A Tale of Two Maps

I've lifted both of the graphics you'll see below and the core of the argument from this Ilan Goldenberg post, so all credit for the work is due to him, I just don't think he made the point as clearly as he should have. To get to the heart of the matter, just take a look at this map that General Petraeus offered as part of his presentation:

That map shows Baghdad awash in sectarian violence in December of 2006, and it shows the violence steadily decline over time until August of 2007, where it's still certainly a problem but a much reduced one from where it had been before. But notice something funny about the map . . . the color-coding of the neighborhoods as Sunni, Shiite, or mixed stays constant throughout the period even though it's a period during which we know there was a lot of violence and a lot of internal displacement. What would happen if we showed how the neighborhoods changed over time? Fortunately for us, General Jones prepared maps that did just that for his own presentation:

Jones' maps show the exact same downward trend in violence as Petraeus' do. But they also show something else. In particular, they show the disappearance, over time, of mixed neighborhoods with violence, refugee flows, and ethnic cleansing producing a city that's much more starkly segregated along sectarian lines than it was twelve months ago. In short, the number of incidents is plausibly declining not because of improved security, but simply because there's relatively little fuel left for the fire. Note in particular that Petraeus shows a large decline in violence between December 2006 and February 2007 which is too soon for the arrival of the surge forces to have made a big difference, but which coincides with the disappearance (shown on the Jones maps) of most of the mixed areas east of the river.

Comments

Goldenberg may not have been perfectly clear, but he was clearer than I was here http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/09/petraeus-lies-this-slide-from-general.html
on Monday

"the figures of Baghdad present no change since December in areas which are predominately Shi'ite and predominantly Sunni. This is a false assertion."

Also I remembered seeing the maps from Jones's presentation but I didn't remember where.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | September 13, 2007 6:04 PM

Matt,

Good catch. I have seen both sets of maps at different times. I don't why it didn't twig that Petraeus had removed evidence of sectarian cleansing.

That is frankly very dishonest to the point of being contemptible. That isn't putting your best foot forward - that is tampering with and changing evidence. I expect spin from everyone - I don't begrduge Crocker or Petraeus emphasizing gains they've made. But I DO have a problem with this.

Frankly, its a pattern with this guy.

Posted by Ben P | September 13, 2007 6:23 PM

Could we split America into three (black, white, Hispanic) as well? It could similarly reduce crime and increase civic order. Well, in the white region, at least.

Posted by Axl Rosewater | September 13, 2007 6:33 PM

But, but, Katy Couric really is a cutie.

Posted by 409 | September 13, 2007 6:43 PM

This is a huge catch. Huge.

Posted by 409 | September 13, 2007 6:54 PM

In other words, the ethno-sectarian violence is reduced because ethno-sectarian cleansing has been so successful. In the Bush/Petraeus spin, ethno-sectarian cleansing isn't a bug--it's a feature.

Posted by Tom Hilton | September 13, 2007 6:55 PM

Technically, Team Bush can take credit for the drop in violence. After all, they did nothing about the neighborhood-by-neighborhood ethnic cleansing going on throughout 2005 and 2006, which has directly led to this drop in violence. If they'd have done something at the time, they would've given tacit acknowledgment to the civil war that wasn't occurring.

Posted by Philippe | September 13, 2007 7:07 PM

Note in particular that Petraeus shows a large decline in violence between December 2006 and February 2007 which is too soon for the arrival of the surge forces to have made a big difference

Yes, but during this period several things were happening:

-The surge was announced, and the the Iraqi government announced its own 'Baghdad security plan'.

-Moqtada al-Sadr went underground, and his militias stopped openly patrolling the streets in many areas.

-U.S. forces, which had mostly stopped patrolling the streets of Baghdad and were just staying in their large bases, started setting up security outposts with the Iraqi Army in Baghdad neighborhoods.

I also remember reading press accounts at the time right before the announcement of the surge saying that the Shiite militias had crossed the Tigris river and were starting to push Sunnis out of the west side of Baghdad. This trend seems to have stopped after the announcement of the surge.

The upshot of all of this is that a plausible case can be made that the surge actually has had some good effects, but it was because of changes in political and military strategy, not because of the extra troops.

