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The data, which Saddam Hussein sealed as a state secret, reveal previously
unseen population scars left by years of war and repression.
In 1987 census takers recorded about 106 men for every 100 women; a decade
later they found just under 99 men for every 100 women, a very big change in
demographic terms.
Where did the men go? Or, looking at it another way, where did the women
come from?
Demographers at the United Nations and the United States Census Bureau say
that perhaps the men were casualties of war or Mr. Hussein's repression, or
became exiles. Or perhaps the men simply made themselves scarce at census time.
It is also possible that the census counters in 1997, for the first time,
were careful to count women, whom they may have undercounted in earlier years.
Joseph Chamie, the director of the United Nations population division, said
he found that last explanation unlikely.
If the figures are accurate, he said, then the drop in the male-female ratio
could well reflect a striking loss of men, who were either victims of violence
or fled abroad to avoid it. But he cautioned against assuming such accuracy,
saying, "All data are guilty until proven innocent."
The lowest reported male-female ratios were clustered in the southern third
of the country, where Mr. Hussein persecuted the Shiite Muslims after their
uprising in 1991.
In the district around Basra, the southernmost portion of the country,
census takers found 97 men for every 100 women. In that province's rural areas,
the home of the predominantly Shiite marsh Arabs who were a particular target
of Mr. Hussein's wrath, there were 95 men for every 100 women, down from 103 in
1987.
Baghdad, with 5.4 million people, was the single most populous geographic
area in 1997; the southwestern province of Muthanna was the least populous,
with 437,000. In Baghdad the sex ratio still tilted toward men, with 101 men
for every 100 women. Muthanna's ratio of 94 men for every 100 women was among
the lowest.
Mr. Chamie said he suspected it might be that many of the missing men were
not lost but in hiding, fearing they would be drafted or, if they were Kurds or
Shiites, subjected to the indiscriminate vengeance of Mr. Hussein's government.
"There was the Iranian war," Mr. Chamie said, referring to the
grinding conflict between Iraq and Iran that lasted from 1980 to 1988.
"Then there was the gulf war."
"Then, after the gulf war in '91, there were conflicts in the south and
in the north," he said, referring to the government crackdowns in the
rebellious Shiite and Kurdish regions.
He added: "Now, several years later, someone comes knocking on the door
and asks, `How many males are here?' You're not going to get a lot of
cooperation. There would be a lack of trust, especially if they thought they
were going to be sent to the front in another gulf war."
Over all, the 1997 population count showed 22 million people in Iraq,
including about 2.9 million in the three Kurdish provinces, where the
population was estimated, not counted. International estimates put Iraq's total
population at more than 25 million today.
The data now under scrutiny in Washington, New York, London and Amman are
obviously dated. Iraq's census results were treated as state secrets by the
Hussein government, some demographers here and at the United States Census
Bureau in Suitland, Md., said this week.
But the new data provide the first outlines of a demographic portrait hidden
from view until now.
The figures could be the basis of an electoral apportionment and so a
building block of the democratic election promised to Iraqis by the provisional
authority, said Col. Allen Irish, a United States Army officer working with the
provisional authority in Baghdad.
"At this point we're still planning," he said in a telephone
interview. "Ultimately it's going to be a decision made by the governing
authority, whether that's the Governing Council or the coalition provisional
authority or some interim group."
One of the problems with the 1997 data, he added, is that they include no
information from the three northern provinces in the Kurdish region.
In the early days after the war, it looked as if there would be no data from
anywhere.
The Ministry of Planning was bombed and then looted, Colonel Irish said.
"The individual census records are pretty much destroyed, but the
aggregated data survived. I remember being in the building and seeing what
looked like census records strewn all over the floor and burned and pretty much
trashed."
When no Iraqi census officials could be found, he said, "We ended up
putting an announcement on the radio: show up at this spot at such and such a
time." The officials then appeared and later brought the data they had
preserved.
But more analysis is needed. Tom McDevitt, an international demographer with
the United States Census Bureau said, "If you are working under the
hypothesis that where the men went was they got killed either in the Iran-Iraq
war or the gulf war or were just eliminated somewhere along the line, then you
would expect to find the sex ratios in certain age groups" deviating from
those of the overall population.
The new data on child mortality, of great interest to those who argued that
United Nations sanctions were leaving Iraqi children underfed and without
access to basic pharmaceuticals, are still being analyzed.
But, Mr. McDevitt said, "on a preliminary basis it looks like the child
mortality may not have been quite as high during the mid- to late 1990's as has
been thought on the limited information we've had from other sources."
The changes in Iraq, however striking, still fall far short of the
cataclysmic changes in the post-World War II populations of Germany, France and
Russia.
Germany had 85 men per 100 women in 1950; it had 96 in 2000. In 1950 Russia
had 75 men per 100 women; it now has 88. In France the 1950 figure was 93; it
is now 95.