forget baghdad

the quiet american

2011-06-01T13:56:00.005-04:00

When’s the last time you talked about the Iraq War? It's a rare topic even in political conversations these days and has been steadily slipping from the news in favor of domestic concerns and, of course, Afghanistan.

U.S. combat troops have withdrawn, Bush and Blair’s memoirs are published and though we still hear of bombings and political struggles, it's become surprisingly easy to consider this 8-year-old war to be over.

But the war is nowhere near over for the refugees that I met in Syria. They keep close tabs on the situation next door, but none of the people I spoke with had any short-term plans to return—all of them cited fear and the lack of a stable future in Iraq as their reasons.

For most people in my generation the war has remained an abstraction; something many of us were "against" (in that we didn’t vote for Bush and we marched in a handful of protests) but that never really touched our lives. "Not My War" and "Not My President" were popular slogans over the past decade.

But when one Iraqi mother desperately trying to imagine some sort of future for her two teenage sons leaned in and asked me, point-blank, "Why did you do this?" I knew she didn't want to hear me tell her that I had, in fact, gone to like three different protests against the war.

I was the first American many of these people had met, and I felt a lot of pressure to say the right thing or offer sufficient answers to their questions (about the war, resettlement to America, the stability of U.S. refugee assistance and how their kids could go to college).

And then I realized that I wasn't supposed to being doing the talking: I was supposed to be listening.

And so I did a lot of listening. From a young artist whose life was threatened after painting portraits for American soldiers to a mother of three daughters and one autistic son who left Iraq when violence against Christians began to escalate. From a recently arrived family whose 9-year-old son had been kidnapped and tortured to a young man whose mother still has shrapnel in her leg from a suicide bombing in Baghdad in 2006.

From all that listening I began to realize how little my opinion about the war now matters. I considered all the toxic left-right politics over the past decade and how they have conveniently obscured a sense of responsibility among my peers, ironically encouraging us to disengage from the actions of our government instead of step up and do better.

And I began, with a mounting sense of panic, to realize that my generation might turn away from the consequences of a war we simply claimed "wasn’t ours"—consequences which are now best articulated in the millions of refugees scattered throughout the Middle East, and around the globe.

Back in the refugee center a few more people had ambled over, and the woman in the tan headscarf repeated her statement a little louder for their benefit. “I hate you and your country.”

I don’t think anyone has ever said “I hate you” straight to my face.

My body reacted to her words before my mind did. My stomach turned cold, shame burned in my chest (and face) and the hair on my arms and neck rose in a prickly wave of embarrassment.

But then I looked at her and I looked at all the faces gathering behind her and I multiplied that number over and over again until it radiated out across the city and the region and the oceans and the world.

"If you don’t want to talk to me I understand."

"No; I want to talk," she answered, offering me a piece of pink bubble gum.

"OK," I said. "I’m listening."

-Sarah Stuteville for Common Language Project. Photos by Alex Stonehill

2010-06-20T21:56:00.001-04:00

In 2007, ECRE and the Scottish Refugee Council found that there was growing
evidence that Iraqis, who have been refused asylum in the United Kingdom, are forced
into homelessness and destitution28. Anecdotal evidence from respondents suggests
that many Iraqis in London are to be found either living on the streets or are sharing
rooms with others and living on handouts, while some female Iraqis have turned to
prostitution to survive in London.

Other challenges and obstacles include a down-grading of status, language
difficulties, complex and confusing asylum policies and widespread Islamophobia.
The difficulties that many Iraqi asylum seekers face on arrival has a detrimental impact on health, and many Iraq entrants have suffered mental health problems in the two to three years after entry into Britain.29 (PDF)

UNHCR investigating deported Iraqi refugees claims that they were beaten by UK officials

2010-06-18T09:04:00.000-04:00

It just gets better and better:

Iraqis expelled from Britain showed bruises: UN

GENEVA — The UN refugee agency said Friday that some of the 42 Iraqis who claimed they were forcibly returned from Britain a day ago showed fresh bruises that could indicate possible mistreatment. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden against deporting Iraqi refugees to Baghdad, pointing to persistent security threats in central regions of the country. "We're also looking into the accounts of mistreatment among the rejected asylum seekers who were forcibly returned yesterday (Thursday) from the UK," said UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic.

