Libya aside, five countries have suffered heavily in the push for democracy

SINCE the Arab uprisings began in Tunisia last December, details of each one—plus the related government crackdown—have been widely reported by the world's media and the protesters themselves. But it is tricky to make accurate calculations of the number of lives lost. The death toll in Libya has proved particularly difficult to determine. Groups such as Amnesty International that gather casualty figures have been unable to operate in some parts of the country and both the rebel forces and Colonel Muammar Qaddafi's government tend to inflate the numbers killed to bolster their causes. Beyond Libya, though, humanitarian groups are still able to record reported deaths. Our table lists the number of lives lost in the five countries that have seen the worst violence since the protests began. Yet since official figures only reflect recorded deaths, the true numbers are likely to be a lot higher.

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