As the Syrian government suppresses pro-democracy rebels, the regime鈥檚 military supremacy and grip on information about its citizens is seriously hampering the task of verifying fatalities.
There were similar difficulties in the Iraq war, but observers, including the (ICRC), say they face different problems in Syria. There is greater potential for intimidation or silencing of witnesses, and then there are the cyber-attacks launched by the regime on communications networks and the online monitoring of the population.
鈥淲e rely on first-hand information, so we talk to everyone we can, including doctors, hospitals, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the authorities,鈥� says Hichan Hassan of the ICRC. 鈥淧oor communications are making it very difficult to establish fatalities and casualties.鈥�
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Hard to verify
The human rights group is attempting to gather and verify information, through sources such as text messages and direct personal contacts. It says its latest confirmed figures of 632 deaths and 2843 detainees are massive underestimates, while . Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 3000 people have been killed.
The ICRC simply says there are 鈥渢housands鈥� dead, and 鈥渢ens of thousands鈥� injured or detained.
鈥淕iven the situation, case-by-case documentation is the only game in town,鈥� says of Royal Holloway College in London. He says that neither of the other two main methods of rough estimating 鈥� through door-to-door sampled interviews or by assessing overlap between independently compiled lists of casualties 鈥� are currently possible in Syria. 鈥淚f the Syrian regime prevails, no one can go and document this stuff,鈥� Spagat says.
After the conflict in Kosovo between 1998 and 2000, the 鈥溾�� was assembled, which Spagat says is the most accurate record of the victims of the conflict. 鈥淚nsan鈥檚 work will necessarily be less accurate and complete than the Kosovo memory book although potentially they could rise to the same level.鈥� he says.
