MATTHEW FRANKLIN CANCIAN AND KRISTIN E. FABBE
▶ FIELDWORK LOCATION: IRAQ
“You don’t know what you’re getting into; or who you’re getting into it with!” the recently fired survey team leader yelled as Matthew walked back to his car. Interpersonal conflict is never enjoyable, but it can be especially uncomfortable in a foreign conflict zone. This fight occurred underneath the barrel of an (unmanned) armored reconnaissance vehicle in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in 2017 as we were conducting a survey of Kurdish fighters (called peshmerga, meaning “those who face death” in Kurdish) and their attitudes toward outgroups. Outright violence was unlikely, but tensions were certainly high as both of our cars exited the peshmerga’s base, with the fired team’s car behind Matthew’s. Matthew let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned in another direction instead of following his car out into the Iraqi desert.
Why did we have to fire Team Four and create this tension? Although Team Four (one of four teams working on our project) had been submitting the requisite number of electronic surveys during their first week of enumeration, the metadata provided by Qualtrics, the survey software we were using, indicated that about half of the surveys, which were designed to take thirty minutes, had been completed by this team in under five minutes. Judging from the time stamps on each survey, it seemed that the team was doing legitimate surveys in the morning, but then two of the team members were rapidly clicking through surveys in the afternoon, faking plausible answers to make the agreed quota without doing the hard work of interviewing soldiers.
Kristin had recently departed to neighboring Turkey to work on a separate project, so I (Matthew) was trying to monitor all four teams on my own, dropping in randomly and unannounced to verify the work they were doing. Kristin was monitoring remotely, watching surveys come in via the Qualtrics software in real time, but she could not be in front of the computer all the time. I was only one person and couldn’t be everywhere all the time. Therefore, we had been careful to institute a number of safeguards against enumerator deception, and we felt confident that we had found a real case of cheating with Team Four. For example, each of the four team leaders was required to submit a photo of himself arriving and leaving the work sites every day. The reticence of Team Four’s leader to do so was a hint that something was amiss. Each team was also required to submit their location via WhatsApp. Assuming that their research site was in an area with cell phone coverage (which they usually were despite the ongoing war), we could confirm that they were traveling to their assigned military bases. I was living at a hotel in the central part of the research area, and these WhatsApp pin drops enabled me to visit a random site every day, unannounced, to ensure that the work was proceeding as reported. We had noticed that the wayward team went back to the same base every day for the first four days, whereas the other teams were constantly moving to new locations as assigned. On a lengthy phone discussion reaching into the wee hours of the morning (one of many that summer), Kristin and I discussed the evidence and decided that Team Four had to be fired.
The hard work, however, fell on my shoulders. Although I had visited the other three teams in the first days of monitoring the project, it was now time to visit Team Four, whom we had identified as survey scammers, and confront them.
Enumerating surveys is hard work wherever it is done: you have to approach strangers, convince them to spend their time with you, and then ask potentially intrusive questions. None of our enumerators had themselves been peshmerga fighters. Furthermore, there was an ongoing war between the Kurds and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which made for a tense political environment. Beyond the political and social challenges, the brutal Iraqi summer often pushed daytime temperatures over 110 degrees. On one day in Sinjar, the thermometer peaked at 122 degrees. If they were lucky, the enumerators would be able to conduct their work in an air-conditioned room in a base headquarters building. Often, however, they had to settle for a shady patch of dirt in a rudimentary outpost somewhere on the base. It was understandable that some of the enumerators would succumb to the temptation to fake surveys.
On the way to confront Team Four, I explained to my driver that I was going to fire the team. The driver, himself a retired peshmerga, suggested that I say there was some technical difficulty with the survey and that the whole thing was being shut down. Kristin and I had discussed taking this less-than-honest route on our phone call the night before, but we had decided that this particular part of Iraq was too small and that we would probably get caught fibbing. What if someone from Team Four knew someone from Team One? We couldn’t be sure, and we didn’t want to get caught lying. So I dismissed my driver’s suggestion and decided to confront the team with the knowledge of their misdeeds. The driver’s advice, however, turned out to be sage.
