Iraq aims to conduct census in single day

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BAGHDAD -- Iraq is planning to send 150,000 schoolteachers on a one-day mission to knock on every door and conduct the first census since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Iraq, like many nations, has carried out an official count of its citizens every decade.

But the new government has decided that existing Saddam-era data is so outdated and selective that it is willing to allocate $60 million to $100 million to update the information.

The 1997 census did not count the three Kurdish provinces then separated by the no-fly zone, nor an estimated 4 million Iraqi refugees.

This also was the height of the "Arabization" program, in which Kurds, Turkmen and other minorities were forced to list their ethnicity as "Arab" or risk losing their homes, jobs or lives.

"In the old days, the census was conducted for the interests of the government," said Nuha Yousif, census manager in Iraq's Ministry of Planning.

"People will want to participate in the census because they know that this time it is information to build the new Iraq," she said.

The census, slated for Oct. 12, will help determine voter rolls for elections, which are to take place in January.

It requires the nation to grind to a halt for a day, with children staying home and most people taking a day off from work.

The planned exercise is intriguing both for what its organizers will include and for what they will leave out.