Deaths in Iraq rose and also fell in 2007

BAGHDAD — December emerged as possibly the safest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since the 2003 invasion and the least deadly for Iraqi civilians in the last 12 months, but overall 2007 was the bloodiest year of the war, according to figures released Monday.

The Iraqi Ministry of Health said 481 civilians died nationwide last month in war-related violence such as bombings, mortar attacks and sectarian slayings. It said 16,232 civilians died last year. The 2006 death toll was 12,320.

“I remember 2007 was the explosions year,” said Abd Hadi Hussein, a Shiite Muslim resident of Baghdad’s Sadr City neighborhood. He recalled carrying a woman who had been injured in a bombing to a hospital in August. “She was completely burned, and people could not recognize whether she was a man or a woman. She kept asking about her little girl. But then the woman died. This memory I can’t remove from my mind.

“But this year, 2008, I am very optimistic,” he said, citing the recent celebrations for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha and the crowded Christmas Masses held in Baghdad.

On the military front, 21 U.S. personnel died in Iraq during December, according to Department of Defense figures released by the independent website icasualties.org, making the average daily death tally last month the lowest since the start of the war. It was possible the military could report additional deaths for the month in coming days, but the casualty number was striking when compared with the December 2006 total of 112.

During 2007, at least 899 American troops deployed to the Iraq theater died, according to the website, the highest annual toll since the American-led invasion in March 2003.

After considerably higher monthly death tolls earlier in 2007, the number of fatalities among Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops has been decreasing since the American military completed a troop buildup in June. But few were celebrating the recent downturn in violence as proof of irreversible progress.

If anything, U.S. military and political officials are warning that recent months’ security gains have opened the door to new challenges, some of which could spawn fresh violence as Iraqis jostle to reclaim their lives. These issues include satisfying about 70,000 young men, most of them members of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority, who have volunteered as security forces and who expect employment from the Shiite-dominated government. Iraqi officials also must find a way to accommodate refugees who return to the country and need housing, essential services and jobs.

In addition, there remains the problem of the Iraqi government’s failure to pass major legislation considered essential to fostering trust between religious and ethnic groups. This includes bills to manage Iraq’s oil wealth, expand job opportunities for former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and decide the powers of provincial governments.

“We have a window. I don’t know how long that window is,” said the U.S. military’s No. 2 commander in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, during a recent meeting with foreign journalists.

Odierno described “signs of a return to normalcy” that he had seen recently in Baghdad: trucks delivering big-ticket retail items such as heaters and washing machines to shops, children playing soccer on public fields.

“The key piece now is, can we sustain this and can it be sustained so the government can move forward?” he said.

Nobody seems certain, least of all Iraqis, who have endured a year that began with the monthly civilian death count topping 2,000 nationwide last January. They remain edgy -- for good reason, as underscored by fresh violence Monday.

A suicide bomber drove into a checkpoint of the security volunteers, called concerned local citizens by the U.S. military, about 20 miles north of Baghdad. Police said 12 people were killed: five children attending a school near the checkpoint and seven security volunteers. The U.S. military said two people died. There was no explanation for the different casualty counts.

In Iskandariya, 25 miles south of Baghdad, a suicide bomber killed two civilians when he attacked a volunteer checkpoint, police said. An Iraqi army official also said U.S. and Iraqi forces fought insurgents linked to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq northeast of Baghdad, in Diyala province, in battles Monday that killed four Iraqi soldiers.

But the violence, though it persisted, was far less than at this time last year.

“We’re afraid of only one thing: that it won’t stay this way,” said Haki Ismael Ibrahim, a Sunni taxi driver who a few months ago would not venture into many Shiite areas of Baghdad. Now, he goes throughout the city.

Ibrahim attributed the improved security to better patrols by U.S. and Iraqi security forces, diminished activities of Shiite militias, and the emergence of the volunteer groups. But like U.S. officials, Ibrahim said the Iraqi government needed to move quickly to give the volunteers what they want: jobs in the Iraqi security forces or other government institutions.

Hussein, the Shiite from Sadr City, expressed concern about the volunteer groups, but for a different reason: because they are Sunnis and, in many cases, former insurgents. His viewpoint underscored the distrust lingering across much of Iraqi society.

“They are very dangerous and sectarian,” Hussein said. “Before, they were hiding. Now they are killing people.”

It’s a worry that some American soldiers share.

“I’m concerned,” said 1st Sgt. Richard Meiers of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, speaking from a base in Iskandariya. “We’re paying them not to blow us up. It looks good right now, but what happens when the money stops?”

Iraq’s government initially resisted embracing the volunteers, fearing the onetime insurgents might return to violence after the eventual departure of the U.S. forces that keep them in check and pay them a daily $10 stipend.

U.S. officials say Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has committed $155 million to job-creation programs for the concerned local citizens groups, matching a U.S. financial commitment, but there is no deadline for them to be given permanent employment.

“That transition needs to take place in the course of 2008,” U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said last week in a meeting with reporters.

Crocker and Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, cited the return of refugees and national reconciliation as two other major issues looming in the new year.

While saying it was good to see Iraqis coming back into the country, Crocker and Petraeus said the Iraqi government needed to establish a system for settling disputes that arise when returnees find squatters or illegal renters in their homes.

“I think this is just going to remain a very, very tough issue for some time,” Petraeus said. “It’s one that Iraqis, as the security situation continues to improve, are going to have to come to grips with more and more.”

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Times staff writers Kimi Yoshino in Iskandariya and Saif Rasheed in Baghdad and special correspondents in Hillah, Baghdad and Baqubah contributed to this report.