC, 2005).

July 2003 saw the launching of an ambitious study by the newly-formed

Occupation Watch Center and its institutional anti-war ally in Iraq, the National

Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Iraq. In October 2003, the Project on

Defense Alternatives (run by the Commonwealth Institute) began collating reports from

Iraqi hospitals and international news services to tabulate the war dead. The issue of civilian casualties is only one of the issues of concern to the group, which has also dealt with issues of general post-Cold War defense policy since its establishment in 1991

(PDA, 2005).

Shortly before the invasion, Iraq Body Count (IBC) was founded as a group of independent citizens operating the only continuously running tally of civilian casualties in Iraq. It remains the most widely cited source with regard to the number of civilian casualties, and is assisted in the distribution and publication of its studies by Oxford

Research Group, with which it maintains close institutional ties (Sloboda, 2005). Its methodology is based on the comparison of "reliable news sources" that are widely- referenced and accessible online, with independently-archived news pieces (IBC, 2005).

In April of 2004, the newly coalition-mandated Iraqi Health Ministry was charged with the duty of accounting for victims of the war, in addition to other tasks. That month, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) published an assessment of the damage of the war to civilian infrastructure, and included a section on casualties in their

11 report, which they obtained largely through media reports and numbers from Iraq's

Health Ministry. It also built upon the initial estimates offered by the Center for

Economic and Social Rights, an organization with UN observer status (CESR, 2005).

One of the most controversial studies, led by Les Roberts of Johns Hopkins

University and Richard Garfield of Columbia University, was published in the medical journal The Lancet in October 2004 (Roberts et al., 2004). Offering a toll of nearly

100,000 civilian casualties (a figure based on estimates from a representative sample), their results were widely reported in the press.

In sum, the groups researching civilian deaths in Iraq form an epistemic community that is varied and disjointed. They independently manage to produce data that is widely quoted in both the international and American media as authoritative. The dilemma of non-cooperation thus cannot simply be reduced to the logistical difficulties of data collection.8

8 I thank one of my anonymous reviewers for highlighting the possibility that local factors, including restrictions and mandates applied differently to different NGOs by the Iraqi government and U.S. occupation authorities, may inhibit effective collaboration among them. Non-governmental organizations have expressed concern over the restrictions applied on the Iraq Health Ministry that have limited the release of mortality data. One report in October detailed allegations that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pressured the Health Ministry not to release data from the Iraqi morgues, upon which several IO and NGO actors partially base their counts and estimates. The Prime Minister's decision was allegedly based on concerns that the Iraqi Health Ministry, then controlled by officials with ties to Shiite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, was overstating the numbers of deaths in order to stoke outrage and popular support for the Mahdi Army movement (Lynch, 2006). However, these concerns could be read as an additional incentive towards cooperation among non-governmental actors facing differential restriction in access to information. Several of the organizations, including IBC, comprise a methodology that uses the Iraq Health Ministry data. If access to this data is inhibited by a state actor, Keck and Sikkink's "boomerang pattern" theory of issue advocacy argues that like-minded domestic and international actors will be pushed to form "networks" and "linkages" to bypass these obstacles to achieve their campaign goals (Keck and Sikkink, 1998:12-6). However, I argue that the actors of the civilian casualties regime do not seek such linkages primarily because they do not necessarily view each other as operating from compatible normative perspectives and directed towards the same goal.

12 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE FUNDING ARGUMENT

In the Darwinian world portrayed by Cooley and Ron (2002), cooperation among non-governmental actors is inhibited by their role as competitors as seekers of financial backing. I agree that competition over funding forms an integral dynamic of relationships among organizations. However, a close examination of the sources of funding shows that competition for funding cannot (or at most can partly) explain the lack of cooperation: we can distinguish several different spheres of funding that minimize the competition among civilian casualty tally groups.