Lawyers in Baghdad managed to interview 14 of the 42 men who were said to have been handled on Thursday by the UK Border Agency. "The men claim that they were beaten by agency personnel in the airport in London while being forced onto the plane. We've met with six of them and saw fresh bruises that indicated mistreatment could have occurred," he added. Mahecic told journalists that the remaining 36 are still being held at Baghdad airport. Eight of them had been contacted by telephone so far. "All of those interviewed reported that the 42 deportees were forcibly returned to Baghdad against their will," he said. "Our advice is still the one and the same, and that's that governments should not be sending back the Iraqi asylum applicants originating from the five central governorates in Iraq," including Baghdad, the UNHCR spokesman added. Mahecic said the agency was not informed by any of the governments involved about return flights to Iraq. British Prime Minister David Cameron defended the decision to send asylum seekers back to Iraq last week. Cameron said that British troops had fought to ensure that the country was safe enough for refugees to return and pointed to progress there.

Iraqi Government officials present at interviews of asylum seekers in the UK

2010-06-10T18:17:00.001-04:00

I had to watch the video multiple times to make sure I heard right. I was aware that the Iraqi government had been lobbying European governments to forcibly send Iraqi refugees back home, but this level of cooperation is unprecedented and really worrying.

Dozens of Iraqi refugees are being forced to go back home. The Netherlands, Britain, Norway and Sweden has rejected many asylum claims and what could be the first in a series of deportations took place on Wednesday. These countries argue that Iraq is now safe enough for those not facing specific threats to return. However, United Nation's High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) disagrees. It says the situation in Iraq is still volatile.

Iraqi artists visas to attend their own exhibition

2010-04-08T11:26:00.000-04:00

No surprise here:

"It was to be Britain's first comprehensive exhibition of contemporary art from Iraq since the first Gulf War, with a guest list including the Iraqi ambassador, the Foreign Secretary David Miliband MP and five of the war-torn country's most promising artists flown over for the occasion.

So it was dismaying for all parties to learn, less than a month before "Contemporary Art Iraq" was to open at Manchester's Cornerhouse Art Gallery, that the UK Border Agency had denied all five artists entry into the country.

The reason? They could provide no valid bank statements. Proof of financial stability and a bank account in the applicant's home country is a bureaucratic requirement for British visa authorities, but it is also, according to Iraqi experts, a very tall order in an occupied country with no banking infrastructure."

أوقفو الحجز التعسفي للاجئة العراقية يسرى العامري STOP THE ARBITRARY DETENTION OF THE IRAQI REFUGEE YUSRA ALAMIRI

2010-01-18T08:39:00.001-05:00

Reposted from Farfahinne.

An Iraqi refugee woman needs your help!
Her names is Yousra Al-Amiri and she has been detained since May 2009 in Lebanon. The General Security is refusing to release her although the judge ordered her release since 11/12/2009 and they are considering transferring her to Caritas shelter for trafficked woman.

This is a flagrant violation of refugee rights and of the independence of the judiciary! Detaining a person without legal grounds is a crime and Caritas shelter is not supposed to be a prison!

You can read the full details on her case in this article (in Arabic) published by Al-Akhbar http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/173323

Yousra needs your support!

Here is what you can do:
1. Contact the Ministry of Interior and request Yousra's release!

2. Contact Caritas Lebanese Migrants Center and express your refusal that the shelter becomes a prison!

3. Contact your Members of Parliament and request that they render all security forces accountable for such violations of personal freedoms!

4. Send this message to all your contacts!

I know you that some of you might be busy and may not have much time but the best would be to send quick sms and emails to the addresses below:

Ministry of Interior:
Phone: + 961-1-754200; + 961-1-751601; +961-751602
Fax: +961-1-750084
Email:info@moim.gov.lb

Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center
Phone: + 961-1-502550
Hotline: + 961-3-092538
Email: carimigr@inco.com.lb

اصدر القضاء منذ أكثر من شهر حكماً بإخلاء سبيل لاجئة عراقية فوراً.إلا أن الأمن العام اللبناني لم ينفّذ الحكم بل يعتقلها تعسفيا ضاربا قرار القاضي بالعرض. قال مديرها إنه «سيسلّمها إلى كاريتاس» اليوم...وهذا مستنكر ومرفوض تماما...

