Volden som nå herjer Irak har noe av Algerie på det verste over seg: sanseløse drap på uskyldige mennesker. Kidnappinger, drap på lærere, søppelkjørere. Nok til å drive ethvert menneske til vanvidd. Derfor drar de som kan, og det vil si middelklassen.

Dermed mister Irak mange av sine kvalifiserte borgere, som det hadde vært god bruk for. De fleste venter til det siste, før de bestemmer seg for å dra. Man regner med at det bor 1 million irakere i Jordan, og mange drar til Syria, skriver Sabrina Tavernise i Nytimes.

Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.

«The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq,» said Assad Bahjat, with his wife, Eileen, and their two children, Elvis, left, and Andres. More Photos »
But when six armed men stormed into their sons’ primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

«The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq,» said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country’s estimated middle class.
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In Dawra, one of the worst areas in all of Baghdad, public life has ground to a halt. Four teachers have been killed in the past 10 days in Mr. Bahjat’s area alone, and the Ahmed al-Waily primary school where the Bahjat boys, ages 12 and 8, studied, may not be able to hold final exams because of the killings. And three teachers from the Batoul secondary school were shot in late April.

Trash is collected only sporadically. On April 3, insurgents shot seven garbage collectors to death near their truck, and their bodies lay in the area for eight hours before the authorities could collect them, said Naeem al-Kaabi, deputy mayor for municipal affairs in Baghdad. In all, 312 trash workers have been killed in Baghdad in the past six months.

Eksodusen har vært så stor at den nå er merkbar i bybildet. I bydelen Bahjat-familiens nabolag står 35 av 40 boenheter tomme. Enkelte strøk begynner å få et anstrøk av spøkelsesgater.

«Shadows,» said Eileen Bahjat, Mr. Bahjat’s wife, standing with her two sons and describing what is left in the neighborhood. «Shadows and killing.»

Likevel sier mange av de som drar at de vil komme tilbake hvis forholdene blir bedre.

As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle-Class Exodus Begins