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent received nearly

$25 million in pledges from a variety of sources not sought out by other organizations dealing with civilian casualties in Iraq (IFRC, 2003). Among the sources of funding were the national governments of states like Denmark, Japan, Australia and Great Britain, as well as large private donations. Medact is not categorically opposed to receiving government funding, but attempts to “retain [its] independence” (Piachaud, 2005) by seeking (and obtaining) funds from Quaker organizations in order to minimize its need for government funding. Iraq Body Count, by contrast, explicitly rejects funding from national governments. Instead it bases the majority of its funding on public donations

(IBC, 2006), as do many similar organizations.

Some of the groups engaged in compiling and publishing civilian casualty tallies are financially self-sufficient, and their directors often do not even seek to make separate appeals for other sources of funding. The study by the Project on Defense Alternatives

(PDA), for instance, was funded largely by its larger non-profit affiliate, the

Commonwealth Endowment. Due to this insulation, as the director of the project Carl

13 Conetta (2005) explains, he “didn't really press folks” for more funding. Similarly, The

Lancet study was funded by the research institutions of its affiliated universities (Public

Health News Center, 2004) as well as by apolitical research institutions (Small Arms

Survey, 2005).

As I have shown, many of the organizations are not in direct competition with each other over financial resources. Yet, even those who are not at all competing for funding failed to cooperate with each other. An exclusively funding-based argument for non-cooperation ignores the complexity of differing sources of funding and the political baggage that they entail.

EPISTEMIC NICHES

Based upon the quantitative research and interviews that I have conducted, I conclude that the actors may superficially appear to share the same purpose for conducting their research, as suggested by the portrayal in the popular media. The assumption of the groups' commonality of purpose blurs the epistemological distinctions that cause many of these groups to view their work as progressing towards fundamentally differing goals, leaving little basis for "cooperation" beyond the mere trading of numbers and information.

"Cooperation is not necessarily cost-free" says Carl Conetta (2005) of the Project on Defense Alternatives (PDA). The PDA is focused on providing a comprehensive tally in order to demonstrate how warfare has changed since 9/11 and to evaluate the US military's claim that its techniques are "clean" in that they minimize "collateral damage"

(PDA, 2005) resulting from the campaigns. In contrast to many of the body count

14 organizations, PDA does not explicitly oppose the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its methodology compared maps of the different coalition campaigns in order to determine correlations between differing military tactics and the number of dead. "Nobody is really interested in doing the work that we're doing" explains Conetta, and he estimates the number of noncombatant casualties at between 3,200 and 4,300 (as of 2003, see Table 1).

Medact, an organization founded in 1992, has a history of research on the general effects of war including nuclear weapons (Medact 2005). Focusing on poverty, environmental degradation, and the breakdown in health infrastructure during war,

Medact analyzes the situation in Iraq from a similar lens through which it viewed the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990's. According to Jack Piachaud of

Medact, the organization seeks "to make absolutely clear what war does to people"

(2005) and to show the "impact of war on social infrastructure and on health infrastructure."

Iraq Body Count, in contrast, is a "free association of concerned citizens" (IBC,

2005) and a community exclusively centered on the issue of accounting for those who have died. Yet, while IBC gathered and published data in its report, it primarily sought to place the responsibility for funding and organizing a proper tally of civilian casualties in war on the occupying coalition forces. This emphasis stands in marked contrast to the policy prescriptions of other groups. For example, Conetta of the PDA comments that the responsibility for such accounting should fall on NGOs, the UN, and Red Cross, though due to political constraints linked to sources of funding, they are either unable or unwilling to do so (Conetta, 2005).

15 The Lancet study, which Jack Piachaud of Medact characterized as "scientifically and ethically sound" (quoted in Guterman, 2005:A10), takes yet another approach.

