Starting Points

Jan 16, 2010

Migration Information Source - Haitian Immigrants in the United States

By Aaron Terrazas
Migration Policy Institute

January 2010

The United States is home to about 535,000 Haitian immigrants — the largest concentration in any single country of Haitians abroad. As the country descended into chaos following the collapse of the Duvalier dictatorship in the late 1980s, Haitians began arriving in the United States in large numbers. Many received humanitarian protection. Between 1980 and 2000, the Haitian-born population residing in the United States more than quadrupled from 92,000 to 419,000. The Haitian immigrant population in the United States has continued to grow since 2000, although at a slower rate. Recent natural disasters in Central America and the Caribbean have pushed large numbers of migrants to the United States and in the wake of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, emigration pressures from the devastated country are likely to grow.

The Haitian diaspora in the United States has also traditionally played an important role in assisting Haiti recover from natural disasters. More than half of all Haitian immigrants resided in just two states, Florida and New York, although they are also concentrated in New Jersey and Massachusetts (for more information on immigrants by state, please see the ACS/Census Data tool on the MPI Data Hub).

This spotlight focuses on Haitian immigrants in the United States, examining the population's size, geographic distribution, and socioeconomic characteristics using data from the US Census Bureau's 2008 American Community Survey (ACS) and 2000 Decennial Census, and the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) for 2008.

Click on the bullet points below for more information:

Size and Distribution

Demographic and Socioeconomic Overview

Legal and Unauthorized Haitian Immigrant Population

Size and Distribution

There were 535,000 foreign born from Haiti residing in the United States in 2008.
There were 534,969 foreign born from Haiti residing in the United States in 2008, making up 1.4 percent of all immigrants. The population has more than quintupled since 1980, when the decennial census counted 92,395 Haitian immigrants, and nearly 20-fold since 1970 when there were 28,026 Haitian-born in the United States.

Up until 1990, the foreign born from Haiti ranked behind most foreign-born groups in terms of size (see Table 1). For instance, in 1980, the number of Haitian born in the United States (92,395) was smaller than the foreign-born population from the Netherlands (103,136), Hungary (144,368), and Austria (145,607).

By 2008, the Haitian-born population was more than five times larger than the Dutch (85,635) and Hungarian (80,333) immigrant populations and ten times larger than the foreign-born population from Austria (52,707).

In 2008, the Haitian born were the fourth largest immigrant group from the Caribbean basin following the foreign born from Cuba (974,657), the Dominican Republic (771,910), and Jamaica (636,589) (see Table 1; see also the pie charts showing the top 10 countries of birth of immigrants residing in the United States over time here [INSERT LINK]).

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About one of every 20 Haitians resides in the United States.
The 535,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States represent about one-twentieth (5.5 percent) of the total population of Haiti (9.8 million in 2008).

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More than 70 percent of the Haitian born resided in Florida and New York.
Florida had the largest number of foreign-born residents from Haiti (247,991, or 46.4 percent of the total Haitian-born population) in 2008, followed by New York (128,750, or 24.1 percent).

The next two states with large Haitian-born populations accounted for an additional 14.7 percent of Haitians residing in the United States: New Jersey (40,773, or 7.6 percent) and Massachusetts (37,936, or 7.1 percent).

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Between 2000 and 2008, two states saw the size of their Haitian immigrant population grow by more than 10,000 people.
In two states the Haitian immigrant population grew by more than 10,000 people between 2000 and 2008: Florida, where it grew by 66,000 from 182,000 to 248,000) and Georgia where the population tripled from 5,000 to 15,000.

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More than three-quarters of Haitian immigrants resided in five metropolitan areas.
Miami-Fort Lauderdale-Pompano Beach, FL, was the metropolitan area with the largest number of Haitian born (183,108, or 34.2 percent of the total Haitian-born population), followed by New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA (159,444, or 29.8 percent), Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH (34,757, or 6.5 percent), Orlando-Kissimmee, FL (24,183, or 4.5 percent), and Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, GA (14,449, or 2.7 percent). These five metropolitan areas accounted for 77.8 percent of the 535,000 Haitian immigrants in the United States.

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Demographic and Socioeconomic Overview

Over one-quarter of all Haitian foreign born in the United States arrived in 2000 or later.
As of 2008, 27.7 percent of the 535,000 Haitian foreign born entered the country in 2000 or later, with 28.8 percent entering between 1990 and 1999, 26.5 percent between 1980 and 1989, 11.2 percent between 1970 and 1979, and the remaining 5.8 percent prior to 1970.

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Two-thirds of Haitian immigrants in 2008 were adults of working age.
Of the Haitian immigrants residing in the United States in 2008, 8.4 percent were minors (under age 18), 67.3 percent were adults of working age (between 18 and 54), and 24.3 percent were seniors (age 55 and older).

Of the total foreign-born population in the United States in 2008, 7.4 percent were minors, 69.0 percent were of working age, and 23.6 percent were seniors.

The median age of Haitian immigrants in the United States in 2008 was 43.1 compared to 40.8 among all foreign born and 38.2 among all immigrants from Latin America and the Caribbean.

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Haitian immigrant women outnumbered men in 2008.
Of all Haitian immigrants residing in the United States in 2008, 54.0 percent were women and 46.0 percent were men. Among all immigrants, 49.8 percent were women and 50.2 percent were men.

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Haitian immigrants were more likely than other immigrant groups to be naturalized US citizens.
Among the Haitian foreign born, 48.4 percent were naturalized US citizens, compared to 43.0 percent among the overall foreign-born population.

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About half of Haitian immigrants in 2008 were limited English proficient.
About 7.5 percent of Haitian immigrants age 5 and older reported speaking "English only" while 39.0 percent reported speaking English "very well." In contrast, 53.6 percent reported speaking English less than "very well," similar to the 52.1 percent reported among all foreign born age 5 and older.

(Note: The term limited English proficient refers to any person age 5 and older who reported speaking English "not at all," "not well," or "well" on their survey questionnaire. Individuals who reported speaking only English or speaking English "very well" are considered proficient in English).

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Nearly half of Haitian foreign-born adults had some college education.
In terms of academic achievement, Haitian immigrants were concentrated in the middle of the education continuum. In 2008, 28.5 percent of the 458,000 Haitian-born adults age 25 and older had some college education or an Associate's degree compared to 18.4 percent among the 31.9 million foreign-born adults. An additional 16.9 percent of Haitian immigrants had a bachelor's degree or higher compared to 27.1 percent among all foreign-born adults.

