IRAQ 2023: Tribal wars, 'terrorist elements' and continuing air strikes

The IBC team (Dardagan, Hamourtziadou and Sloboda)
01 Jan 2024

Civilians killed in smaller numbers, but clan disputes on the rise

In 2023 Iraq Body Count (IBC) documented 537 civilians violently killed. Of these, 216 were attributed to “terrorist elements” including ISIS, 170 to tribal/clan disputes, and 30 to Iraqi/US and Turkish militaries. Another 121 deaths were of individuals whose bodies were found, in some cases with signs of torture but no clear indication of the perpetrator.

Only the civilian deaths from clan disputes represented an increased rate on the previous year: all the other listed categories showed a reduced rate of killing.

However, signaling that Iraq remains a country in a state of low-level conflict as well as cross-border warfare, IBC also documented 786 combatants killed, including Iraqi and Turkish soldiers and various non-state actors including alleged terrorists from ISIS and the PKK.

VIOLENT DEATHS RECORDED BY IRAQ BODY COUNT 2023 & 2022

Cause of death/actors involved	Civilians killed 2023	Civilians killed 2022
'Terrorist elements' including ISIS	216	338
Bodies found	121	159
Clan disputes	170	125
Iraqi and associated militaries	30	118
Total civilians	537	740
Conflict actor	Combatants killed 2023	Combatants killed 2022
'Terrorist elements' including ISIS	350	521
PKK fighters	323	506
Turkish soldiers	39	97
Iraqi soldiers	28	80
Popular Mobilisation Forces	32	30
Federal Police	3	23
Other	11	16
Total combatants	786	1,273
	2023	2022
Civilians + combatants killed	1,323	2,013

The question of terrorism

In addition to those killed, and as in 2022, we have also seen thousands arrested under Iraq’s anti-terrorism law: 5,589 during the year, according to a December 27 Interior Ministry statement. This is higher than, but tracks with, IBC’s partial monitoring of such arrests, multiples of which are reported almost daily. Their (alleged) supply seems limitless.

IBC separately recorded 350 alleged terrorists killed by state forces, who are near-universally designated as “ISIS”, seemingly as a form of shorthand. Curiously, the far lower cumulative figures issued by the Counter-Terrorism Service (51 killed) and the Interior Ministry (65 killed) combined come to a total of only 116 killed.

Most such deaths recorded by IBC involve a small number killed per incident. But 6 of the larger incidents alone total 85 such deaths, to which must be added dozens of smaller incidents, which together surpass the official tally more than three times over. 1

And this is not the first occasion on which this discrepancy has arisen: in 2022 IBC recorded the killing of 521 alleged terrorists, against an official cumulative figure of 311.

Governments like to brag about their achievements against “terrorist elements” so it is a puzzle as to why the daily reports that IBC has accumulated amount to so much more than the official totals. Could it be that actually many of these deaths turned out to be not “terrorists” after all, but civilians unjustifiably killed, and so officialdom quietly and retrospectively scrubbed these deaths from the record?

A volatile security situation, and distrust of political actors

Five years after the liberation of its territories from ISIS occupation, Iraq still suffers the effects of armed violence by non-state actors, armed interventions by external state actors and rising tribal wars in fractured communities operating in a degraded human security environment. The security situation remains volatile, with 2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that ethno-sectarian tensions are on the rise,

while the military interventions of Turkish and Iranian armed forces further destabilized bordering regions, especially in Northern governorates of Iraq. The proliferation of armed actors, including Popular Mobilization Forces, active remnants of IS and tribal armed actors, continue to entrench local conflict, divisions and tensions between communities.

Government corruption has resulted in community distrust of political actors and the police, as tensions across sectarian, tribal and ethnic lines are on the rise, undermining security and cohesion. According to Dr Amina Sabar, an emergency ward doctor in Baghdad’s Sadr City,

In Iraq, the tribes are a force that is beyond the law. The clans have their customs and laws that they enforce. Most disputes are resolved through the payment of “blood money”. If they cannot agree or if one side does not want to pay then there will be violence and fighting until it is resolved. If the clan is involved in something, no one else can interfere. The police will not get involved.

IBC’s data concurs with Dr Sabar’s assessment, as it shows an alarming rise in tribal or clan wars. While overall figures are lower than in 2022, the number of civilians dying in clan conflicts is higher, having gone from 125 in 2022 (17% of all civilian killings) to 170 in 2023 (32% of all civilian killings).

US and UK involvement: friends or enemies?

In an ominous development linking Iraq to the ongoing conflict in Israel/Palestine, as the year was ending, President Biden ordered the US military to carry out retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq. This was in response to a strike in Erbil against a US base alleged to be by Katzib Hezbollah, a Shia pro-Iran armed group, that injured 3 US service members on December 25. The US strikes a day later killed a member of the Iraqi security forces and wounded 18 people, including civilians. On November 21, US airstrikes had already killed 9 Iranian-backed militia members south of Baghdad. Those strikes caused the first direct, independently US-caused deaths in Iraq since 2020. The attacks come “at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war”, as noted by many commentators.

The Iraqi government condemned the air strikes by the US military on its territory as ‘hostile acts’. And, not for the first time, Iraq’s political leadership announced its intention to rid itself of the US’s military presence in the country: an exercise in national sovereignty that has so far amounted to mere aspiration.

The US officially ended its combat role in Iraq at the end of 2021, formally transitioning to advising and assisting the Iraqi security forces. However, there are still 2,500 US troops in the country that continue to work with and through ‘regional partners’ to defeat ISIS, as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. As for UK forces, they “continue to support the Iraqi government”. Based on information found at the UK government website, RAF Typhoons attacked targets at two remote locations in the Hamrin mountains in north-eastern Iraq on 2 May 2023. The Typhoons employed seven Paveway IV guided bombs in “successful precision strikes”.

Iraq in 2023 continues to suffer a low-level armed conflict that is now little-noticed outside it but remains deadly to its civilians and numerous conflict actors alike. Iraq has seen earlier periods of relative quiet that erupted into fresh and much worse violence: it would be prudent to assume that its present tensions contain the same potential. We can only hope that calmer and wiser heads ultimately prevail, if not among its supposed foreign allies, then among Iraqis themselves.