Ideally, the study would "lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from airstrikes" (Medact, 2005). The Lancet is a well-established journal, though the research that resulted in the famous tally of 100,000 casualties was conducted by Les Roberts and his affiliates at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities and was not funded by the

Lancet, which "published the report but did not commission or have anything to do with the study itself" (Piachaud 2005). As John Sloboda of IBC points out, Roberts and his university affiliates and publishers at the Lancet provide an estimate of those who have died and not a compilation of recorded deaths (Sloboda, 2005). Also in contrast to IBC,

Les Roberts, project director of the study published by The Lancet was very conscious of potential accusations of political bias, which he attempted to minimize by sending the report to several reviewers because The Lancet "didn't want to publish something that was going to be unfair to one side or another." Given that the study was published shortly before the November 2004 U.S. election, he commented that he "wish[ed] it had come out a couple of weeks earlier so that all the hoopla would be more about the number than the timing" (Roberts, quoted in Goodman, 2004).

The United Nations Development Program study, "Iraq Living Conditions Survey

2004," provides a comprehensive account of various areas of civilian life in Iraq at the time of its publication in 2004. In comparing civilian casualty initiatives for Iraq, Richard

Garfield, Les Robert's colleague in the Lancet study, commented that the UNDP study dealt with the same population outlined in the Lancet study. However, he noted that the

UNDP staff held "no particular expertise" (2006, interview) for the epidemiological work

16 inherent to the Lancet study. The scope of the UNDP study was expansive, with civilian deaths featuring as only one component of a much broader research agenda. As the IBC study points out, neither the Lancet study nor the UNDP made "distinction[s] between civilian and combatant deaths, whereas our study has been very, very careful to exclude any individuals that were clearly identified as combatants" (Lawless, 2005). This may be due to the sweeping mandate that the UNDP has been given to account for the various factors involved in reconstructing Iraq—such that discussion of civilian casualties is neither the primary focus of the study, nor does it feature prominently in the work

(UNDP, 2004).

Garfield defended the validity of the work, but maintained that the IBC and

Lancet studies dealt with differing populations of interest. Highlighting that the Lancet study's focus is on "field epidemiology"—a logical outcome of a study conducted by researchers primarily from institutions of higher education with strong medical backgrounds—Garfield (2006a) remarked that there was no need to reproduce the work of IBC. Because it is a sum of actual recorded deaths, IBC's numbers are necessarily an undercount. Garfield repeatedly touched upon the breakdown of civil infrastructure as the primary cause of death for many of the casualties, and cited mortality rates among young children as a valid correlate to overall conditions of mortality in the nation (2006b).

These statements stand in marked contrast to the reports of IBC, which keeps a detailed log of violent deaths as the foundation of its tally. Less important than the origin of the bombs, he posited, was the breakdown in health services and other damage created by the loss of security and disruption caused by war in Iraq.

17 Until recently, the administration of the Iraqi health care system was the responsibility of the Health Ministry under the direction of the Coalition Provisional

Authority and was subject to its reconstruction policies, including that of de-

Baathification (Lewin, 2005). With a budget of $950 million, (Office of the Press

Secretary 2003, Facts…) the Health Ministry appears to be financially the best positioned to overcome the obstacles I outline that impede efficient documentation of civilian casualties. Its mandate, however, comprises a range of goals of which keeping track of

Iraqi deaths resulting from the war is just a small factor. As these examples show, non- cooperation is not merely a matter of political conflict. Rather, it is the result of the groups' different understandings of their goals within the issue area of civilian casualties—epistemic functions that the groups' widely view as incomparable—despite the relatively narrow issue-area that they share.

CONCLUSION

An accurate understanding of the groups providing counts or estimates of civilian deaths in Iraq must take into account the multitude of differing self-perceptions of these actors that affect decisions of what they are trying to do, how they are trying to do it, and most importantly, why they do not collaborate in a more tangible and substantive manner.

The media has failed to make such a distinction, often comparing one number with another in such a way as to highlight the immense difficulties of accounting for the number of civilian dead in Iraq, and casting doubt on the ability of any group to do so.

