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Dignity
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When dignity, not labels, defines a people

Iraq’s first census in decades did not reduce citizens to stereotypes of sect or ethnicity. All the better to avoid wars driven by identity politics.

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Reuters
A census taker talks to people in Baghdad, Iraq, Nov. 20.
  • By the Monitor's Editorial Board

In coming days, Iraq will do something extraordinary in a Middle East where identities are often anchored by tribe, religion, or ethnicity. It will release detailed results of its first national census in decades – without any of those pigeonholing categories.

In other words, data collated from a two-day, door-to-door survey conducted last November will not break down people by labels such as Shiite or Sunni, Kurd or Arab. Aimed at simply helping officials divvy up elected seats and spread resource wealth equally to everyone, the census will not reduce individuals to demographic stereotypes.

“Iraqis should be citizens first and foremost and be treated as such by government strategy,” Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the Crisis Group think tank, told Deutsche Welle.

Iraq has learned this lesson the hard way. For more than four decades, it suffered major conflicts and several civil wars driven in large part by identity differences. When the current constitution was approved in 2005, it included the words “equal” and “equality” eight times. In 2019, student-led protests against corruption took aim at a governing system that ensures the prime minister is always a Shiite Muslim, the parliamentary speaker a Sunni Muslim, and the president a Kurd. (That quota system is akin to one in Lebanon.)

Iraq is ready for a period of calm, inward-looking restoration. With the Mideast in high flux from Gaza to Syria to Iran – and with elections expected in Iraq this year – “There is a maturing among the Iraqi public and its leadership, that approaching international matters with the least negative blowback on Iraq is the best path forward,” wrote analyst Muhammad Al-Waeli in the website 1001 Iraqi Thoughts.

Young Iraqis may be the most eager to define themselves as Iraqis first. Preliminary data from the census showed 56% of the population of 45.4 million was born after the 2003 American-led invasion that ousted a dictatorship. This cohort took the brunt of the 2013-2017 civil war fueled by the Islamic State.

Civic ideals, not social stigmas, may now unite many Iraqis. A census based on equal dignity can reflect that.  

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