On the other end of the education continuum, 26.0 percent of Haitian-born adults had no high school diploma or the equivalent general education diploma (GED), substantially lower than the 32.5 percent among all foreign-born adults. About 28.6 percent had a high school diploma or GED compared to 21.9 percent among all foreign-born adults.

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Haitian immigrant women were more likely to participate in the civilian labor force than foreign-born women overall.
In 2008, Haitian-born women age 16 and older (71.7 percent) were more likely to participate in the civilian labor force than all foreign-born women (57.1 percent) overall. Haitian-born men were about equally as likely to be in the civilian labor force (80.7 percent) as foreign-born men overall (80.6 percent).

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Nearly half of employed Haitian-born men worked in services or in construction, extraction, and transportation.
Among the 168,000 Haitian-born male workers age 16 and older employed in the civilian labor force in 2008, 26.1 percent reported working in services and 22.3 percent reported working in construction, extraction, or transportation (see Table 2). By contrast, among the 13.6 million foreign-born male workers age 16 and older employed in the civilian labor force in 2008, 17.4 percent reported working in services and 25.9 percent reported working in construction, extraction, or transportation.

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Over one of every four employed Haitian-born women worked in healthcare support.
Among the 182,000 Haitian-born female workers age 16 and older employed in the civilian labor force in 2008, 27.2 percent reported working in healthcare support occupations and 22.7 percent reported working in service occupations (see Table 2). By contrast, among the 9.5 million foreign-born female workers age 16 and older employed in the civilian labor force in 2008, 5.4 percent reported working in healthcare support and 25.7 percent reported working in service occupations.

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Haitian immigrants were less likely to live in poverty than other immigrant groups.
The poverty rate among Haitian immigrant families was 12.9 percent in 2008, lower than the poverty rate among all foreign born families (14.9 percent). The difference was even larger among immigrant families headed by a female householder with no spouse present. Among Haitian immigrant households headed by a female with no husband present, the poverty rate was 20.8 percent in 2008, compared to 30.7 percent for all immigrants.

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Legal and Unauthorized Haitian Immigrant Population

There were about 230,000 Haitian lawful permanent residents (LPRs) in 2008.
There were about 230,000 Haitian-born lawful permanent residents (LPRs) in the United States in 2008, about 1.8 percent of the estimated total 12.6 million LPRs.

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Based on the 2000 Census, the federal government estimated that there were 76,000 unauthorized Haitian immigrants living in the United States.
The most recent published estimates from the Department of Homeland Security, based on analysis of the 2000 Census, suggest that the unauthorized immigrant population from Haiti grew from 67,000 in 1990 to 76,000 in 2000. Haitians accounted for 1.1 percent of all unauthorized immigrants in the United States in 2000, the 11th-largest unauthorized immigrant group in the country.

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Most Haitians who received LPR status in 2008 came as family-based immigrants.
In 2008, 26,007 LPRs were admitted from Haiti, 2.3 percent of the 1.1 million LPRs admitted. Of these, 37.2 percent (9,675) came as family-based immigrants and an additional 34.4 percent (8,958) arrived as the immediate relatives of US citizens. An additional 21.6 percent (5,620) arrived as refugees or asylum seekers.

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Over half of Haitian-born lawful permanent residents in 2008 were eligible to naturalize.
About 140,000 of the estimated 230,000 Haitian-born LPRs (60.9 percent) were eligible to naturalize as of January 2008.

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In 2008, the United States deported 1,098 Haitian nationals.
In 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) located and deported 1,098 Haitian nationals. In January 2010, DHS announced a temporary stay on deportations to Haiti in the wake of the massive earthquake that hit the country.

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For information about ACS methodology, sampling error, and nonsampling error, click here.

Sources

Monger, Randall and Nancy Rytina. 2009. U.S. Legal Permanent Residents : 2008. US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics. Available online.

Rytina, Nancy. 2009. Estimates of the Legal Permanent Resident Population in 2008. October 2009. US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics. Available online.

US Census Bureau. 2008 American Community Survey. Accessed from Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, et al., Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Population Center, 2004.

US Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics. 2008 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. Various tables. Available online.

World Bank. 2009. World Development Indicators. Washington, DC. Available online.

US Immigration and Naturalization Service, Office of Policy and Planning. Nd. Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: 1990 to 2000. Washington, DC. Available online

-- Click on title of this postings to see tables associated with article. - John --

Jan 14, 2010

Our Man In Yemen

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Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh is a loose cannon once dubbed Little Saddam—and a pivotal ally in our war on terror.

By Kevin Peraino and Michael Hirsh | NEWSWEEK

Published Jan 9, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Jan 18, 2010

Ali Abdullah Saleh is not an especially lovable ally. Once known as "Little Saddam"—whom he hero-worshiped back in the day—Saleh is the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East after Libya's Muammar Kaddafi. During interviews, the Yemeni president slouches in his chair like a bored schoolboy, anxiously knocking his knees together as a question is asked. If he thinks he has said something particularly witty, Saleh smirks and flashes a wink at his aides to make sure they have heard it. Otherwise Saleh, a self-styled field marshal, doesn't try very hard to please anyone, even visiting American officials, who control about $70 million in aid for Yemen's military. It's a budget that could soon be at least doubled, and he will continue to do as he pleases, whatever the U.S.'s advice happens to be. Saleh has a standard response when asked about cooperation with Washington. "We're not your employees!" he barks.

Fair enough. No Middle Eastern leader can afford to look like an American stooge, and a little theatrical insolence goes a long way in this part of the world. The last thing the Obama administration wants is another Pakistan or Afghanistan, where local resentment of America's tactics in fighting jihadists has seemed to create more jihadists. Still, Saleh is caught in a harsh spotlight now—one that Barack Obama plans to keep trained on him despite the risk that the Yemeni leader will lose credibility among his own people. U.S. officials have been surprised by what they've discovered about the resurgence of Al Qaeda in Yemen in the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt by a Nigerian student who says he was trained and equipped there. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as this offshoot is called, is linked directly to the "core" group in Pakistan and it is now "one of the most lethal" affiliates, White House counterterrorism coordinator John Brennan said at a news conference. "We know there have been plenty of communications between FATA [the tribal regions in Pakistan] and Yemen," said another senior administration official who was authorized to speak only anonymously.