Posted by RC | September 13, 2007 7:12 PM

To add a human dimension to the charts, here's an article by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on the subject from a few days ago. Excerpt:

Concrete walls and checkpoints have divided Baghdad into isolated neighbourhoods ostensibly to prevent militia attacks. On the surface they appear to have brought some stability and better security. But in many neighbourhoods it has come only through a process of sectarian cleansing - Shia driving out Sunni and Sunni driving out Shia.
In Dora, in the south of Baghdad, Sunni extremists have fought street battles against Shia militias and have now cleansed the area of its Shia residents. The American security plan has divided the northern part of the district into fenced neighbourhoods with checkpoints at all the entrances.
"Bodies piled in the street outside my house every morning," said one resident, a shopkeeper, remembering the fighting. "We live in an isolated area, but at least we have peace ... we don't leave our area because once we are on the highway, we have to pass though the commandos' checkpoints and we will be killed."

Posted by Ginger Yellow | September 13, 2007 8:41 PM

I have been wondering for a while if the Bush's Brain team's plan is to hold on until all the Sunni are dead or have fled the country.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | September 13, 2007 8:56 PM

I'm no lawyer, but it would be interesting to see if this qualifies as perjury.

Posted by anonymous | September 13, 2007 8:59 PM

Fair enough, but I'm not really sure our objective is to ensure that Baghdad has integrated neighborhoods.

Posted by Tyro | September 13, 2007 9:03 PM

Sweet. I've been reading hints of the possibility in McClatchy's discussion of the numbers but I hadn't seen anyone put it together like this. Somebody's head really ought to roll for this. They tortured the data until it confessed.

Posted by mk | September 13, 2007 9:48 PM

Matt, I was the one who made this discovery on Monday afternoon and wrote about it unbossed.com. I think it's only fair to credit unbossed for a story that others picked up subsequently (that includes a report later published by McClatchy).

Link: http://unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=1721

"First, examine the third of the slides he presented to Congress (on page 4 of this PDF). It presents four maps of "ethno-sectarian violence" in the neighborhoods of Baghdad since December 2006. These maps pretend that the ethnic/sectarian mix of various neighborhoods has remained constant during this period. In fact, as I've commented here and elsewhere, the Sunnis have been driven headlong out of many neighborhoods since December 2006. Despite the map, there are no longer either majority Sunni or mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhoods east of the Tigris. And west of the Tigris, Sunni-dominated areas have shrunk considerably.

The maps falsify one of the most delicate of issues: The failure of the "surge" to stem ethnic/sectarian cleansing of Baghdad. If that information were brought to the fore, it would call into question the claims by Petraeus and other spokespeople for the Bush administration that the "surge" is responsible for an alleged drop in violence in Baghdad. If there is any such drop, it may be due in large part to the success of Shia attempts to drive Sunnis from their homes and into exile."

Posted by smintheus | September 13, 2007 9:56 PM

BIG DEAL.

YOU FAIL.

Posted by Rose | September 13, 2007 10:22 PM

time to put fatty back in his box again. A few points

- I notice that the petraeus map exposes a lie that though not originated by fatty was parroted by him. That lie being that car bombs were were excluded from figures for sectarian violence.

- the color coding does not remain constant in petraeus' maps(if you compare the map for feb 07 to aug 07 you see that an area in the southern has gone from majority sunni to mixed). The reason the changes are small is, as jones maps suggest, there wasnt significant demographic change in the period. If we compare jones and petraeus maps over the time period where they overlap there is very little difference. Petraeus aug 07 is indistinguishable from jones july 07 and the only singicant difference between petraeus dec 06 and jones jan 07 is a small area in the south which jones labels as mixed and petraeus has majority sunni.

- if 'accessabilty' was really a strong determinant of levels of violence we might expect to see a strong correlation with how mixed an area is and the level of violence there, jones maps dont show this correlation. The most salient example is south east baghdad which both petraeus and jones maps show as having comparitvely very low levels of violence despite being very mixed as of jul 06 and having its population change over time.

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | September 14, 2007 5:12 AM

OK unbossed let's go to hour and minute stamps as I noted the falsification on Monday too.

Pimp hand give me a break. The colors do not correspond to the date in the title of the figure and there is no indication in the legends (or anywhere in the figure) that the date in the title does not match the date of the data presented in the map given that title. This is not due to lack of information or an error as was demonstrated by general Jones who showed honest maps.