نعم لإطلاق سراح يسرى العامر الآآآآن

أرسلو الرسالة التالية على رقم كاريتاس 03092538:"بيت الأمان ليس بالسجن. أوقفو الإعتقال التعسفي للاجئة العراقية يسرى العامري عبر رفض نقلها الى بيت الأمان

EDIT: She's been freed.

2009-07-01T11:00:00.001-04:00

Just a reminder, only about five percent of the refugees have returned to date. From AJE:
Even if youre escaping the violence in Iraq, in Lebanon, youre not a refugee but an illegal immigrant on the run.

what the media's fetish for female suicide bomber stories doesn't tell us

2009-03-08T11:12:00.004-04:00

Two stories were pervasive with regards to Iraqi women at the time of the elections, the first was about women's participation in the elections due to a quota imposed on parties to run female candidates(which was also the case in all the elections since 2003 anyways), the second was about the arrest of a recruiter of female suicide bombers.

It's a third story that flew under the radar that is far more telling: that that same week Iraq's minister of women's affairs resigned in protest of the lack of resources to support "an army of widows, unemployed, oppressed and detained women". The Iraqi government estimates there are under 1 million widows in Iraq today but others say the number is closer to 2 million. According to Oxfam's report on Iraqi women over three quarters of widows are not receiving any kind of pension though they are entitled to it, with the majority citing bureaucratic complications or "not being allowed" as the reason. 35.5% of the total respondents said they were acting as the head of the household, many claiming they could not afford to provide water, food, electricity, education, or medical care for their families, while 27% said they were not pursuing education because they had to work to support themselves or their families, and 40% aren't sending their children to school. The survey also found that income levels worsened for 45% of women in 2008 compared to 2006 and 2007, and around 40% said their access to quality medical care had worsened in the same time period.

This was all happening the same year that the Iraqi government ran a budget surplus, to add insult to injury while so many widows cannot access a pension, instead of rectifying this situation the Maliki government responded by offering to pay $8500 to any man that marries a widow. Meanwhile around election time there were reports, that parties used the fear of cutting off aid to widows in their campaigning. Of those that were receiving monthly rations, 45% admitted they only received them intermittently, while the majority of women not receiving rations were because they had trouble having their rations cards transferred to their new place of residence after they were displaced.

Last year al-Amal's survey on the needs of the poor found that only 12.9% of the total polled received any aid whatsoever from the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs-the ministry responsible for helping the poor-while 9.3% received any assistance from the Ministry of Displacement and 68.5% received no aid at all: 40% of these families were headed by women, 2/3 of those being widows. Refugees International's 2008 report found there were widespread complaints of sectarian bias affecting the displaced's access to assistance(of both sects in areas where they were the minority,) with even electricity being unevenly available by area. According to the report even in best cases Iraqis report on only getting half the rationed items that they used to and that the quality of the items has declined. The report mentioned that at the time only $25 million of the IOM's $85 million appeal was actually funded while the UN assistance mission was criticized for its focus on immediate aid and excluding community assistance programs and local organizations who were unable to participate in defining the scope of the assistance projects because they didn't have a representative in Amman. The UN's slowness to respond(though by the time of its publication the report acknowledges it was beginning to) as well as the Iraqi government's corruption, inefficiency and just plain unwillingness to address the crisis left a huge vacuum of need that militias could fill forcing literally hundreds of thousands of people to be dependent on them for food, shelter, and electricity in the absence of a state.

Which brings me back to the first two stories in this post. Over the last year there was constant reporting and blog posts dedicated to female suicide bombers in Iraq. Some mentioned mental problems or the use of violence(sexual and otherwise) to persuade recruits but very few considered what other factors are making Iraqi women so vulnerable in the first place. And why would they consider that, as far as the media is concerned things have been going great in Iraq the past twelve months. The Guardian can't make up it's mind; the British say that Basrah is booming even as honor killings are on the rise.