As a result, the smart-alecky antics of Ali Abdullah Saleh have begun to seriously grate on Washington. Saleh's U.S. critics point out that while his government occasionally cracks down, it has been hopelessly ineffective at keeping Al Qaeda from infiltrating the country—and possibly even Yemen's own security services. And as Yemen's economic situation gets more desperate—thanks in part to the Saleh government's corruption—Al Qaeda's presence in the country is growing. What's worse, some of the men around Saleh occasionally seem to be encouraging the militants: a 2006 prison break that reinvigorated Al Qaeda's local operations was considered to have been an inside job, though no evidence linked it directly to Saleh. Hawks in Congress like Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman breathlessly repeat warnings about Yemen going the way of Iraq and Afghanistan, destined to become "tomorrow's war."

The problem Obama has is that if Saleh is an SOB, he's America's SOB. There just isn't anyone else Washington can rely on in Yemen, which is one reason why in September, Obama sent Saleh a letter pledging full U.S. support. A poor relation of Saudi Arabia that sits at the southern tip of the peninsula, Yemen is, as one British official puts it, "Afghanistan by the Sea." The nation is a topographical mix of desert and savage mountains, with a xenophobic tribal culture. Hopelessly fractious, divided by seven local dialects (Saleh, when he gets excited, will often abandon standard Arabic and lapse into his native Sanani), it is an urgent nation-building problem as much as a terrorist haven, experts say. Saleh is beset by an exploding population, crushing unemployment, an acute water shortage—Yemen's cities have water for only a couple of hours a day—and oil output expected to dry up in less than a decade. And he's running out of money: the president spends most of his dwindling reserves on fighting a grinding civil war in the north and a resurgence of separatist sentiment in the south.

Distracted and deficit-ridden itself, the United States may have neither the patience nor the resources to stop Yemen from sliding into failed statehood. Yet if Saleh fails, there is, one U.S. official says, "a real prospect that Yemen may become a Somalia on the Arabian Peninsula," a no man's land ruled by warlords. So the only policy choice is to give more aid to Saleh and hope that, much like Afghan President Hamid Karzai—who is sometimes dismissed as the "mayor of Kabul"—the Yemeni leader can gradually wrest control of more of his country than the capital city of Sana. Saleh himself compares his constant balancing and maneuvering among tribes and factions to "dancing in a circle of snakes."

Yemen is part of the fluid, ever-shifting "Jihadistan" that keeps opening up new fronts in troubled parts of the world, including neighboring countries like Somalia. As recently as 2006, Al Qaeda was thought to be all but eliminated from Yemen. But in a global game of whack-a-mole, every time U.S. forces crack down in one place, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, jihadists seem to pop up elsewhere. In the case of Yemen, the rebirth of Al Qaeda is also a result of successful operations in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

The terrorist cells these countries harbor are not quite the Al Qaeda of 9/11. While the leaders are sometimes the same, flitting from place to place, Al Qaeda has also mutated into a franchised brand name that is no longer centrally directed. These diffuse cells often use cyberspace to inspire and loosely direct a more individualist, do-it-yourself terrorism.

It was this looser model, apparently, that inspired both Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be bomber aboard Northwest Flight 253, and U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, this past fall. While investigations are continuing, it appears that both men had links to Yemen and were in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born cleric who foments jihad on the Internet and has long been hiding out in Yemen. Yemeni forces launched a series of raids just before Christmas targeting key Qaeda figures, including Awlaki. But Abdulelah Haider Shaya, a Yemeni journalist who is close to Al Qaeda, told NEWSWEEK that Awlaki survived and called him recently to check in after the attacks. According to Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, both Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and Said Ali Al-Shihri, another key Qaeda figure in Yemen, also survived the strikes. In the meantime, the operations have become a rallying point for the regime's enemies, which accused Sana of taking orders from U.S. taskmasters.

Still, there are some signs of hope. In July Saleh met with Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. CentCom chief, in order to more closely coordinate counterterror strategy. Al-Qirbi told NEWSWEEK that the leaders agreed to "enhanced cooperation" at the meeting, including bolstering intelligence sharing and training operations.

Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as "seaborne missiles"—as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters.

Any long-term counterterror strategy will require addressing the root causes of the social instability that allows Al Qaeda to thrive. But Petraeus knows that he can go only so far in Yemen. Unlike in Afghanistan, there is no talk of delving into the country's tribal dynamics. Saleh has insisted that any U.S. assistance be confined to training and equipping Yemen's own security forces. Most Yemen experts say the worst possible solution would be to send in U.S. troops—even stealthy Special Ops teams—to do the job for the Yemenis. Seventy percent of Yemen's villages consist of populations of fewer than 500 people, according to Barbara Bodine, a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen. American operators would stick out—and guarantee a backlash. "Any outsider who comes in, much less a six-foot-tall American in a ninja suit, is going to show up," says Bodine. And the waves of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan have demonstrated how politically explosive an air campaign can become. "If we start allowing what's happening in Pakistan, God knows what will happen," says a senior Yemeni official, who also didn't want to be identified talking about a sensitive topic.

Above all, there is the tricky problem of handling Saleh, who seems to have come around to the view that Al Qaeda threatens his regime. "The good news is he seems for the time being to be on a positive trajectory, having taken action against AQAP several times," says the administration official. "The art in this will be in ensuring he doesn't go back to playing one side off the other." Western officials want Saleh to compromise and end his civil war with a Shiite separatist tribe called the Houthis so he can concentrate on Al Qaeda, but they are leery of suggesting that he might get less help if he doesn't. "One thing we know about Saleh is that any talk of conditionality is just bad news," says the U.S. official. "This is a guy who's going to do what he wants." All Washington can hope is that what Saleh wants is similar to what America wants in Yemen: a few less dangerous snakes to worry about.

With John Barry in Washington

Obama vs. Obama

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Is he a lawyer too cautious in his approach to terror? Or is he a fighter who has failed to restore the rule of law? Yes.

By Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor Jr. | NEWSWEEK

Published Jan 9, 2010

From the magazine issue dated Jan 18, 2010

Dick Cheney has said that President Obama is "trying to pretend that we are not at war" with terrorists. Tell that to the terrorists. According to data compiled by Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann for the New America Foundation, the Obama administration in less than a year in office has carried out more than 50 Predator strikes against terrorist targets. That's more than George W. Bush did during his entire presidency. At the same time, liberals accuse Obama of betraying his ideals and his promises to restore the rule of law. This accusation is equally wrongheaded. Obama has made—or more precisely has permitted his attorney general, Eric Holder, to make—a series of decisions that weigh proper judicial procedure and the appearance of justice over risks to national security.

