A quick perusal of the statistics suggests that December is going about the same as October (so far, same number of deaths (67) as in October, but fewer hostile deaths (52 in December v. 58 in Otober).
The violence seems to have died down a little other than the December 21 attack, but that may be mainly because the number of soldiers killed was overestimated (19, when in reality it was 15), so the 4 deaths on December 23 don't seem to count.
This doesn't necessarily mean much. Daily violence tends to fluctuate. This doesn't necessarily signal a long-term trend. There have been plenty of breaks in the violence (and plenty of spikes, for that matter), but they have neither indicated a sudden outbreak of prolonged massive violence (during November 2003, I initially thought that the violence would ramp up to 100 fatalities a month permanently) nor the breaking of the insurgency.
On the other hand, the overall trend in deaths has been upwards.
Stay tuned.
That is all.
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