Today’s Must Read

One week later, here it is: Gen. Petraeus’ definition of sectarian violence.

Ever since the GAO report last week said it was “not clear” that the surge had contributed to a drop in sectarian deaths, Gen. Petraeus has been under pressure to explain his methodology. The GAO was agnostic on whether or not sectarian attacks had declined in recent months, citing that it required knowing a perpetrator’s intent — a task beyond the capabilities of the agency. But GAO was, at least inferentially, skeptical, noting that the broader pattern of attacks on civilians — of which sectarianism is a proportion — hasn’t declined. And further reporting suggested problems with how MNF-I has tabulated sectarian casualties: one famous Washington Post story cited a senior intelligence official claiming MNF-I looks at where a bullet entered someone’s head to divine sectarian intent.

Petraeus has disputed all of this. Yesterday, in Washington, Petraeus took a stab at an explanation. And in Baghdad, the Los Angeles Times reports, so did the U.S. military command, known as Multinational Forces Iraq, to combat the accusation that it’s cooking the books to exaggerate the success of the surge. However, it’s not exactly clear what that methodology tells us:

Stung by accusations that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. troops in Iraq, had presented selective statistics during his testimony before Congress, the military released a statement here outlining its definition of sectarian violence: bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes.

That seems a little circular. As I wrote last week, determining sectarian killings isn’t a matter of determining intent. There’s plenty of evidence from a body that a killing was driven by sectarian motivations. Victims of sectarianism “generally are males found without identification documents and shot execution-style. The bodies usually are blindfolded and bound at the wrists, and often bear signs of torture,” writes the LAT‘s Tina Susman. It may be that MNF-I’s methodology makes sense, and the GAO was unduly harsh. Or not.

Here’s MNF-I’s statement in full:

Multi-National Force-Iraq defines ethno-sectarian murder as a murder committed by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

Ethno-sectarian violence is defined as an event and any associated civilian deaths caused by or during murders/executions, kidnappings, direct fire, indirect fire, and all types of explosive devices identified as being conducted by one ethnic/religious person/group directed at a different ethnic/religious person/group, where the primary motivation for the event is based on ethnicity or religious sect.

In our collection of data, a shot to the front or back of the head is not used to determine ethno-sectarian murder.

The number of ethno-sectarian murders has declined significantly since the height of the sectarian violence in December 2006. Iraq-wide, the number of ethno-sectarian deaths has decreased by over 55 percent, and it would have decreased much further if it not for the casualties inflicted by barbaric al-Qaeda bombings attempting to reignite sectarian violence.

It remains unclear why, as reported, the GAO, DIA and CIA have difficulty accepting MNF-I’s definition of sectarian violence.