Obama's split-the-difference approach on terrorism is consistent with what we have learned about the president in his first year. He is a realist and compromiser who seeks the middle way, not a liberal ideologue. His approach is judged highly by most counterterror professionals, who understand that the most effective policies are often the least palatable politically. Where Obama has stumbled, though, is when he has allowed politics or a legalistic approach to get in the way of common sense about public safety. While the rantings from the right and from the left should be rejected or discounted, Obama can be a little too Solomonic in his judgment when it comes to balancing the rule of law and protecting the homeland. In some cases, rather than relying on current laws, he should be working harder to change them.

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On the talk shows, and in less stark fashion within the councils of power, there are competing big-picture approaches to the threat of terrorism. Think of two mindsets: that of a warrior and that of a lawyer. Warriors can be primitive and atavistic—which is to say brutal. Reflective warriors have a tragic sensibility. They know that in war, things go wrong and the innocent get hurt no matter how great the effort to spare civilians and limit collateral damage. War is (or should be) a matter of national survival, of accepting casualties and the infliction of suffering to avoid annihilation. ("Annihilation" in the context of terror means a nuclear bomb going off in a U.S. city, which would change the American way of life as well as cause hundreds of thousands of deaths.) Lawyers, by contrast, are concerned with fair procedure and individual rights. The ethos is summarized by the saying "Better to let a hundred guilty go free than to convict one innocent man."

Obama, on balance, falls into the lawyer camp. A Harvard Law grad who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, he is steeped in a tradition that privileges the Bill of Rights over the crude or arbitrary exercise of power. He is also a considered analytical thinker. Lawyers, at their best, weigh the equities and reject one-sided arguments. In his reasoning and pronouncements, Obama has shown an appreciation for shades of gray.

In their desire to avoid inflammatory language—referring to terrorism as "man-caused disaster" and the like—Obama's lieutenants have from time to time tried too hard. Still, Obama's greatest contribution so far to national security policy has been tonal. He has softened the Bush-era rhetoric and turned down the volume on what a former CIA chieftain once called "the Mighty Wurlitzer," a mythical organ that blasts out the music of American salvation and superiority. Obama is keenly sensitive to appearances. He has always known that speaking of a "crusade" and "Islamofascism" was a good way to make jihadists out of Muslim teenagers, and that the American prison at Guantánamo was Al Qaeda's best recruiting tool.

Obama was hardly alone or unusual in these views. Even President Bush recognized that Guantánamo was doing more harm than good, and his administration had begun to free detainees and take steps toward closing the prison. Bush was simply too discredited to gain much PR benefit from such moves.

Obama, on the other hand, has also been scrupulous about keeping open his options for fighting terrorism. His antiterror policies are essentially those of Bush's second term. Brutal interrogation methods such as waterboarding were no longer being used by 2005. Obama formally banned not only torture but all forms of coercion—even angry shouting or threats—as interrogation methods. But sharp-eyed lawyers have pointed out that he did so by executive order rather than by Congressional legislation, which means he is free to change his mind without first obtaining the approval of elected representatives. The post-9/11 system of warrantless wiretapping was reformed and made legal by Bush's Justice Department and Congress. Obama has continued the "rendition" policy of sending captured terror suspects back to their home countries, as long as their hosts promise not to torture them.

In many ways, Obama has governed on national security from the right of center. As Peter Baker points out in The New York Times Magazine, he has emphatically told his subordinates that the CIA is to get whatever it needs in the way of resources. But the deciding factor is effectiveness, not ideology—and he's open to changing policies that don't work. Although Obama put a one-year deadline on closing Guantánamo, for instance, he missed it. The job of sorting the truly lethal from the less dangerous detainees is complex and time-consuming. So too is persuading a foreign country to accept detainees who have been schooled in jihadist ideology in the prison yard of Guantánamo.

That doesn't mean the president hasn't miscalculated. To signal a new era shortly after taking office, Obama ordered his minions not to resist an ACLU lawsuit to publicly release CIA documents detailing the torture methods used against captured Qaeda operatives. He also went along with Attorney General Holder's decision to investigate intelligence officials involved in the post-9/11 interrogation program. In doing so he overlooked or rejected warnings by outgoing CIA director Michael Hayden, among others, that he risked seriously undermining morale in the intelligence community. The morale of the CIA is not to be taken lightly. Intelligence officers are less likely to take risks if they think they will be left to shoulder the blame when things go wrong. As Obama cranks up covert operations from Afghanistan to Yemen, he is going to need to have the intelligence community behind him—leaning forward, not watching their backs.

Obama may also have been short-sighted in supporting Holder's decision to try 9/11-mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in federal court in Manhattan. Presumably Obama wanted to show the world that even a fanatical terrorist could get a fair trial in America, and saw little risk that KSM, as the spooks call him, would be acquitted. Holder's decision even drew support from former Bush Justice Department officials Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith, who are celebrated for standing up to the Cheneyites on the question of torture and warrantless eavesdropping in 2004. In a Washington Post op-ed last November, Comey and Goldsmith argued that trying KSM in Manhattan was "unlikely to make New York a bigger target." They reasoned that "if al-Qaeda could carry out another attack in New York, it would—a fact true a week ago and for a long time."

True enough. But the real threat now may be less from Al Qaeda Central, holed up in the mountains of Pakistan, than the various Qaeda offshoots and wannabes, some of whom may live in New York. For a suicide bomber tempted by immortality, avenging the trial of the 9/11 mastermind by blowing up a New York subway will be a powerful lure.

In this case Obama could have worked harder to find a middle path. He has not abolished the system of military commissions set up by Bush to try terrorists. Rather, he has tinkered with the rules, making it harder to introduce evidence obtained through coercion. But the legality of those panels, and the ability of the government to hold detainees indefinitely, is under challenge in the regular federal courts. Lacking proper guidance, federal judges have been making up the rules as they go along. Obama actually promised to seek legislation to determine how and for how long detainees can be held without trial—but he backed off under pressure from liberals and civil libertarians, who oppose enshrining any form of preventive detention into law.

Obama may be regretting that caution. When the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was arrested, he was granted a lawyer after 30 hours and stopped talking. Conservatives squawked, but in fact the Bush administration had done the same for the so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid, back in 2001. There needs to be some kind of system that would allow interrogators to question a terror suspect captured inside the United States for a period of time—say two weeks—before he is put in the criminal justice system and "lawyered up." Abdulmutallab might have tipped off the CIA to other plots or plotters before he went silent.

