News

On this page we link to news stories that are relevant for the sampling issues discussed on these pages. While these stories provide only anecdotal evidence, they still help us to gain a realistic picture of life in Iraq.

Baghdad's Haifa street has long been a flash point in the conflict. There has been a new surge of activity on Haifa street which features centrally in the new US military push in Baghdad. The BBC article about the Haifa street area, "Central Baghdad's Mean Streets", is worth reading. It highlights the degree to which conflict violence varies by location within an overall urban conflict environment. Saddam Hussein erected many high-rise apartments on Haifa street and packed them with his supporters. Anti-coalition forces often hide in or behind these tall structures and fire on coalition forces. Coalition forces navigate through Haifa street and the labyrinth of streets behind it at great peril.

The spatial pattern of violence in on and around Haifa street has to reflect the characteristics of the terrain. As we have demonstrated on the urban homicide page, two streets can be quite close together and yet face very different violence risks. Any sampling scheme that relies on homogeneity in the danger levels of streets with varying underlying characteristics will be exposed to bias.

This heart-rending New York Times article, Bombs Lasting Toll: Lost Laughter and Broken Lives, tells of 34 children who were killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad. This is the only story we know of that provides a street map (enlargeable) pinpointing the precise location of a conflict event (registration on the New York Times web site is required). We emphasize the following points.

1. The explosion was on a residential cross street to a main street.

2. The bomber appears to have been drawn to a convoy of American Humvees parked at the end of the street.

3. American soldiers do not travel very far from such streets.

4. The children killed were all very local, just outside their homes.

5. Note, however, that it is still unusual in the Iraq conflict to have so many child victims. But, alarmingly, even this may be changing for the worse: Pupils Killed as Iraq Schools Hit.

BBC photo essay on the Baghdad suburb of Shoula

This is well worth reading and viewing. We highlight some notable features. The nine pictures contain, by our count, twenty four adult males, zero females and zero children. The adult males are shown at a local shop, patrolling the neighborhood, guarding a local mosque, relaxing at a local cafe and having a street barbecue.It is easy to understand why adult males are more exposed to violence than are women and children who seem to be tucked away, surely not in full safety but less exposed than the men are. There is also no suggestion that any of these suburbanites range over much territory beyond their local neighborhood. One resident is quoted as saying he only moves between his house and the local mosque; everywhere else is too dangerous. The men know that gathering in the local cafe is risky, e.g., from car bombs, but they want to relax so they congregate anyway.

To summarize:

1. The main risks faced by the residents of Shoula seem to be the local risks. Men only circulate to a limited extend and women and children seem to hardly circulate at all..

2. Even though the men stay near to home they face elevated risks since they patrol, guard, relax on the street and gather together in cafes. Thus, even though risks are close to home adult males are still more in the line of fire than are women and children.

Guardian article: "Tea and kidnapping - behind the lines of a civil war

Half of the article is about life on a cross street to a main street in a Sunni neighborhood of Baghdad that is a focal point of violence:

"There is little unusual about the double-lane street with its small walled-villas and trees. It stretches almost a mile through this middle-class neighborhood in the north of Baghdad, connecting a highway that separates a Shia area from Husham's Sunni one to a riverbank road."

This street has been attacked repeatedly in recent weeks by Shiite "death squads" and "commandos" with " regular street skirmishes" and "exchanges of mortar fire." Husham, a young unemployed male, says that his vigilante group has "50 men on this street" and that he has not left the neighborhood for four months: "If I cross that highway, I am dead." Some people do cross the highway such as Husham's two cousins who were killed on a bus into central Baghdad. Nevertheless, he stays near home along with, presumably, the local women and children who, again, seem invisible in this article.