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Ear to the Ground

As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Grows

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Posted on May 18, 2006
Iraqi family
From Christoph Bangert / Polaris, for The New York Times

?The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq,? said Assad Bahjat, shown here with his wife, Eileen, and their two children, Elvis, left, and Andres.

In the last 10 months, as the violence has continued unabated, Iraq has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7% of the population and a quarter of the country’s middle class.


N.Y. Times:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 18 ? 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.

But when six armed men stormed into their sons’ primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

“The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq,” said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.

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.

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By felicity smith, May 19, 2006 at 11:07 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

This news is very ominous and very typical in a country where anarchy has replaced the rule of law. Middle-class flight always leaves a country ripe for take-over by the likes of a Saddam Hussein who promises law and order.  How ironic that Mr. Bush will have created a regime in the Middle East like the one he set out to destroy - and killed thousands of innocent people in the process. It is a sin for which there is no redemption.

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By C Quil, May 19, 2006 at 9:56 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

With the increased violence and lack of basic necessities like water and electricity, Iraq is losing the very people it desperately needs right now.

Doctors become targets for treating the wounded of the “wrong side” - whoever that may be at the time. Nurses and midwives are no longer safe in any part of the country. Engineers no longer have anything to do as all rebuilding contracts are handed over to Halliburton and the like.

Lawyers, judges, journalists and their families stand the chance of being assassinated at any moment.

Why would anyone stay if they had the chance to leave?

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