Conservatives who complain that Abdulmutallab should have been treated like an illegal combatant and thrown in a military brig overlook an important point. Under the existing system of military commissions, detainees have a right to a lawyer, just like ordinary criminal suspects. So he would have been silenced either way. What we really need is a new system that looks at the whole difficult question of preventive detention. While the talking heads shout and cast blame, someone in Congress or the administration needs to find a solution that accommodates the needs of intelligence gathering and the rule of law. Obama, the law professor, could probably write such a law himself.

China's Google dilemma: Soften on censorship or anger millions of Internet users

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By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 14, 2010; A14

BEIJING -- Google's threat to shut down its Chinese Web site and offices over cyberattacks and censorship puts the government here in the awkward position of having to choose between relaxing restrictions and raising the ire of the roughly 80 million Chinese people who use the search engine.

Few political and Internet analysts appear to doubt that China will stick to its tough stance and reject Google's proposal to stop censoring search results on its Chinese sites. But Google's audience of Chinese "netizens," a few of whom placed flowers outside the company's Beijing offices Wednesday, is large enough to make such a reaction risky.

"This would adversely affect a lot of people, not just the technorati elite that is Western-oriented anyway," said Kaiser Kuo, an independent technology consultant. "The government could face a serious backlash this time."

On Wednesday, the Google story was the top trending topic on a Twitter-like microblog on the Chinese site Sina.com, with about 60,000 people weighing in before the conversation was taken down. Most commenters expressed dismay at the prospect of losing Google's China-based service; some lashed out at the government, while others begged Google to stay. A substantial minority wished the company good riddance.

"This will make the extent of Chinese censorship a lot clearer, even to ordinary Chinese people who are not aware of it," said Jeremy Goldkorn, a China Internet specialist who posts on Sina's blog site and runs a Web site called Danwei, which has been blocked since July.

"Many people think Google should negotiate with the Chinese government," said Zhou Shuguang, a blogger who has done investigative reporting across the country. He added, though, that its withdrawal would lead more Chinese to discover that China lacks freedom on the Internet. "There are no benefits to people at all if Google continues to make concessions with Chinese authorities," he said.

The government has backed down once in the face of outcries on the Internet. Last year, it attempted to require the makers of personal computers sold here to install Green Dam, a filtering software. But it reversed itself after widespread online protests that the software slowed down and damaged computers.

Still, businesspeople in Beijing were pessimistic Wednesday about the prospect of a crack in what is known as the Great Firewall of China. "China can't lose face over this, and it's not going to let anybody run an open search engine," said an industry source close to Google.

The government has shut down or blocked thousands of Web sites. Twitter, YouTube and Facebook are all blocked. Just this week, the General Administration of Press and Publication boasted of taking down 136,000 non-registered Web sites and more than 1.5 million pieces of "bad information." It also said it had shut down 15,000 pornographic Web sites.

For now, the government has said only that it will seek more information from Google. Virtually the only official comment came in the form of a signed opinion article on the People's Daily Web site, lacking the weight of an officially vetted unsigned editorial. The article likened Google to a "spoiled child" and said that even if it stormed out of China, it would be back because of the importance of the Chinese market.

Other pro-government online comments said that Google, which lags far behind the Chinese-based search engine Baidu, was simply dressing up a business decision in moral clothing. Baidu has about two-thirds of the market. Some independent analysts have estimated a 30 percent market share for Google, but well-placed industry sources put the number closer to 20 percent.

Dan Brody, who set up Google's China office and now runs the Koolanoo Group, a Beijing-based Internet media investment firm, estimates that Google has annual revenue of $300 million to $400 million in China -- an amount that he said pales next to the revenue it earns elsewhere.

Moreover, he said, if Google loses even a small percentage of its users in Europe or the United States because it is seen as compromising too much with China, it could lose more than it earns in the country. "From a business and moral perspective, user trust in the West is so important to them," he said.

The company has clashed with the Chinese government since it set up google.cn in 2005. Google agreed to remove information that China's leadership might find too sensitive but differed with officials over what should fall into that category.

Last summer, state-run media denounced the firm for providing access to "pornography." Another industry source close to Google said that in addition to well-publicized incidents, Chinese officials were demanding weekly that items be removed. When cyberattacks were discovered, he said, "it was the last straw." The industry sources spoke on the condition of anonymity.

If Google closes down its Chinese site, or if the Chinese government closes it down, Chinese users could still try to use the U.S.-based site. But the U.S. site works more slowly, and access to many pages is blocked.

Where would that leave the Chinese market?

The closing of Google's China site would boost Baidu and Sina and hurt Google, industry analysts said.

Despite expensive campaigns in universities and schools, Google has had trouble catching up to its domestic competitors. Analysts say Chinese Internet users prefer the crowded, busy sites of Baidu and Sina to the no-nonsense sparseness of Google's home page. Unlike Google, Baidu and Sina also feature bulletin boards and music-downloading services. And surveys have shown that most Chinese people have trouble spelling Google or don't know its Chinese name, Guge, which means "valley song."

Google China has also suffered from high turnover and was recently forced to replace some of its locally hired, Mandarin-speaking staff with managers from its California headquarters. The head of Google China, Kai-Fu Lee, who was recruited from Microsoft, quit in September.

Ironically, however, the possible departure of Google is no guarantee of harmony on the Chinese Internet. This week, Baidu's site was attacked by hackers who said they were from Iran.

"This is a lose-lose solution for both Google and China," said Hu Yong of Beijing University's School of Journalism and Communication.

"For Google, China is a huge market with very big business potential," Hu said. "For Chinese netizens, it's a bad result as well. A search engine is very important for the free transportation of information online. And we need competition," he added, or "the number of information sources will decrease."

Staff researchers Zhang Jie and Wang Juan contributed to this report.

Google China cyberattack part of vast espionage campaign, experts say

Image via CrunchBase

By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Ellen Nakashima
Thursday, January 14, 2010; A01

Computer attacks on Google that the search giant said originated in China were part of a concerted political and corporate espionage effort that exploited security flaws in e-mail attachments to sneak into the networks of major financial, defense and technology companies and research institutions in the United States, security experts said.

At least 34 companies -- including Yahoo, Symantec, Adobe, Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical -- were attacked, according to congressional and industry sources. Google, which disclosed on Tuesday that hackers had penetrated the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights advocates in the United States, Europe and China, threatened to shutter its operations in the country as a result.