Successful transnational advocacy networks, according to Keck and Sikkink, operate from a "common frame of meaning" (1998:7). This is precisely what is missing

18 in the case of civilian casualty initiatives. Questions of who should be included in a civilian casualty count, and the count's methodology reflect larger schisms related to the goals of the particular initiative. But the "boomerang pattern" (1998:13) of issue advocacy, which often implies logistical and financial coordination among actors motivated by "principled ideas," also implies a shared conception of a "target" state or actor as the focus of symbolic and accountability leverage. In comparison to the transnational advocacy networks that were active during the Argentinean and Mexican dirty wars, Keck and Sikkink identify the normative vulnerability of the "target" (in this case, the respective governments of Argentina and Mexico) as a critical determinant to the success of the campaigns launched to extract information regarding cases of

"disappeared" political dissidents. However, as I have demonstrated, there exist differing conceptions of the "target" to be leveraged among the variety of groups involved in researching the dead in Iraq. The authors of the casualty initiatives do not agree on which agencies or governments should bear the burden of redress to civilians. This in turn contributes to the lack of a shared epistemological goal—an important but understudied consideration of the discourse about human rights transnational advocacy.

Organizations that could, according to transnational advocacy network theory, complement each other with more institutionalized sources of reliable funding in order to effectively leverage a "target" human rights violating agency or government are unable or unwilling to do so. This is largely because they hold differing opinions of who that target is and what their aims are vis-à-vis the delicate political consequences of appearing as anti-war or neutral. Revisiting the cases of the Argentinean and Mexican "disappeared" political dissidents illuminates the circumstances under which such an accountability

19 campaign could potentially achieve its goals. These campaigns, through the targeted application of the "politics of shame" and coordination between domestic and international human rights actors, were able to eventually achieve their stated goal— policy-change on the part of the governments of these respective nations that greatly diminished the use of "disappearances" as a tool of statecraft (Keck and Sikkink,

1998:107-20). The evidence gathered from the Iraq civilian casualties case suggests that the institutional aspirations of the organizations involved differ to the extent that coordination on the scale and scope of a "successful" human rights campaign is virtually impossible. Therefore, assessing circumstances under which a campaign for an accounting of the number of civilian casualties from the 2003-2005 war would succeed in its goal warrants a more careful examination of how such goals are constructed—and how they are implicitly varied for so narrow an issue-area. At best, Richard Garfield

(2006a) posits, understanding the work of these studies is only "half about funding."

Surpassing materialist arguments that see non-cooperation as a function of material constraints and competition among non-state actors over funds and prestige within a given issue-area, consideration of the lack of a shared epistemological goal provides a more effective framework from which to analyze the phenomenon of Iraqi civilian casualty tolls and the confusion that characterizes its media portrayal. Only in recognition of the ideational nuances of "frames of meaning" can a more accurate view of the complexities of the Iraqi civilian casualty issue be fully realized.

20 REFERENCES

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25 "Costs of Cooperation" Table 1: Civilian Casualty Estimates

Organization Sources of Geographical Structure and level of Stance regarding Campaign methodology Epistemic goal Time period covered funding location and HQ institutionalization coalition actions in (date of publication) Iraq CIVIC Solicits private HQ in Washington, Centered on the direction of Does not directly Door-to-door interviewing Seeks changes in March 21 - July 31, donations; DC. Field research in Marla Ruzicka, its late seek withdrawal of with joint Iraqi and international law 2003. accepts funds Iraq. founder. Board of directors coalition troops. American staff. that would require from includes prominent human Rather, focuses on compensation of 2,066 deaths tallied government rights activists, though they mitigating impact of civilian victims by agencies wield little direct influence war on "unintended occupying forces. (USAID) on the group's victims." administration. International Initial funding Regional HQ in Small number of Iraqi staff Seeks withdrawal of Report is qualitative, Aim is to "present July 2003 Occupation from the Baghdad and international peace coalition troops from including random case an accurate and Watch umbrella workers in Baghdad. Iraq. samples and anecdotal comprehensive Death estimate Center organization, evidence. Relies on picture of the unclear. United for Peace firsthand reporting. occupation, on a and Justice. daily basis, The group has since including both the been deactivated due good and the bad." to security concerns.

