Iraq: Middle Class Melt Down genre: Just Jihad & Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation

Since failing to find WMD's in Iraq, the Bush administration has made the exporting of democracy to oppressed countries a key talking point when explaining the invasion. We routinely hear about the 25 million people who were freed and given the ability to elect a government of their choosing. There is merit in these ideals but the process involved in bringing such lofty goals to fruition is proving to be extremely complicated. An article in the New York Times points out a troubling issue that has received little attention. Read the full article here.

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.

The school system offers another clue: Since 2004, the Ministry of Education has issued 39,554 letters permitting parents to take their children's academic records abroad. The number of such letters issued in 2005 was double that in 2004, according to the director of the ministry's examination department. Iraqi officials and international organizations put the number of Iraqis in Jordan at close to a million.

Sometimes the simplest statements contain the most truth. The sign mentioned in the following paragraph is a full scale indictment of the progress being made as well as a blistering commentary on the intransigent nature of the conflict. When an average resident of Iraq has a better grip on the basic realities than those attempting to bring democracy and those intent on honoring sectarian allegiances, it is hard to imagine that resolution is imminent. It also points out the well established practicality of the middle class...those people who work hard each day and have little time to engage in ideological rhetoric. If Iraq's middle class is lost, I see little hope for progress.

Residents have been known to protest, at least on paper. In an act of helpless fury this winter, a large banner hung across a house in Dawra that read, "Do God and Islam agree that I should leave my house to live in a camp with my five children and wife?"

In Dawra, one of the worst areas in all of Baghdad, public life has ground to a halt. Four teachers have been killed in the past 10 days in Mr. Bahjat's area alone, and the Ahmed al-Waily primary school where the Bahjat boys, ages 12 and 8, studied, may not be able to hold final exams because of the killings. And three teachers from the Batoul secondary school were shot in late April.

Trash is collected only sporadically. On April 3, insurgents shot seven garbage collectors to death near their truck, and their bodies lay in the area for eight hours before the authorities could collect them, said Naeem al-Kaabi, deputy mayor for municipal affairs in Baghdad. In all, 312 trash workers have been killed in Baghdad in the past six months.

But it was the increasingly sectarian nature of the violence, deeply painful to Iraqis who are proud of their intermarried heritage, that tipped the scales as Falah Kubba and his wife, Samira, considered leaving with Fehed, Roula, 13, and Heya, 12.

"The past few months convinced us," said Mr. Kubba, a businessman whose wife is Sunni. "Now they are killing by ID's. The killing around Americans was something different, but the ID's, you can't move around on the streets."

Daniel DiRito | May 19, 2006 | 8:38 AM
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Post a comment


Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry


© Copyright 2024

Casting

Read about the Director and Cast

Send us an email

Select a theme:

Critic's Corner

 Subscribe in a reader

Encores

http://DeeperLeft.com

Powered by:
Movable Type 4.2-en

© Copyright 2024

site by Eagle River Partners & Carlson Design