Human rights groups as well as Washington-based think tanks that have helped shape the debate in Congress about China were also hit.

Security experts say the attacks showed a new level of sophistication, exploiting multiple flaws in different software programs and underscoring what senior administration officials have said over the past year is an increasingly serious cyber threat to the nation's critical industries.

"Usually it's a group using one type of malicious code per target," said Eli Jellenc, head of international cyber-intelligence for VeriSign's iDefense Labs, a Silicon Valley company helping some firms investigate the attacks. "In this case, they're using multiple types against multiple targets -- but all in the same attack campaign. That's a marked leap in coordination."

Image by Steve Webel via Flickr

While it's difficult to say with certainty where a cyberattack originated because the Internet allows hackers to seemingly crisscross country borders and time zones in seconds, the issue is quickly turning into a source of diplomatic tension.

The standoff between Google and China touches on the most sensitive subjects in U.S.-China relations: human rights and censorship, trade, intellectual property disputes, and access to high-tech military technology.

"The recent cyber-intrusion that Google attributes to China is troubling, and the federal government is looking into it," White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said. He added that President Obama made Internet freedom "a central human rights issue" on his trip to China last fall.

Since it began operations in China five years ago, Google had agreed in theory to filter sensitive searches but clashed with the Chinese government on what material was covered, and the company regularly found its service blocked when it defied its hosts.

China's state media reported that the government is looking into Google's claims. In China, news about Tuesday's public rebuke by Google was heavily censored except for a stinging opinion piece in the official People's Daily that called the Silicon Valley tech giant a "spoiled child" and predicted that it would not follow through on its ultimatum.

The recent attacks seem to have targeted companies in strategic industries in which China is lagging, industry experts said. The attacks on defense companies were aimed at gaining information on weapons systems, experts said, while those on tech firms sought valuable source code that powers software applications -- the firms' bread and butter.

The attacks also focused on obtaining information about political dissidents.

"This is a big espionage program aimed at getting high-tech information and politically sensitive information -- the high-tech information to jump-start China's economy and the political information to ensure the survival of the regime," said James A. Lewis, a cyber and national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is what China's leadership is after. This reflects China's national priorities."

Adobe, a software maker, confirmed on Wednesday that it learned of the attacks on Jan. 2 but said there was "no evidence to indicate that any sensitive information . . . has been compromised," while Symantec, which makes security software, said it is investigating to "ensure we are providing appropriate protection to our customers."

Dow Chemical said that it has "no reason to believe that the safety, security and intellectual property of our operations are in jeopardy." Yahoo and defense contractor Northrop Grumman declined to comment on the attack.

The attackers, experts said, followed the familiar "phishing" ruse: A recipient opens an e-mail that purports to be from someone he knows and, not suspecting malicious intent, opens an attachment containing a "sleeper" program that embeds in his computer. That program can be controlled remotely, allowing the attacker to access e-mail, send confidential documents to a specific address -- even turn on a Web camera or microphone to record what is going on in the room.

In many cases, a user does not know he has been the victim of an attack.

One type of attack exploits a flaw in Adobe Reader, a popular free program that allows e-mail users to read .pdf document files. The flaw was made public Dec. 15 but fixed only on Tuesday -- the day Google announced that its systems had been compromised.

Sara L.M. Davis, executive director of New York-based Asia Catalyst, which assists charities in developing countries, said she began to receive these fake e-mails shortly after the new year. The senders all appeared to be people with whom she regularly communicates. The subject lines contained topics -- "AIDS in China" or "Some photographs of you and Dr. Gao" -- that suggested familiarity with her and her organization.

"If I weren't already paranoid, I would have already opened one," Davis said.

Google declined to provide details on what exactly the attackers took and whether it included any information about super-secret search engine technology that drives the company's profits.

Nart Villeneuve, a research fellow at the University of Toronto, has analyzed attack e-mails sent to human rights groups over the past few months. Villeneuve, who works at Citizen Lab, which focuses on Internet and politics, helped research GhostNet, a vast cyberspying operation revealed last year that apparently originated in China and targeted the office of the Dalai Lama, foreign embassies and government offices.

He said the GhostNet attack resembles the strategy used against Google, other U.S. companies and human rights groups this time around. The attack e-mails to the human rights organizations could mostly be traced to "command and control" computers in mainland China. However, Jellenc said, the two attacks do not appear to have been carried out by the same group.

In August, someone obtained a list of 5,000 subscribers to the China Leadership Monitor, a respected quarterly publication from the Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

The subscribers received a fake e-mail from a Gmail account purportedly from the publication but with an attachment that would take over their computers. Alice Miller, a visiting professor at Stanford and the publication's editor, said she had worked with U.S. government investigators and said the attack originated in China.

Staff writers Cecilia Kang and John Pomfret contributed to this report.

Malaysian Catholics' Lawyers Offices Are Ransacked

Image by amos1766 via Flickr

By JAMES HOOKWAY

Intruders ransacked the offices of the legal team that's defending a Malaysian Roman Catholic newspaper's right to use the word Allah in its Malay-language pages, church officials said, marking a fresh escalation of the bitter dispute.

The Rev. Lawrence Andrew, editor of the Catholic Herald, said legal staff found door-locks forced open and papers scattered across the floor when they arrived for work on Thursday morning. Derek Fernandez, the main lawyer acting for the newspaper, said closed circuit television cameras were vandalized to prevent them recording the incident, and that a lap-top computer was missing.

"My first impression is that the break-in is related to the Allah case," Mr. Fernandez said. "It is designed to intimidate us in the case we are handling for the Herald."

The Associated Press quoted Arjunaidi Mohamed, the police chief of the Kuala Lumpur suburb where the break-in occurred, as saying it was too early to link the raid to the recent spate of church attacks.

The ransacking comes amid rising religious tensions in Malaysia after the country's High Court on Dec. 31 ruled that Christians can use the Arabic word Allah in their Malay-language publications. Many Muslims were angered over the ruling, saying the word should be exclusive to Muslims, who could be tricked into following Christianity if non-Muslims are permitted to use the term.

Image by lloydi via Flickr

Since the ruling, which the government is appealing, 10 churches have been attacked in various parts of the country with Molotov cocktails or defaced with paint. Arsonists razed the administrative office of one to the ground. A Sikh temple was also attacked with stones late on Wednesday, possibly because Sikhs also use the term "Allah" in some scriptures.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, argues that the Arabic word is the only acceptable translation for God in the Malay language, and that Malaysian churches attending to indigenous, Malay-speaking tribes have been using the term for decades.