Iraq Body Solicits private No HQ. Operates "a free association of Seeks withdrawal of Maintains running To represent the Periodically updated Count donations; small independently. John individuals. We have no coalition troops database of individual "complete picture since April 2003. donations from Sloboda directs both constitution, no shareholders, casualties; data cross- of the situation in philanthropic IBC and Oxford no office, no staff." checked from various Iraq." Seeks to 54,432 – 60,098 organizations. Research Group, no news sources; separates force "warring deaths tallied Does not accept further institutional civilians from insurgent parties" to report (Jan 23, 2007). government ties. combatants on civilian deaths funds. resulting from their actions Iraqi Health Funded through HQ in Baghdad, Iraq. Directed through the Does not explicitly Estimates are tallied Primary goal is to Periodically updated Ministry the Coalition Coalition Provisional oppose coalition through reports of 60 of provide basic since 2003 Provisional Authority (formerly Office actions in Iraq. the 124 hospitals directed health care to Authority of Reconstruction and by the IHM. Does not Iraqis 22,950 deaths Humanitarian Assistance). differentiate between estimated for 2006 casualties from coalition (January 8, 2007) actions and casualties from insurgent actions Iraqi Red Generally Regional HQ in Regional offices in 14 The ICRC Relies on media reports, in Aim is not Periodically updated. Crescent funded through Baghdad regions, country delegations historically does not the field witness exclusively to tally Society the UN system. in 63 with hierarchical make statements in testimonies and data from deaths as civilian Over 7,000 deaths Receives modus operandi support of or in Iraqi morgues casualties estimated since substantial opposition to specific "Four main core September 2006 funding from military actions areas: promoting national humanitarian governments. principles and values; disaster response; disaster preparedness; and health and care in the community" Les Roberts Funded by the Johns Hopkins Project was directed Does not explicitly Estimates do not Maintains a Periodically updated and Bloomberg University based in primarily by Les Roberts and oppose coalition differentiate between medical since January 2002. The Lancet School of Public Baltimore, MD. his colleagues JHU, action in Iraq. combatants and civilians. perspective on the Health, and Operated out of Columbia, and Al- Estimates based on consequences of Over 600,000 deaths Columbia Baghdad, Iraq. Mustansiriya University in extrapolation and random war. Concerned estimated (June 2006) University, as Baghdad. cluster sampling. with providing an well as apolitical accurate estimate research of casualties from institutions. the war. Medact Accepts HQ in London, UK. Administered by Does not explicitly Journalistic surveys of Primarily March 2003- government International Physicians for oppose coalition hospital and burial concerned with November 2003 funding; accepts the Prevention of Nuclear actions in Iraq, but records. Utilizes official understanding the donations from War. seeks to minimize Operation Iraqi Freedom consequences of 20,000 deaths philanthropic humanitarian costs. (OIF) combat statistics as war in general on a estimated organizations well as data from US civilian population and from its operations. and environmental umbrella degradation. organization International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Project on Funded largely HQ in Cambridge, Directed by Carl Conetta Does not explicitly Journalistic surveys of Part of a broader March -October 2003 Defense by the MA at the with a small staff for the Iraq oppose coalition hospital and burial campaign for the Alternatives Commonwealth Commonwealth project. actions in Iraq. records, complemented by reformulation of 3,200-4,300 deaths Endowment Institute witness testimony. US defence policy estimated Donors include HQ in New York Highly bureaucratized, with The UNDP Estimates do not The Iraq program's March 2003- April United the Iraq City, NY. Regional over 134 country offices. historically does not differentiate between three primary 2004. Nations Reconstruction HQ in Baghdad. make statements in civilian casualties and goals are Development Fund, prominent support of or in combatants. Estimates democratic 18,000-29,000 deaths Program national opposition to specific based on representative governance, estimated governments military actions survey of over 21,000 economy and and the citizens. employment and European infrastructure Commission rehabilitation and the environment.