States of ignorance: the unmaking and remaking of death tolls

Abstract

This paper considers the complications and tensions associated with knowing about ignorance. In particular it attends to how the social analysis of ignorance hazards being associated with the production and magnification of ignorance. It does so through questioning how the UK government contended that the number of civilian deaths stemming from the 2003 Iraq invasion could not ‘reliably’ be known. The twists and turns of official public statements are interpreted against the back region government and civil service deliberations obtained under the British Freedom of Information Act. Far from settling what took place, however, this material compounded the challenge of trying to characterize different strategies for manufacturing ignorance. From an examination of the choices, contingencies and challenges in the way actors and social scientists depict ignorance, this paper then considers future possibilities for inquiry whereby social analysts can question their role in producing ignorance while questioning claims of ignorance.

Keywords:

• partial knowledge
• armed violence
• pragmatism
• Freedom of Information
• Iraq

Acknowledgement

My thanks to Linsey McGoey, Richard Moyes, three anonymous reviewers and the participants in the ‘Strategic Unknowns’ conference at the Saïd Business School for their advice and assistance in the production of this paper.

Notes

1. One is a November 2007 request from Richard Moyes of the NGO Landmine Action to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) that asked for information since 2001 on what projects the departments have ‘funded, undertaken or analysed in a) Afghanistan b) Iraq that work, inter alia, to assess the numbers and specific causes of civilian casualties resulting from armed violence perpetrated by UK forces and our relevant international partners’ and ‘analyses or assessments [that] have been made … regarding methodologies for assessing the civilian cost of armed violence’. The second set consists of requests by the author in 2009–10 to the FCO, MoD, Department of Health and Department for International Development that re-asked Moyes's questions for Iraq. The third is material posted online at the FCO FoI website (see http://foi.fco.gov.uk/content/en/foi-releases/2009/lancet-report). An FoI request to the FCO indicated that this was given in response to a request about ‘the feasibility, accuracy, and results of any assessments made by the UK government of the number of direct and indirect casualties in Iraq’ with special reference to comment and opinions in The Lancet. The materials are available at http://people.exeter.ac.uk/br201/.

2. Though this was by no means the first intervention to draw critical attention to the issue of civilian deaths. Others included the work of Iraq Body Count and Boyce et al. (2004).

3. For an overview of the varied efforts to assess deaths, see Chapter 2 of Geneva Declaration Secretariat (2008a).

4. For an examination of the media reception of The Lancet studies, see Chapters 6–7 in Edwards and Cromwell (2009).

5. This because the letter in question was released by the FCO and the Chief Economist of the FCO is cited as commenting on deaths in other correspondence.

6. Particularly in November 2004 e-mail correspondence in order to formulate a statement by the UK Foreign Secretary.

7. In O'Neill (2006) another distinct but related argument is made about how access to information does not always ensure effective communication because the audience does not have the ethical and epistemic capacity to comprehend it.

8. This is all the more the case given the FoI Act came into force only in 2005.

9. An undated (but post-2004) released Foreign Office analysis of ‘African conflict statistics’ provided detailed grounds for concerns about the reliability of conflict statistics.

10. The names of officials were deemed ‘not relevant’ by the FCO to the questions posed by Richard Moyes (see Griffiths, 2008).

11. It also opened a way for meeting the need repeatedly expressed in the FoI material to ensure that whatever was given by way of official assessment was consistent with the prior comments made by the Prime Minister Tony Blair (2004). On 3 November he said that ‘we do not accept the figures released by The Lancet last week at all’. At least one case for consistency could be made because it was the figures that were doubted by Blair, rather than the methodology per se.

12. In 2010, the MoD released to the author a four-page paper titled ‘Analysis of 2006 Lancet article – summary of findings’ (undated and without an identified author) that was not cited elsewhere or released as part of the other FoI requests. It likewise judged the methodology sound and (on balance) supported the study's findings.

13. In the case of 2006, these internal representations were publicized through the BBC World Service's own FoI request in late 2007 (Bennett-Jones, 2007).

14. Especially in contrast to Jack Straw's 1600 word statement on 17 November 2004.

15. See, as well, note 11.

16. In relation to the latter it was written that ‘[n]o information is given on how the figures are reached. Our embassy in Baghdad thinks they are an average of MOH/MOI/MOD figures, however, all these departments reach their totals in different ways.’

17. In addition, the aforementioned 2007 FCO checklist made brief reference to dispute about figures within Iraq.

18. Differences which made it difficult for the author to comprehend what legitimate grounds existed for the redacting of material.