I'm not a lawyer but I think it amounts to perjury.

Also sectarian bombings are *not* included in the numbers presented in the graph. Petreaus claimed that they were and the second MNF-I explanation of their methodology repeats the claim. However the claim is definitely false and is not made true by repetition http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/09/petraeus-lies-this-slide-from-general.html

This is clear, because there was a huge immense gigantic mass sectarian killing by bombs on August 14 2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Qahtaniya_bombings
. The graph does not reflect this event (the assumptions needed to argue that the deaths were included are absurd). Thus the claims about the definition of "ethno-sectarian violence" are definitely false.

I think that this was clearly perjury. Petreaus may not have known how the maps were changed, but he couldn't have forgotten the Qahtaniya bombing nor could he honestly believe that the deaths were included in his graph. Finally there is no way that mass killing of people in a tiny sect could have been non-sectarian.

MNF-I can claim as often as they want that " its definition of sectarian violence [includes] bombings, killings or other attacks committed by an ethnic group or religious sect against another, for purely sectarian purposes." http://tinyurl.com/3dp6on

The figures do not. Otherwise they would include more than 500 more deaths in August 2007. They are lying. I swear that if they sue me for slander (or libel whichever it is on the web) I will not defend myself claiming that they are public figures but rather only argue that my claim is true.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | September 14, 2007 8:21 AM

Sue you? WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!! Nobody gives a shit what you think.

Posted by Lester | September 14, 2007 8:38 AM

Cranky Observer adds deaths and exile. It's easy to have a decline in murder rates when there's nobody left to kill.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 14, 2007 9:06 AM

Hey Lester a guy can dream no ?

Also, by the way, I have received a threatening letter (the one before the one before the one that threatens to sue) in which Curio Pintus asserted that I had written something false and damaging about him (and I don't even know who Curio Pintus is).

Posted by Robert Waldmann | September 14, 2007 9:14 AM

Robert, Not to take anything away from your commentary on Monday, but I was the first to write about the falsification of the maps (at unbossed, Daily Kos, and elsewhere) about 8 hours before you. My observations had already been picked up that afternoon by Cernig and given some prominence at blogulators like memeorandum.

http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/09/wot-no-ethnic-cleansing.html

I don't mind getting credit for my work.

Posted by smintheus | September 14, 2007 9:28 AM

So, claiming that the Surge deserves credit for the reduced violence in Baghdad is like firefighters claiming credit for putting out a fire when all that happened is that the house burned down to the ground and nothing's left to burn.

Posted by Princeton Dem | September 14, 2007 9:59 AM

Further to Ginger Yellow's excerpt and comment above, a recent report from Baghdad from the Independent made me want to see a map of the walls and fences that have been put up (almost entirely by U.S. military and contracors, yes?) since November 2006:

The walls being put up by US contractors at a record speed are formalising this break-up of Baghdad along sectarian lines. Militias rule the roost in the newly created ghettos; armed young men with sunglasses manning checkpoints, collecting levies from passing traffic, and meting out their own justice to victims who would never make the calculations on the effects of the surge.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2950298.ece

Posted by Nell | September 14, 2007 2:06 PM

OK smintheus credit given here http://tinyurl.com/yr4zpj

Posted by Robert Waldmann | September 14, 2007 2:43 PM

The peace of the graveyard.

Posted by AlphaLiberal | September 14, 2007 7:07 PM

It's refreshing to see lefties finally acknowledging that sectarian deaths are down (as are suicude bombings).

It's too much to expect you to admit why. But your bs won't wash.

No sooner was al Qaeda driven out of Anbar that Anbar became more peaceful. No sooner was al Qaeda driven out of Baghdad that Baghdad became more peaceful. No sooner was al Qaeda driven out of the Baghdad rings that they became more peaceful. Don't expect lefties to give credit where it is due.

So try explaining that the war which lefties claimed was lost is now being won.

Incidentally if Iraqi refugees are now 2 million this is less than half what they were when Saddam was in power.

Posted by Terry Gain | September 18, 2007 5:18 PM

The there's no one left to kill

dog won't hunt. Try this:

It was the Democratic Party threat of withdrawal that caused the Iraqi government to finally get their act together and end the civl war.

(Curiously they did it without meeting benchmarks)

Posted by Terry Gain | September 18, 2007 6:22 PM