Lebanon just recognized that Iraqis staying there are refugees-as opposed to illegal immigrants. As far as I know they are the first Middle Eastern country to do so, since Turkey's refugee policy seems to only apply to Europeans.
Authorities destroy Karbala farms, displacing peasants.
Cholera crisis hits Baghdad.
"Of Iraq's widows, only 84,000 receive government support from the Ministry of Labour and Social Support -- between 50,000 and 120,000 Iraqi dinars -- $40-$95 -- a month." Out of an estimated 1-2 million.
Kurds impose limits on where Arabs can live.
1560 Palestinians are still stranded at the Iraqi-Syrian border and still face threats in Iraq. Who wants to break it to Angelina Jolie? [Last time, I promise.]
During the wave of Church attacks in January, apparently the spiritual leader of Iraq's Catholics claimed that he didn't believe they were about persecution so much as to show that Iraq was not at peace. In all honesty, I really don't know what to make of that.
Illiteracy is spreading rapidly among refugee children which isn't very surprising. Even where they are allowed to attend school books, transportation, and uniforms are still a financial burden. A recent IPSOS poll did show that enrollment had significantly increased among Iraqis in Syria during 2007, though lack of resources and documentation were still cited as by far the most common reasons for not being enrolled in school.
IWPR: Iraqi scholars reluctant to return.
Robert Fisk:
It's not difficult to create orphans in Iraq. If you're an insurgent, you can blow yourself up in a crowded market. If you're an American air force pilot, you can bomb the wrong house in the wrong village. Or if you're a Western mercenary, you can fire 40 bullets into the widowed mother of 14-year-old Alice Awanis and her sisters Karoon and Nora, the first just 20, the second a year older. But when the three girls landed at Amman airport from Baghdad last week they believed that they were free of the horrors of Baghdad and might travel to Northern Ireland to escape the terrible memory of their mother's violent death.
Alas, the milk of human kindness does not necessarily extend to orphans from Iraq – the country we invaded for supposedly humanitarian reasons, not to mention weapons of mass destruction. For as their British uncle waited for them at Queen Alia airport, Jordanian security men – refusing him even a five-minute conversation with the girls – hustled the sisters back on to the plane for Iraq.
"How could they do this?" their uncle, Paul Manouk, asks. "Their mum has been killed. Their father had already died. I was waiting for them. The British embassy in Jordan said they might issue visas for the three – but that they had to reach Amman first." Mr Manouk lives in Northern Ireland and is a British citizen. Explaining this to the Jordanian muhabarrat at the airport was useless.