I finally located Team Four around noon, and they were just finishing their two hours of legitimate surveys. As the peshmerga they had been interviewing left, I initiated the difficult conversation. As soon as I asked Team Four how long they thought a survey should take, they realized that the jig was up. Instead of taking the discovery in stride, however, the team leader got angry and began yelling. I had not anticipated a confrontation and had to make a snap decision; I decided to ask calmly to see all the tablets to verify the number of surveys that had been done. Once all the tablets were physically in hand, I told the team that they were fired. It was at this point, as both parties walked back to their cars, that the leader of Team Four yelled out the threat that began this chapter.
On the drive back to the hotel, I received a conciliatory phone call from Hiwa, one of the team members. Several hours later, Kristin received a call and an email from the angry team leader himself, who tried to blame the episode on me. Kristin didn’t buy it. First, she trusted me—as it turns out, working long hours in a war zone will make you fast friends. Second, having seen the evidence of cheating for herself, she knew that the leader of Team Four was now resorting to a futile strategy of trying to drive a wedge between us. That was not going to work. She decided to ignore further emails and phone calls for the time being. Then, in yet another late-night phone call, we discussed the incident, deciding that we needed a real strategy for mending the rift. The leader of Team Four was obviously immature and dishonest, but he was also politically connected, and we were concerned. The conciliatory phone call from Hiwa provided an opportunity.
We arranged a meeting for several days hence, when Hiwa and I would both be in Erbil. In the meantime, Team Four’s leader had made a more explicit threat over email about what would happen if the wages for the “work” they had already done were not paid. On the day of the meeting, Hiwa proposed that he and I meet under the auspices of a relative of a prominent Kurdish politician, Sherif, at a popular hookah bar.
When I arrived at the bar, Sherif and Hiwa were seated in the company of two female students from a local university. “Which one of them is cuter?” Hiwa asked me, gesturing to the girls (who also spoke English). I decided to dissimulate. “They are both sweet in their own way, like apples and oranges.” I was trying to dodge the question without offending anyone. This received an approving laugh from Sherif, who then told Hiwa and me to retire to deal with our business at a separate table, alone.
What was going on? Clearly bringing along Sherif to the meeting was a signal of power, but its strength was ambiguous. Were Hiwa and Sherif just drinking friends, or was this a legitimate node of influence that Hiwa could use if we didn’t make amends with Team Four? We had mooted the idea of not paying the team anything on a phone call prior to the meet-up. We decided it would be better to play it safe and conciliate them, offering to pay for the legitimate surveys rather than playing hardball. Refusing to pay at all would have risked further infuriating Team Four’s leader and alienating Hiwa, who seemed to be trying to make nice. We reasoned that playing hardball would probably lead to a battle of influence between the academics and the renegade team. For example, there would have been a competition between us to reach decision makers within the peshmerga to stymie or allow the research to proceed. We wanted to conduct our research, not waste time waging a feud. So in the corner of a Kurdish hookah bar, I and Hiwa exchanged conciliatory words and some cash.
Then came a twist that I really wasn’t expecting: Hiwa offered to continue the research together with the two other team members who had not forged surveys. Was there a legitimate rift within Team Four, where the left hand didn’t know what the right was doing? Furthermore, why did they want to continue doing the research? As it was an economically trying time, perhaps they needed the money. However, we believed they had been instructed by someone to keep an eye on us foreigners and to make a report. In Iraq, like many other countries in the region, there is a strong informant culture, and one is never quite sure who is making reports to whom.1 Were they working for one of the political groups that had sanctioned our research, just to ensure that we were doing what we said we would? Or were they working for a foreign group, believing that we worked for the American government? Or were they simply cash-strapped students who wanted another chance after they had dropped the ball the first time?
Whatever the case, recalling the driver’s wise words, I told Hiwa I would call them if we decided to continue working in their province. Of course, we would continue, but I decided to equivocate. When I returned to Sherif, Apple, and Orange, Sherif greeted the news of the deal well. The next day, Kristin received a conciliatory email from the former leader of Team Four. We had lost some money and some time, but a major crisis was averted.