...or such could be said of the coverage unill very recently.

The BBC drew a link between the new improved situation and the oppourtunities it's created for women in Iraq:

She estimates that 40% of all prostitutes in Iraq are widows. Improvements in security have certainly led to some shady opportunities for those who have lost their husbands and income. Nightclubs have started to reopen in Baghdad. We visited one of them. The scene would previously have been unthinkable.
...I talk to the singer who works there. He says women are employed just to dance and talk to the customers. But he tells me there are many other nightclubs in Baghdad where widows will leave with men for the right price.

NYT:

Officials at social service agencies tell of widows coerced into “temporary marriages” — relationships sanctioned by Shiite tradition, often based on sex, which can last from an hour to years — to get financial help from government, religious or tribal leaders. Other war widows have become prostitutes, and some have joined the insurgency in exchange for steady pay. The Iraqi military estimates that the number of widows who have become suicide bombers may be in the dozens.

In the past several weeks, even as the government has formed commissions to study the problem, it has begun a campaign to arrest beggars and the homeless, including war widows...Efforts to increase the government stipend for widows — currently about $50 a month and an additional $12 per child — have stalled. By comparison, the price of a five-liter container of gasoline, used for cars as well as home generators, is about $4.

Still, only about 120,000 widows — roughly one in six — receive any state aid, according to government figures. Widows and their advocates say that to receive benefits they must either have political connections or agree to temporary marriages with the powerful men who control the distribution of government funds. “It is blackmail,” said Samira al-Mosawi, chairwoman of the women’s affairs committee in Parliament. “We have no law to treat this point. Widows don’t need temporary support, but a permanent solution.”

I thought the quote in the same NYT article from the head of the children's charity was particularly apt:

Questioning the government’s priorities, he added, “They are busy building public fountains when we don’t have water in the sink.”

no, it's still not over

2009-02-22T23:28:00.001-05:00

2009-02-16T11:40:00.002-05:00

KQED interviewed professor Nadje Ai-Ali about her new book, What Kind of Liberation, and the legacy the war has left for Iraqi women.(thx Alex)

2009-02-07T09:33:00.002-05:00

But a dramatic increase in Sunni representation (commensurate with their aspirations) was always unlikely for one big reason: the clearly visible refusal to take serious measures to allow refugees or internally displaced persons to vote. IDPs were technically enfranchised, but the rule that they vote in their place of origin and the inefficiency of the bureaucracy ensured that few actually would. In September, Brian Katulis and I warned that failure to deal effectively with the IDP problem would "essentially ratify the country's new sectarian map" created by the bloody sectarian cleansing of 2006-07. According to IOM's authoritative surveys, about 64% of Iraqi displaced come from Baghdad -- and it is in Baghdad where the effects of their disenfranchisement are most being felt. With less than 10% (or even 20%) of the seats in the Baghdad council, Sunnis may well feel that this warning has come true.

I don't get why so few in the press (that I've seen anyways) factored the refugee population into why there was such a low voter turnout compared to previous years.

meanwhile...

2009-01-30T12:32:00.005-05:00

the thousands of minorities that have fled the country need to return, be re-integrated, and be protected. A small portion of Iraq’s four million plus refugees have begun going back to their homes and provinces. The UNHCR has recorded no minorities coming back however. In order for this to happen, they have to be assured of their safety first. This has not happened for those still in the country. The government also needs to deal with property disputes. Baghdad has started some policies on evicting squatters, but they are not being applied evenly. There is also not enough evidence yet that this is having any influence on whether Iraqis come back or not. The election law was also not something that would encourage minorities. If they don’t come back, then Iraq will be a less diverse and tolerant country the paper warns. When minorities leave, those left behind are often victimized making the whole situation worse.

