THE HARD TASK OF COUNTING CASUALTIES IN SYRIA

BY SOFIA BRINCK

Several numbers can describe the ongoing Syrian war: 6.6 million refugees and 6.7 million internally displaced, 2 million people living below the poverty line, and 90 percent of the children needing humanitarian aid. But despite these figures, one number is missing. A quick internet search for the Syrian death toll will show that reports oscillate from 250,000 to half a million deaths depending on which organization is being quoted. 

In 2016, the UN set the death toll in nearly 400,000 people and then announced it would stop counting due to the difficulties of accessing verified information. Since then, the only sources are independent organizations that provide very different figures.

What is certain is that no one knows precisely how many people have died in the decade-long conflict that became a proxy war of foreign nations and that we may never know. Numbers are not everything in armed conflicts, warns Kelly Greenhill, associate professor at Tufts University, and exact figures are not necessarily achievable. But they matter.

“Accurate-ish numbers matter: for resource allocation (and to prevent misallocation), public policy formulation and implementation, to enhance public trust and combat cynicism, and to help forestall further weaponization and politicization of history,” said Greenhill.

And, of course, they matter to the families of every victim of the war.

Keeping count in Syria

The most respected and updated figures come from three organizations. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), opposition-linked and based in London, 594,000 people had died until March 14, 2021. On the other hand, the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), a program of the Syrian Center of Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) based in Syria and other countries, has documented 228,419 deaths in the decade of conflict. Meanwhile, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, at the Uppsala Universitet in Sweden, estimates the death toll at 362,266 people. There are other smaller organizations, but their publication frequency has not always been constant.

Casualty counting is grueling and dangerous. VDC works with a network of documenting officers on the ground in Syria who gather information in a three-step system. The goal is to cross-check every casualty produced by shootings, arbitrary executions, kidnappings, torture, death resulted from deprivation of health care, bombing, use of prohibited weapons, and shelling.

For Ghalia Mardam Bek, from VDC's Justice and Rule of Law Program, the main difficulties are the lack of secure access and sometimes fear of surviving family members. “Some massacres happen in non-accessible areas for our team members; some are in far-away places where an unknown number of casualties are buried in mass graves without identification indicators, such as in the Houta Dig. In some cases, families of victims killed during individual incidents, such as kidnapping, do not provide information, fearing vengeance. People killed in prison are also hard to identify since most witnesses do not know their names, making it also difficult for families to know the fate of their relatives.”

Reparation, truth, and justice are fundamental parts of transitional justice processes after periods of conflict and systematic human rights violations.

Even when the UN kept count, they could not do it independently. In 2012, they funded a project by a U.S.-based non-profit organization, the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), which compiled the work from seven different datasets, including VDC, SOHR, and Syrian government records. In their last report in 2014, they identified 191,369 deaths. However, the process proved to be more complicated than expected, as most of the organizations had different methodologies and definitions, which caused overlapping and duplications.

Dr. Michael Spagat, Professor of Economics at Royal Holloway University of London and NGO Every Casualty advisor, warns that casualty counting must be regarded with care, constantly checking each organization’s methodology and information.

“I have always been kind of suspicious, for example, of SOHR’s numbers, as they have the highest figures,” Spagat said. “Even when they publish information on their website, you cannot download a spreadsheet with the details. VDC comes closest to do it. But what I would like these organizations to do is actually to publish their raw data.” 

It is not that their figures cannot be accurate, Spagat argues. They could be. But numbers can be politicized, and methodologies can be inconsistent, so checking the data is crucial.

The importance of numbers

Uncertainty in casualty counting is not a new phenomenon. Heated controversies have surrounded death tolls in Iraq, Bosnia, and Sudan. Professor Greenhill has called it a “common feature of modern warfare.” She attributes it to data acquisition risks, measurement disparities, different counting methods (active versus passive surveillance techniques, for example), and divergent political incentives. But in a world where counting is a human impulse, in Dr. Spagat's words, not measuring can mean not existing.

Dr. Hannah Garry, clinical professor and founding director of USC Gould Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, is wary of numbers when people focus solely on the quantitative aspect. “Numbers matter for resolution purposes; numbers matter for accountability purposes. In my area of work, there is a quantitative aspect to bringing legal cases for, say, crimes against humanity. But there is a double-edged sword to figures because the more numbers you get, the more impersonal it becomes. The eyes glaze over after a certain point.” 

In 2019, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet rang the alarm at the international indifference to the rising Syrian casualties, describing its response as “a collective shrug.” An accurate death toll could put pressure on the involved countries and even get the international community to a breaking point where they are “scandalized enough to use political capital to try to bring the different sides to the resolute peace table,” argues Dr. Garry. But that is just one part of the story.

Reparation, truth, and justice are fundamental parts of transitional justice processes after periods of conflict and systematic human rights violations. And to achieve that, every victim needs to be recognized in their individuality. “That is why war memorials have names, not numbers,” explains Spagat. “We need to give each death some due recognition.”

We may never know precisely how many people died in Syria, and even if we get a death toll, it will probably be approximated. But the process of documenting every casualty is long, and NGOs such as VDC know they cannot stand still: “We can’t rely on international organizations documenting the casualties. We can’t wait until the end of the war to investigate crimes because the evidence may disappear, and many war criminals may flee to evade responsibility. The victims may not receive the compensation they are entitled to. So, no, we can’t wait to get started.”

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Sofía Brinck is a Chilean journalist and a graduate student in the joint master’s degree in Global Media and Communications at USC Annenberg and the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is participating in a foreign affairs reporting class taught by Professor Phil Seib, a collaboration between the Pacific Council and the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.