It's Bad When Iraqis Leave...Not So Great When They Want to Stay, Either
Posted by: Clay Waters
5/19/2006 10:15:29 AM
Sabrina Tavernise reports "As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins" from Baghdad.
Tavernise focuses on one unfortunate family and then draws back for a wider scope: "Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop....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."
Of course, during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, travel documents were regulated by the security regime and very difficult to obtain.
Strangely enough, this isn’t the first time Tavernise has written about passports and people leaving Iraq. Except three years ago, fewer people were leaving Iraq than during Saddam’s rule, and Tavernise also managed to spin that into a bad news story.
Back in June 2003, TimesWatch documented a Tavernise story that was quite creative in finding a downside to the fall of Saddam: "Thriving Kurdish Trade in Fake Passports Slumps as Fewer Choose to Flee the Region."
She wrote of a businessman in the false passport trade: "Sarhang's business has dropped off precipitously. There are no clients for his wares. He spends his days in the empty shop playing a Sony PlayStation. Kurds, it seems, are now choosing to stay at home."
A caption for a picture accompanying the story read: "In the central market of Sulaimaniya, Iraq, in the Kurdish-controlled zone of Iraq, shops that used to sell false passports to people trying to flee to other countries have fallen on hard times."
Apparently for Tavernise, it’s bad when Iraqis want to leave, and it’s not so great when they want to stay, either.
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