The dispute presents an awkward problem for Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who must call an election by 2013. Political analysts say he needs to retain the support of the country's Muslim majority while winning back votes from the large ethnic-Chinese and Indian minorities, many of whom backed an opposition coalition in the last elections in 2008.

Some economists, meanwhile, worry that Muslim anger over the Dec. 31 court ruling could dissuade Mr. Najib from pushing for further reforms of Malaysia's race-based affirmative action program.

Known as the New Economic Policy, the decades-old initiative was designed to give a boost to the country's Muslim Malay majority and help them catch up economically with their ethnic-Chinese compatriots. Mr. Najib and other government leaders – as well as many business leaders – argue that Malaysia needs to provide a more level playing field to stimulate economic growth, but analysts say carrying out reforms will be politically difficult.

—Celine Fernandez in Kuala Lumpur contributed to this article.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

Tibet governor tenders resignation at policy meeting

Image via Wikipedia

Tue Jan 12, 2010 11:46am IST

By Lucy Hornby

BEIJING (Reuters) - The governor of Tibet has tendered his resignation, Chinese state-owned media said on Tuesday, as Beijing convened a meeting to spur economic growth and quell dissatisfaction in the region.

Qiangba Pingcuo, an ethnic Tibetan, was governor during demonstrations by Tibetans in their capital, Lhasa, that turned deadly on March 14, 2008.

The report by Xinhua did not give a reason for his resignation, which can also indicate a person is slated for another post.

"Everyone is looking to see whether an official will be made to pay for the policy failures indicated by the events of the spring of 2008," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet scholar at Columbia University in New York.

The Xinhua report did not indicate whether Qiangba's resignation would be accepted, or who his replacement would be. He is 62, three years shy of China's mandatory retirement age.

"Qiangba was seen as one of the heavier people in the administration, but not as someone who initiates policies," Barnett added.

Image via Wikipedia

His resignation came as China convened a major policy conference on Tibet, that stressed increased industrial development and investment from Beijing as well as continued controls on religious institutions.

The most powerful official in Tibet is party secretary Zhang Qingli, a Han Chinese. Both Zhang and Qiangba were in Beijing when the 2008 demonstrations broke out.

The emphasis on greater investment at the meeting implies that China is recognising some of the economic causes of discontent by Tibetans, many of whom feel that Chinese migrants have benefitted more from large projects, including mining and a train line to Lhasa.

Tibetans demanded greater religious and civil freedoms during demonstrations in March 2008 in towns across the plateau, that China officially blamed on exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Also leaving his post is Legchok, the head of the People's Congress in Tibet, Xinhua said. An ethnic Tibetan and former governor, Legchok turned 65 in October.

Facts on Trafficking and Prostitution

Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation

The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation was compiled from media, non-governmental organization and government reports. It is an initial effort to collect facts, statistics and known cases on global sexual exploitation. Information is organized into four categories: Trafficking, Prostitution, Pornography, and Organized and Institutionalized Sexual Exploitation and Violence.

Sources were not contacted to verify information. Close examination will reveal that there are contradictions in information depending on the sources of information (ex: how many women are in prostitution in Thailand). All statistics are reported with no attempt to evaluate which numbers are more likely to be accurate. In fact, the exact numbers in many cases are not known and estimates come from different sources which use different methods to determine what they report.

We hope these facts will assist people to recognize the harm caused throughout the world by sexual violence and exploitation and catalyze action against this violence agianst women.

This project was made possible with the support of the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Rhode Island and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), Norway.

If you use this information in your work, please reference this factbook--The Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation, Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic, Nadine Z. Mendelsohn, Vanessa Chirgwin, Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, 1999.

Asia

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia and Pacific Afghanistan Armenia Azerbaijan Bangladesh Bhutan Brunei Burma/Mynamar China and Hong Kong Cambodia India Indonesia Japan Korea Macau Malaysia Maldives Nepal Pakistan Philippines Sri Lanka Taiwan Thailand Turkey Vietnam

Europe

Europe Central and Eastern Europe Eastern Europe Albania Austria Belarus Belgium Bosnia and Herzegovina Bulgaria Croatia Czech Republic Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Netherlands Norway Poland Romania Russia Slovak Republic Spain Sweden Switzerland Ukraine United Kingdom Yugoslavia

Oceania

Australia East Timor New Zealand Papua-New Guinea

Africa

Algeria Angola Benin Botswana Burkina Faso Cameroon Ghana Kenya Liberia Nigeria Rwanda South Africa Sudan Tanzania Togo Uganda Zambia Zimbabwe

Middle East

Middle East Egypt Iran Iraq Israel Jordan Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates Yemen

Central America and the Caribbean

Latin America Central America Costa Rica Cuba Dominican Republic Guatemala Honduras Suriname Trinidad and Tobago

South America

Argentina Brazil Columbia Venezuela

North America

Canada Mexico Marianas (USA) United States

Factbook Table of Contents

Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Factbook on Global Sexual Exploitation
Donna M. Hughes, Laura Joy Sporcic and Nadine Z. Mendelsohn

Jan 13, 2010

Arab League Countries' Views of U.S. Leadership Up in 2009

Click headline of this posting for full view and nicer display of tables. - John

by Mohamed Younis

DOHA, QATAR -- Approval ratings of U.S. leadership increased in 10 of 12 Arab League countries that Gallup surveyed twice in 2009. Between the first survey period from February to March and the second survey period from July to October, U.S. leadership enjoyed the highest approval jump in Bahrain (33 percentage points), Mauritania (22 points), Kuwait (19 points), and Comoros (15 points).

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Overall, approval of U.S. leadership among citizens in these countries is highest, and above the majority level, in Djibouti (81%), Mauritania (78%), Comoros (69%), Bahrain (55%), and Kuwait (52%). Majorities in five countries -- Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Territories, and Yemen -- continue to express disapproval of the job performance of U.S. leadership. In the 12 nations surveyed, drops in approval ratings, such as in Algeria (four points) and Saudi Arabia (three points), are within the margin of error and thus remain unchanged since the last round of polling in February/March 2009.

