As seen on the front page of today’s Washington Post:
Days after the bombing of a Shiite shrine unleashed a wave of retaliatory killings of Sunnis, the leading Shiite party in Iraq’s governing coalition directed the Health Ministry to stop tabulating execution-style shootings, according to a ministry official familiar with the recording of deaths.[...]
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 28 that more than 1,300 shooting victims had been brought to the morgue in the first six days after the Samarra bombing. The figure was provided by a morgue worker who refused to be identified by name.
Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari denied the account, saying Shiite-Sunni violence had claimed 379 lives in the week following the attack on the shrine. Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the U.S. commander in Iraq, called The Post’s report exaggerated and inaccurate. An e-mail sent to U.S. military officials this week seeking updated casualty figures went unanswered.
I heard the following overgeneralization that helps explain the above a little bit:
- Bombings in Iraq have generally been Sunni insurgents acting against Shiites and Americans.
- Execution-style murders in Iraq in the past week have generally been Shiites acting against Sunnis
- Therefore, if true, the Shiite-dominated government is ordering that body counts be maintained on Sunni-on-Shiite violence, but not Shiite-on-Sunni violence.
What a mess.