If minorities do come back they need to be able to return to their original communities as well. This would be part of the process of reversing the sectarian cleansing that occurred from 2006 to 2007. If minorities, along with all the Sunnis and Shiites can’t return to their neighborhoods than Iraq will be a segregated nation. Families will be internally displaced living with friends or relatives where their group is the majority. Iraq could end up like Bosnia where international effort has led to a country that still has hundreds of thousands of displaced thirteen years after the Dayton Peace Accords.

read the whole post detailing how Iraq's religious minorities are being squeezed by both Arab and Kurdish political factions in the North and its part in their continued insecurity (Musings on Iraq blog.)
See also: Through the Cracks (The National)
The US Commission on International Religious Freedom December 2008 Report

who's the hypocrite, exactly?

2008-12-26T20:52:00.001-05:00

While bloggers are still expressing outrage over a dude who threw a shoe I'd just like to point out that Iraq was ranked the deadliest country for press for the sixth year in a row by the Committee to Protect Journalists, though there was a dropoff in the alltime high number of fatalities of journalists working in the country in both 2006 and 2007, which is not surprising. The challenges they face was also the subject of this timely video from Alive in Baghdad. Meanwhile on the day of the actual incident Human Rights Watch released a damning report on the Iraqi criminal justice system. Yet on that day and almost two weeks later the detractors still complain that the world is obsessing over the wrong things as they write more and more posts analyzing to death that exact same thing.

2008-12-22T09:46:00.004-05:00

Open democracy Podcast has interviews on the subject of Iraqi women refugees in Syria, with groups that try to meet their needs and refugee women discussing the problems they face. IRIN also reported last month that blocking some rice imports to the country meant that many Iraqis were getting reduced rations.

(For people interested in the subject the podcast is part of a series on interviews with activists trying to improve women's status in Syria and Lebanon, the rest here, here and here. Their definition of women's rights does not seem to include mailorder brides, BTW.)

2008-10-21T17:56:00.003-04:00

While the Iraqi government is encouraging return of displaced Iraqis back to their home country the UNHCR and other NGOs are still clear that the conditions on the ground are not adequate for them to return. The 2008 BBC documentary The Hard Way Home follows three Iraqi families in Syria and their attempts to survive and navigate the bureaucracy of aid.

Here are parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

fewer iraqis seeking asylum

2008-10-20T20:45:00.006-04:00

Was the headline of a story about a 10% decrease since the previous year, according to the LA times, but still keeping their status as the single largest group of asylum seekers.

Yet for some reason this summer Germany moved for EU member countries to postpone increasing their intake of Iraqi refugees untill September.

fear of iraqi refugees in sweden, absence in britain

2008-05-28T11:14:00.008-04:00

Not that I'm not glad that someone is talking about Iraqi refugees' issues still, but it'd be nice if the same amount of attention paid to Sweden was paid to the situation in places like Britain, but I understand that it's way harder to film absence.

A total of 39,610 Iraqis applied for asylum in European countries in 2007-50% more than in the previous year, still making up the single largest group of asylum seekers in Europe, but the numbers accepted don't seem to be changing significantly. According to an ECRE report 295 Iraqis in the Middle East were referred to the UK for resettlement in 2007, of these referrals UNHCR has records for 24 actual departures to the UK. UK officials have stated they'd like like to bring 200 Iraqis over per year in addition to the 600 UK employees they are planning to accept over a two year period, but that still hasn't materialized into reality. According to the report Finland(127,) the Netherlands(125,) Ireland(200) and Sweden(732) were all able to resettle Iraqis referred by UNHCR in larger numbers-even on top of all the Iraqis that are being smuggled into the country as of late, even on top of the fact that it recieved ten times the number of Iraqi asylum applications the UK did last year, Sweden still managed to resettle more than 30 times the number of UNHCR referrals that the UK did.

At this rate Britain might also be outdone by American efforts at helping a different kind of Iraqi. Baghdadpups has been helping US forces who have befriended Iraqi animals on their tour and just can't leave them behind, and will rescue your animal of choice from tough Baghdad streets and bring it to the safety of an American home for the low low price of $4000(US.) Each. The site operates solely on donations from the public and to date they have raised enough money to rescue at least 14 dogs and cats which are featured on their site so far, brought over in the four months since February 08, with claims of many more to come whose identity will be revealed once they have arrived in the US. If they can keep up this rate it'll put the satire at dogoriraqi.com on a whole other level.