The newest data were collected after President Barack Obama's much-covered speech in Cairo, Egypt, which was aimed at outreach to the Muslim world and improving America's image worldwide. The administration's attempts to apply diplomatic pressure on Israel to "freeze" settlement development in the West Bank may have also affected respondents' approval ratings at the time. It should be noted that the data precede Obama's decision to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and his failure to meet the January 2010 deadline for closing the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In addition, since the time of polling, the Israeli government's continued refusal to completely freeze settlement development as requested by the Obama administration may have an effect on U.S. job approval in the near future.

While Obama's approval rating among Americans has for the most part declined since the summer, approval of the job performance of U.S. leadership in Arab League countries appeared to be on the upswing at the time of the survey.

U.S. Leadership Continues to Earn Best Marks in Sub-Saharan Africa

Among these 12 Arab League nations, U.S. leadership enjoyed the highest approval ratings in three countries in sub-Saharan Africa -- where approval in each country far exceeded the majority. This continues a trend seen during the course of the Bush administration with approval ratings of U.S. leadership higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region in the world.

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Negative to Positive Shifts and Other Surprises

The latest wave of Gallup data from the Arab world found, for the first time, statistically significant increases in the percentage of Palestinians and Lebanese who approve of U.S. leadership. Approval of U.S. leadership in the Palestinian Territories increased 13 points to 20%, while approval ratings in Lebanon increased 8 percentage points to 30%. At the same time, in Saudi Arabia, approval ratings of U.S. leadership, an important U.S. ally in the region and a country Obama visited en route to Cairo for his address, showed no statistical shift positive or negative.

Additionally, the percentage of respondents who said they didn't know or refused to rate the job performance of U.S. leadership shed light on the degree to which respondents feel they are familiar enough with the approach of the current leadership to form an opinion. In many cases, don't know responses dropped noticeably: in Mauritania by 24 points to 1%, in Kuwait by 17 points to 8%, in Comoros by 14 points to 6%, and in Saudi Arabia by 7 points to 11%. On the other hand, don't know responses significantly increased in Bahrain by 8 points to 17%, in Algeria by 7 points to 10%, in Yemen by 6 points to 20%, and in Morocco by 4 points to 9%.

Bottom Line

While approval ratings of U.S. leadership alone cannot serve as a proxy for evaluating U.S.-Arab world relations, Gallup's latest polling in the Arab world suggested some improvement at the time of the survey. Surprises were found in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories, where opinions improved for the first time since the Bush administration. However, in Saudi Arabia and Algeria, no statistical change in approval ratings of U.S. leadership took place between the two polling periods in 2009. While the president's focus on outreach to the Arab and Muslim worlds may have had a positive effect on the attitudes of many, his ability to follow through on many of the proposed programs for cooperation and development will be crucial to adding more Arab countries to the list of those where a majority approve of the leadership of the United States.

To see all countries worldwide for which 2009 U.S. approval data are available, see the updated map and table on the World Citizens' Views on U.S. Leadership, Pre- and Post-Obama page.

Sign up for Gallup e-mail alerts or RSS feeds

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For complete data sets or custom research from the more than 150 countries Gallup continually surveys, please contact worldpollpartners@gallup.com or call 202.715.3030.

Survey Methods

Results are based on face-to-face interviews with approximately 1,000 adults, aged 15 and older, conducted in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Palestinian Territories, Mauritania, Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Kuwait, and Yemen between March and April 2009 and July and October 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error ranged from a low of ±3.3 percentage points in Bahrain to a high of ±3.7 percentage points in Yemen. The margin of error reflects the influence of data weighting. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Study Finds 3,000 Pakistanis Killed in Militant Attacks

Image by Brave New Films via Flickr

By SABRINA TAVERNISE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The number of Pakistani civilians killed in militant attacks rose by a third in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to a new research report, a toll that was driven higher by a surge of suicide bombings against civilian targets.

The report, released this week by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent research group based in Islamabad that tracks security issues, found that 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in insurgent attacks, 33 percent more than in 2008.

Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said the number of deaths totaled 1,674, lower than the institute’s count, but its director, Muhammad Amir Rana, argued that its data is more comprehensive, drawing on local media reports, which its employees double check, as well as official sources. The reports provide one of the few comprehensive analyses of civilian casualties in Pakistan, a growing concern as the insurgency here grinds into another year.

Militants carried out 87 suicide attacks in 2009, up from 63 the previous year, according to the institute, with civilian centers increasingly a target, including mosques, a university, and public markets. The bombings, which tend to inflict harm over a wide area, helped account for the 60 percent rise in injuries to 7,334.

The institute began issuing the reports in 2006, Mr. Rana said, an effort to give a clearer picture of militancy in Pakistan. Since then, the number of Pakistanis killed in militant attacks has more than tripled.

Image by Ammar Abd Rabbo via Flickr

While Pakistan has long had problems with violence, including sectarian fighting throughout the 1990’s, it was not until after 9/11 that major terrorist attacks began to intensify. In 2005, attacks increased dramatically, and have risen every year since, with their numbers doubling between 2005 and 2007, Mr. Rana said.

The overwhelming majority of the suicide bombings last year were in the Northwest Frontier Province, a populous area in the western of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the militants are strong.

In a counter trend, the tribal areas, where the military has opened operation against the militants, saw a drop in bombings from militants — seven, compared to 16 the previous year.

Punjab, the most populous province and the military and political heart of the country, suffered 15 suicide attacks, the second-highest number in the country, up from eight in 2008, but far below the 52 that militants conducted in the Norh West Frontier Province.

Punjab, ethnically distict from the border regions in the mountainous west, had been relatively untouched by violence until recently. The surge in bombings last year shocked Pakistanis and helped turn public opinion and media coverage against the Taliban, though anger at the government and the United States also spiked.

Image by doodledubz collective via Flickr

The number of sectarian attacks jumped by 86 percent compared with 2008, according to the report, with the highest concentration in Dera Ismail Khan, a city in the Northwest Frontier Province whose Shiite minority has been targeted by militants.

In all, researchers counted 12,632 deaths from violence in 2009, of which about half were deaths associated with the Pakistani military’s campaigns against Taliban militants throughout 2009. The military keeps specific tallies of its own dead, though militant casualties are more difficult to track and are often based on estimates and not body counts in the field. Battlefields are rarely accessible to journalists.

Also included in the tally were 667 people — mostly civilians — killed in American drone strikes, the report said. Another 2,000 were killed in non-militant violence, including political violence and tribal fighting.

Though the civilian toll, which includes police officers and other civilian law enforcement agencies, seems high, it is still far lower than the 3,000 civilians killed per month in Iraq — a country with a population a fraction of Pakistan’s — in 2006.