Defining "Progress" in Iraq [View All]

Opinion

Defining "Progress" in Iraq

Katrina vanden Heuvel Fri May 18, 1:00 PM ET

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*The Iraqi Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT) with the support of UNDP released statistics this week showing a key indicator of progress trending in the wrong direction. Insurgent death squads dumped 234 bodies around Baghdad in the first 11 days of May, a 70.8 percent increase from the 137 bodies dumped around the capital during the first 11 days of April.

*Some 88 violent deaths were reported across Iraq on Wednesday, including 32 people who died the night before when a car bomb exploded near a market in the Shiite area of Abu Saydah northeast of Baghdad.

*A leading British think-tank, Chatham House, reported on Thursday that the surge has failed to reduce overall violence across the country, as insurgent groups have shifted their acts outside Baghdad.

*UN agencies working in Iraq warned that a chronic shortage of drinking water may increase diarrhea rates, particularly among children. Diarrhea is already the second highest single cause of child illness and death in Iraq.

*The survey by the Central Statistical Bureau reports that 43 percent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty" and another 11 percent of them live in "abject poverty."

*The Iraqi parliament has proposed a bill, signed by a majority of members, demanding American troop withdrawal and an end to the occupation. (For those in our Congress who have placed so much stock in the idea of democracy, isn't it time to drop the neo-colonial paternalism and listen to your Iraqi counterparts. As Senator John Kerry put it today, "There are some people who would send our troops to fight and die for democracy and then not honor it.")

But the reality is that for many legislators who refuse to support a timeline for withdrawal, especially Republicans who continue to support their bunkered-in President, the question of how to measure progress in Iraq will not be answered by how many Iraqi children are dying or refugees fleeing. The answer will be the polls in their districts.

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