Within a few days, things were getting back on track. Our main local partner, who had recruited the other three survey teams but not this one, agreed to raise a new team in the now unmanned province. The new team leader was named Jihad; although it is a common name, it is a word that conjures negative associations for many Westerners. In contrast to the less sensationally named members of Team Four, however, Jihad was as honest as the sun was hot in an Iraqi summer. Moreover, he was an energetic and serious scholar who pushed his team to do an excellent job catching up, and the survey wound up being a success.
A few conclusions are in order, first, about avoiding survey falsification and, second, about how to navigate foreign power structures. Even in difficult conflict zones, many legitimate local scholars want to do good research and take pride in their work. We know many! But one can never be too cautious when it comes to survey monitoring, regardless of location.2 A host of electronic tools exist now to help verify enumerator compliance that did not exist even five years ago; we used Qualtrics and WhatsApp, but the options for researchers will surely multiply.3 Every researcher who wants to run a survey successfully should consider using tools like these if possible. It also is good practice for researchers to describe the safeguards they employed in any articles they write. Beyond that, however, there really is no substitute for physically visiting and monitoring a survey site unannounced. Showing up, seeing Team Four’s legitimate morning interviews, and then watching the peshmerga leave for the day ultimately confirmed what was happening with the wayward team beyond reasonable doubt. Have a stress-management plan (that doesn’t involve alcohol) in place if you have to do the uncomfortable work of firing people who both need the money and could harm you. Although my experience as a Marine had toughened me up a little, I still took a few days off to relax with friends in the mountains following the Team Four showdown.
Second, it is often hard to predict who will be the most reliable partners. The Western-educated leader of Team Four turned out to be duplicitous, whereas Jihad was someone we could trust with our lives. To this day, we don’t know what to make of Sherif’s presence at our final peace conference with Team Four; maybe it was a tacit threat as we feared, but Occam’s Razor would argue that the meeting could just be coincidental. These interactions aren’t just about logistics; with reflection, they can inform your research.4 Further illustrating the problems of identifying the ranks and roles of individuals, formal permission from the government was all we needed in some areas, but that counted for little in other areas; a call from an acquaintance cleared us through a check point when a letter from the minister of peshmerga affairs failed. In summary, researchers in conflict zones need to keep an open mind about everyone they meet—an open mind that the person could be an ally or an obstacle.
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Matthew Franklin Cancian is a PhD candidate in political science at MIT.
Kristin E. Fabbe is an assistant professor at Harvard Business School.
PUBLICATION TO WHICH THIS FIELDWORK CONTRIBUTED:
• Cancian, Matthew Franklin, and Kristin E. Fabbe, “Empathetic Enemies: Victimized Combatants and the Politics of Revenge and Forgiveness” (work in progress).
NOTES
1. See, for instance, Wendy Pearlman, “Narratives of Fear in Syria,” Perspectives on Politics 14, no. 1 (March 2016): 21–37.
2. Blaydes and Gullim point out special difficulties posed by religion in surveys in the Arab world, whereas Benstead argues that the problem is generalized: Lisa Blaydes and Rachel M. Gillum, “Religiosity-of-Interviewer Effects: Assessing the Impact of Veiled Enumerators on Survey Response in Egypt,” Politics and Religion 6, no. 3 (September 2013): 459–82; Lindsay J. Benstead, “Survey Research in the Arab World: Challenges and Opportunities,” PS: Political Science & Politics 51, no. 3 (July 2018): 535–42, https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096518000112.
3. For more on electronic surveying, see Lindsay J. Benstead, Kristen Kao, Pierre F. Landry, Ellen M. Lust, and Dhafer Malouche, “Using Tablet Computers to Implement Surveys in Challenging Environments,” Survey Practice 10, no. 2 (March 2017): 2781, https://doi.org/10.29115/SP-2017-0009.
4. See Sam D. Sieber, “The Integration of Fieldwork and Survey Methods,” American Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (May 1973): 1335–59, https://doi.org/10.1086/225467.