Fourth Installment of "Where Things Stand" in Iraq

Dec. 12, 2005 -- -- This is the fourth installment of "Where Things Stand" -- ABC News' effort to take stock of how life has changed for Iraqis since March 2003 when U.S. troops invaded Iraq. We believe this to be the first reliable national poll conducted in Iraq since June 2004.

As in past years we are trying to help our audience -- and ourselves -- to understand whether Iraq and its people are in better or worse shape than they were prior to the U.S.-led invasion. At a time when "progress in Iraq" has become such an integral part of the political debate in this country (a not always well-informed debate), taking such measurements seems particularly important. Are Iraqis better off now than before the war? Have their lives improved in tangible, quantifiable ways? Are they optimistic about the future? Such questions are what this project is all about.

This is the fourth installment of "Where Things Stand." This time we faced a number of challenges and almost abandoned the project altogether -- because so much of Iraq continues to be a no-go area for our reporters. In the end, we managed to canvass the country in different ways.

ABC News, in partnership with Time magazine, the BBC, Japanese news service NHK and Germany's Der Spiegel newspaper, sponsored a rare and exclusive nationwide poll in Iraq. Conducted by Oxford Research International, the poll of 1,711 Iraqis represents a true nationwide survey of Iraqi opinion. We asked Iraqis about electricity supplies and local security, about the United States, the Iraqi constitution, the upcoming elections, and much more. Well-trained Iraqi fieldworkers interviewed people in 135 different locations around the country. Using the ABC News poll conducted in 2004, we were able to track how opinions have changed over the last 18 months.

We also partnered with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, an organization that trains local journalists in conflict zones (more about the IWPR below). We interviewed and vetted 12 of their reporters, provided them with digital video cameras, and dispatched them -- in six teams of two -- to points across the north, south and central parts of the country. These teams, together with ABC News correspondents and other Iraqi stringers, visited nearly all of Iraq's main regions and cities, collecting stories and videotape wherever they went. They traveled more than 3,000 miles, through a dozen provinces, and interviewed more than 1,000 Iraqis throughout the country.

The poll and the IWPR teams are complemented by a research effort conducted here in New York -- combining interviews with experts, conversations with groups working on reconstruction in Iraq, and assessments of other surveys and research done in Iraq over the past year. On the eve of Iraq's Dec. 15 election for 230 seats in the National Assembly, this reporting offers a broad sense of how Iraqis around the country feel about their lives, about the future and about the vote itself.

This latest report is filled with surprises -- and some fascinating paradoxes.

Iraqis are far more optimistic about their individual circumstances than when we last asked these questions; seven in 10 now say their lives are going well, and two in three believe things will improve in the coming year.

Such optimism covers nearly the entire range of living conditions -- significant improvements are seen in medical care, water quality and even in terms of security. This last finding was perhaps most striking: six in 10 Iraqis now say they feel safe in their neighborhoods. The only real exceptions to this optimism in our quality-of-life metrics involve electricity and the availability of jobs.

The bad news: First, while Iraqis are optimistic about their own future, they are actually pessimistic when it comes to the future of their nation.

Only 44 percent of Iraqis say they believe things are going well in their country; 52 percent said they felt the country was "doing badly." Support for the U.S.-led invasion has dropped: In February 2004, 39 percent of Iraqis told us they believed the invasion was wrong, but today that number stands at 50 percent. Even among optimistic Iraqis it appears the U.S. gets little credit for any improvements in their lives. Fewer than one in five Iraqis believes that U.S. reconstruction efforts have been "effective." Most Iraqis now say they "disapprove strongly" of how the U.S. has operated in Iraq. Not surprisingly, the percentage of Iraqis today who oppose the U.S. presence has spiked -- from 51 percent to 65 percent.

The second caveat involves a sectarian divide that has become a chasm.

Virtually all signs of optimism vanish when one is interviewing Iraq's Sunni Muslims. There's more on this in the Local Government section of the report; suffice for now to cite a pair of poll results. While 54 percent of Shia Muslims believe the country is in better shape than it was before the war, only 7 percent of Sunnis believe the same. Optimism about security -- 80 percent of Shias and 94 percent of Kurds say they feel safer -- is absent among Sunnis. Only 11 percent of Iraq's Sunni Muslims say they feel safer than they did under Saddam.

Overall, there is a Rorshach-test quality to all this. One could easily sift through the research and field reporting and conclude that Iraq is in danger of collapse; one could almost as easily glean from the same data that there is great cause for optimism.

At the heart of the "collapse" scenario is a litany of dashed hopes. Many Iraqis cannot understand why -- two-and-a-half years after the Americans arrived -- electricity and sewage are not more reliable, why more reconstruction projects have not reached their neighborhoods, why corruption remains so prevalent and why their local (and in many cases democratically elected) officials have not changed things for the better.

Yet there are ample reasons for optimism: The burgeoning commerce that now touches nearly all corners of the country; an economy growing, thanks in part to the high price of oil; per-capita income up 60 percent, to $263 per month; improvements in health care and education; and the widely held belief that next week's elections will make a positive difference. Seventy-six percent of Iraqis told us they were "confident" the elections would produce a "stable government" -- and despite the sectarian divisions, few Iraqis express concern about civil war.

As far as security goes, there is one more paradox. On the one hand, the proliferation of militia in some cities and towns has unnerved people, and it may prove destabilizing in the long term. On the other, in some places we found people crediting these same guards and gunmen with having improved the safety of their communities.

Above all, we were struck -- as we have been in previous installments of this series -- by the stoicism and faith of the Iraqi people. Time and again, Iraqis listed their troubles and itemized their complaints only to finish with bold expressions of hope. We met a young man in a Baghdad park named Murtada Mohammed. After telling us how poor services were in his neighborhood, how hard it was to afford goods and then how often he feels fear in his daily life, he finished this way: "Tomorrow will be better -- I know it."

Our poll suggests that there are a great many Iraqis -- across the country, and from many walks of life -- who are like Murtada Mohammed.

The Institute for War and Peace Reporting is an international media development charity, based in London and Washington. It aims to strengthen local journalism in crisis-ridden countries by training reporters to be independent journalists. It often collaborates with international and regional media to transfer skills and experience.

The 12 reporters who worked with ABC News volunteered for the project. ABC News paid them a salary and expenses during the reporting period.

The assessments below were derived from a combination of data -- the poll, the IWPR and other reporting, ABC News' own reporting, and the research gathered over the last several months.

Questions were framed with pre-invasion Iraq (i.e., before March 2003) as the baseline. The region described as "central" corresponds roughly to Baghdad and the so-called "Sunni Triangle."

1) SECURITY

North: Better

Central: Worse

South: Better

Security remains far and away the primary concern for Iraqis; 57 percent say it's what matters most. (The next closest category -- "getting the U.S. out of Iraq" -- draws just 10 percent.) Anecdotally, we continue to hear nightmarish stories about the lack of security -- and important ways in which this problem permeated so many walks of life. And yet the overall numbers -- in the north and south in particular -- suggest that the situation has actually improved.

Sixty-one percent of Iraqis now say they feel security is better than it was before the war; that represents a 12 percent increase since we last asked, and a fairly startling counterweight to the prevalent view in the press. Having said that, these numbers are driven almost entirely by Shiites and Kurds who were treated so brutally under Saddam Hussein.