Civilians Ran a Greater Risk of Being Killed in Juarez Last Year than in Baghdad

Thursday, March 05, 2009
By Edwin Mora

A night vision view of U.S. paratroopers patrolling with Iraqi police officers in eastern Baghdad on February 16, 2009. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. James Selesnick)(CNSNews.com) - Civilians ran a greater risk of being killed in the border city of Juarez, Mexico, last year than in Baghdad, Iraq.

The per capita rate of civilian killings in the Mexican border city in 2008 was nearly three-and-a-half times (3.4) as great as the per capita rate of civilian killings in the Iraqi province of Baghdad, CNSNews.com has determined, based on State Department statistics and data supplied by an Iraqi civilian-casualty database recommended by the Department of Defense.

In Ciudad Juarez, where drug cartels are fighting with Mexican authorities for control of the city, an estimated 1,800 people were killed in 2008, according to the U.S. State Department.

That equaled one in every 889 residents in a population that the State Department says 1.6 million.

Meanwhile, in the Baghdad Governorate (the Iraqi province that includes Baghdad), only about one in 3,040 people were killed in 2008, using the civilian casualty figures gatherd by the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project.

The overall number of civilians in Baghdad Governorate that were killed in 2008, according to IBC, was between 2,632 and 2,847.

But the Baghdad Governorate, with an estimated 6 to 8 million people, is almost four to five times larger in population than Ciudad Juarez, depending upon which figure is utilized.

That means people are at greater risk in Juarez than in Baghdad province.

In fact, CNSNews.com has calculated that approximately 113 per 100,000 people were killed by violence in Juarez, while in Baghdad about 33 per 100,000 civilians shared the same fate.

A reasonable analysis

Statistics on the number of deaths from violence in Juarez were taken from the U.S. State Department’s travel alert, issued Feb. 20.

Calculating the population and death rates of Iraq, however, was not a simple proposition.

IBC, which compiles data from English-language news outlets (including Arabic media translated into English), NGO-based reports and other official records that can be found in the public domain, provided the civilian death-toll for Baghdad.

John Sloboda, IBC’s co-founder, told CNSNews.com that the uncertainty in the estimated number of civilian casualties in Baghdad Governorate in 2008 (2,632 to 2,847) results from “inconsistencies in reporting.â€