Britain’s government and military have for years stood by the claim that in terms of protecting ordinary Iraqis, the UK fought a “perfect” war against Islamic State militants in Iraq. For all the bombs dropped on cities such as Mosul, the official position is that only militants were killed. Not a single civilian death is acknowledged.
For the Guardian’s foreign correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison, the claim of a perfect war seemed self-evidently unlikely. She tells Michael Safi how working with the non-profit organisation Airwars, she was able to piece together a very different picture of the war. One where numerous casualties could be inferred from data that showed civilian casualties resulting from bombs that only British missiles could have caused.
She visits the Iraqi city of Mosul to hear from the families who have lost everything as a result of the bombing campaign British forces were part of – and are now only asking that their losses are acknowledged.
Photograph: Ismael Adnan/The Guardian
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