 |
Iraq plans to hold first full census since ’87 in October
The census was postponed for a year over worries it was being politicised. Ethnic groups in contested areas like the northern city of Kirkuk, home to Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and a valuable part of Iraq’s oil fields, opposed it because it might reveal demographics that would undermine political ambitions.
The count could provide answers or create more squabbles in a diverse nation riven by sectarian violence following the US invasion in 2003 and now trying to bolster fragile security gains while deciding how to share out its vast oil wealth. Iraq has the world’s 3rd largest crude oil reserves.
The autonomous Kurdish region in the north claims Kirkuk as its own. The census will determine whether Kurds are the biggest ethnic bloc in the city, which could bolster that claim. It will also find out how many people live in Iraqi Kurdistan, which will define its slice of central government revenues, currently 17 percent. If the census finds Kurds are a greater percentage of the total population, the constitution says the region gets more money, and retroactive payments.
Numbers, not politics
What it won’t do, Alak said, is attempt to determine which of the hotly disputed areas belong to whom. “It is not our business to decide their destiny,” Alak, the head of the Central Organzsation for Statistics and Information Technology (COSIT), said in an interview this week. “We count the people in the province where they live. Deciding the destiny of the areas is the business of the politicians.”
The census will be the first to include the Kurdish region since 1987. A 1997 census counted 19 million Iraqis and officials estimated there were another 3 million in the Kurdish north. The current national population is believed to be “not less than 30 million,” Alak said.
“We started three months ago the listing and mapping process that is the backbone of our work,” he said. “We have initial numbers of houses, buildings, families, and individuals.” The census will show the religious makeup of a predominantly Muslim nation but will deliberately not ask a resident’s sect. Sectarian fighting has killed tens of thousands since Saddam Hussein’s minority Sunni-led regime was deposed and majority Shiites gained political power.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| AMANDA PAUL |  |
||
| Ukraine: a lost country | |||
| MÜMTAZER TÜRKÖNE |  |
||
| The 52nd anniversary of May 27 | |||
| ABDULLAH BOZKURT |  |
||
| Turkey and Mexico: Distant yet so close | |||
| BERİL DEDEOĞLU |  |
||
| Yemen and beyond | |||
| ARZU KAYA URANLI |  |
||
| On Memorial Day a few words to make your day memorable | |||
| ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ |  |
||
| Google kidnaps Gül! | |||
| CUMALİ ÖNAL |  |
||
| Critical months for Egypt | |||
| DOĞU ERGİL |  |
||
| Qualities of power | |||
| İHSAN YILMAZ |  |
||
| The Egyptian elections, Islam and Islamists | |||
| EMRE USLU |  |
||
| Operational errors | |||
| MARKAR ESAYAN |  |
||
| There is need for a new initiative | |||
| JOOST LAGENDIJK |  |
||
| Europe can’t have it all. Or can it? | |||
| HASAN KANBOLAT |  |
||
| Are Russian tourists being discouraged from visiting Turkey? | |||
| MELİH ARAT |  |
||
| Handmade | |||
| KLAUS JURGENS |  |
||
| Back to the ’80s | |||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
