The Dupuy Institute

Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis

The Dupuy Institute

Excellence in Historical Research and Analysis

Casualties in Iraq (November)

Christopher A. Lawrence
December 2, 2016

Have some casualty figures for Iraq: tally-shows-spike-casualties-Iraq

The source is the U.N. To summarize (with my comments added):

1,959 Iraqi security forces killed in November across Iraq.
1. At least 450 wounded….this is obviously low and I would expect it to be at least 8,000 based upon the number killed (see point 1.c.ii below).
2. This total includes army, police engaged in combat (interesting distinction), Kurdish Peshmerga, interior ministry forces, and pro-government paramilitaries (so includes everyone except maybe Iranian forces)
3. The Peshmerga claims that 1,600 of their fighters have been killed since the start of the offensive on Oct. 17. Does this mean that the Peshmerga have been doing over half the fighting?
  1. Almost 10,000 Peshmerga fighters were also wounded……meaning they have around a 6.25-to-1 wounded-to-killed ratio, which makes complete sense to me.
  2. 1,959 times 6.25 = 12,244 total wounded for November if I apply the same ratio to the November estimates of killed.
926 civilians were also killed. This is less civilians killed then soldiers killed in combat. There are some wars where this has not been the case.
Now, this was a force of around 100,000 coalition troops. They have now suffered over 14,000 casualties over a month, or 14% of the force? This seems high.
They are supposedly facing 5,000 – 6,000 ISIL fighters. These guys have caused 14,000 casualties and are still going strong?

Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.

Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.

His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) and The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019)

Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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