Cooking the books on returning Iraqi refugees

November 26, 2007

Among the many dejecting developments in Iraq in recent years are the millions of Iraqis who were forced to flee their homes and their country. As part of the broader effort to bolster the performance of the Maliki government, officials are touting impressive numbers allegedly showing these Iraqis finally coming home.

On Nov. 7, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi spokesman for the American-Iraqi effort to pacify Baghdad, said that 46,030 people returned to Iraq from abroad in October because of the “improving security situation.”

Last week, Iraq’s minister of displacement and migration, Abdul-Samad Rahman Sultan, announced that 1,600 Iraqis were returning every day, which works out to a similar, or perhaps slightly larger, monthly total.

Great news, right? More evidence of “progress”? It would be, if the numbers were accurate. Regrettably, like many of the encouraging statistics in this war, the data here has been exaggerated to show a misleading result.

As the NYT’s Damien Cave explained, “[R]eturnees have essentially become a currency of progress,” the value of this currency has been manipulated.

How bad is it? New York Times employees who travel from Iraq and then come back to the country are counted as Iraqis returning home thanks to improved security.

[O]fficials from the ministry acknowledged that the count covered all Iraqis crossing the border, not just returnees. “We didn’t ask them if they were displaced and neither did the Interior Ministry,” said Sattar Nowruz, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration.

As a result, the tally included Iraqi employees of The New York Times who had visited relatives in Syria but were not among the roughly two million Iraqis who have fled the country.

The figures apparently also included three people suspected of being insurgents arrested Saturday near Baquba in Diyala Province. The police described them as local residents who had fled temporarily to Syria, then returned.

Some Iraqi lawmakers said that overly broad figures were being used intentionally.

“They are using this number because they want to show that Maliki is succeeding,” said Salim Abdullah, a lawmaker and member of the largest Sunni bloc, known as the Accordance Front, referring to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “But this does not make the number correct. I think dozens of Iraqis return home daily, but not 1,600.”

Playing fast and loose with Iraq data. Who would have guessed.

Do military personnel and Blackwater employees count too?

  • There are about 850 Iraqis who helped America’s invasion and occupation who can’t go home because they would be killed. The state department won’t let them come over here either.

    What about those who come back, leave again, then come back again? Are they counted twice?

  • In my estimation, there is little doubt that George Bush is going to be rewarded – rather than punished – for invading a sovereign nation on trumped-up reasons and smashing it to bits. He and his government only have to fool the same people who gave him two terms as president. Honestly; how hard is that going to be?

    It doesn’t matter what you and I think; the fact remains that the success spin is gaining traction among the undecided, and people are beginning to believe that Iraq is coming around at last, because they want to believe it.

    We have reached the point in foreign policy where it no longer matters whether you were right when you started, or even if your actions were criminal – it only matters how it turns out. Eventually, and probably in not even too long a time, the memory of the grotesque crime that was the invasion of Iraq will fade from world consciousness, and they’ll begin to see Americans once again as pretty much all right. It might even come to symbolize American determination, who knows?

    The downside, which likely won’t directly affect the people most responsible, is that it will usher in an era in which might makes right, and the lesson of making up a believable story to back an invasion of territories who have something you want will not be lost on the militarily powerful. If I’m not mistaken, that was the very principle that generations of Americans, as well as others, died willingly to eradicate.

    Nice going, Mr. President.

  • Well, that’s pretty crass manipulation, but how much does it add up to? Even if it’s only 100 of the 1,600 figure, it’s really not a big deal.

    It shouldn’t be done all the same, but (as we see from reading the examples on this site every day) there are worse examples of playing fast and loose with the facts- like Rove’s trying to pin the Iraq war on congress, by hinting on the Charlie Rose show that congress, not Bush, wanted the Iraq war, while Bush wanted to wait-and-see what more inspections and diplomacy would yield. Your exposing this with Bush’s own quotes the other day is something everyone should see, if they want a clear, indisputable example of how the Republicans lie and try to manipulate us.

  • I write a comment like this (#4) not because I care when the Republicans are dishonest and it gets blown out of proportion a little bit in peoples’ reaction to it, but because I think our integrity matters and it matters in the eyes of the public, and we don’t want to let the Republicans to get a chance to say that we’re being dishonest by trying to make a drop in the bucket (ex.: unpaid Republican intern steals a 5-cent pen from a publicly-funded office 4 or 5 times a year) look like it’s a real crime.

    So I write something like this once in a while just to remind us to keep particular things in perspective before we go trumpeting them all over the place and ultimately walking into the Republicans being able to make us look like we’re dishonest. Again, I know as well as anybody that the Republicans are much more dishonest than us, and much more often, but they’re the ones who have got the media’s ear right now, so we have to look at what we do all the time and think about it before we broadcast it.

  • I have to second Mark #3’s observations. I see momentum building on several fronts for claims of “success” or “victory” in Iraq, which, if they become publicly accepted, will vindicate Bush and solidify support for neocon positions advocating American hegemony, pre-emptive wars and military solutions generally.

    And the Democrats have boxed themselves in. They’ve played the war-is-a-disaster-because-it’s-going-badly card almost exclusively. So now what can they say if it looks as if it’s turning around, and then it really does turn around? Whoops! No cards left in their hands. Remember when Pelosi discarded the impeachment card as soon as she was dealt her hand by the voters?

    The war is a disaster for many, many reasons, but the Democrats can’t play any of those cards, the best cards, now, because it’s too late, nobody will listen, and they’ll just be accused of being sore losers and whiners and traitors.

    The war was a crime, an international crime to begin with. Bush and Cheney are war criminals. Nobody in the establishment had the guts to accuse them. And they lied to the American people to get us into the war, committed fraud, and Pelosi didn’t have the guts to begin impeachment proceedings. And then there’s all the damage and slaughter the war has caused and the trillion or so stolen from the middle class to fight it and the unbelievable war profiteering and resultant corruption and the dramatic increase in global terrorism, and all the domestic priorities ignored and on and on and on. And all for no reason at all.

    But the Democrats could only complain about how badly it was going, and that is coming back to haunt them and emasculate them, I’m afraid.

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  • This seems to be just another part of the Maliki regime’s efforts to promote an Iraqi model of Bu$hite neoconservativism. I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the term “maliki”—if translated from Bu$hylvanian to English, would read “mini-me.”

  • I’ve a sneaking suspicion that the term “maliki”—if translated from Bu$hylvanian to English, would read “mini-me.” — Steve, @7

    With only the smallest pronunciation adjustment,”mali ki” would translate, from Polish, as “small stick” 🙂

  • The question to be asked by any responsible journalist is: How many of these (esp. Sunni) refugees are returning from Syria simply because they ran out of savings, couldn’t get jobs or permission to stay in Damascus and have no choice but to return, even if they know they’re risking their lives?

    Now–where can we find a responsible journalist?

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