ECRE also bashes the EU European Border Management Agency (FRONTEX) for trying to keep Iraqis from entering their territory, failing to distinguish between refugees and other types of migrants, targeting Iraqis considered "illegal immigrants" and attempting to prevent their migration by increasingly dangerous journeys while the legal avenues for Iraqis to migrate are becoming more difficult. Since November 2003 Germany removed refugee status for some 18,000 Iraqis it had granted during Saddam's reign, though last year Germany had one of the higher rates of accepting Iraqi asylum seekers at 85%, up from 11% in 2007. As well forced returns are still happening from the UK, Poland, Greece and Italy, as they now are happening in Sweden. Sweden took in over 18,000 Iraqis in 2007, almost half the total number of asylum applications in Europe, Germany took in the second largest amount at under 4000, but every other European country accepted Iraqis in the hundreds, if at all. If most of Europe had taken on even one tenth the burden that Sweden did(and if the countries that actually started this war would take on more than that,) we might not see Iraqis being deported from there today.

iraq action days in august

2008-05-05T10:38:00.001-04:00

Education for Peace in Iraq Centre-EPIC, the people that organized the Iraq Action Days conference in April are planning Home District Action Days in August, to pressure the American government to step up its response to the humanitarian crisis. You can sign up to get more info here.

You can also sign their pledge:

WE BELIEVE that the people of Iraq and the United States are interconnected by events over the past five years, and that far more is needed to help Iraqi families who are displaced or otherwise affected by violence in Iraq.

WE CALL ON President Bush, Members of Congress, and presidential candidates to do far more to:
Strengthen humanitarian assistance to the region;
Support effective relief, peacebuilding, and community-based development in Iraq; and
Increase U.S. admissions and expedite resettlement of vulnerable Iraqi refugees.

WE COMMIT ourselves to help millions of Iraqis in need of humanitarian relief and protection and to make a better, safer world for the people of Iraq and the United States.

iraqi prisoners riot in bulgaria

2008-05-05T09:19:00.001-04:00

Bulgaria's news agency reports:
A riot broke up in the Bulgarian prison for temporary detention of illegally staying foreign citizens near Busmanci.

Around 13 o'clock six Iraqi citizens and a few other prisoners barricaded themselves in one of the building's corridors. Shortly after that the police arrived at the scene.

The prisoners set a mattress afire during the riot, but the smoke in the closed hall made them come out and surrender to the police.

The rioters are six Iraqi citizens, who were to be extradited tomorrow through Hungary, then to Syria, and from there to Iraq. The Hungarian authorities denied issuing them transit visas, so the whole journey was pushed back to April 30th.

Apparently the delay is the reason for the unrest. The six Iraquis were caught trying to cross Bulgaria's borders more than a month ago.

Found via sursock.

number of IDPs on the rise

2008-04-08T07:29:00.005-04:00

Anyone surprised?

BAGHDAD, 3 April 2008 (IRIN) - A new international report says that on 20 March there were some 2,778,305 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq. Hitherto the figure of 2.2 million IDPs in Iraq had been widely publicised.

The 21-page report - produced by IDP Working Group members consisting of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), other UN Agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - is based on data gathered by the IDP Working Group, and information from the Iraqi Ministry of Displacement and Migration, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the International Committee of the Red Cross and other NGOs.

For the report check the IRIN link.

It probably won't surprise anyone that trauma and health problems are more common among refugees than the general populace, IRIN recently also reported that Iraqi refugees in Egypt were found to be in much worse health than refugees from other areas:

"Stress caused by bad news from back home, by lack of funds, employment or education opportunities, has caused an increase in cases of heart disease and diabetes," Ahlam said.

Iraqi refugees, she said, had a higher rate of medical problems compared to other refugee populations, such as the Sudanese and Somalis. Iraqi children also had health problems unique to their population, which Ahlam believed were attributable to radioactive waste left over from Iraq's war with Iran and the first Gulf War in 1991.

Human horror stories exist among Iraqi refugees - from women who have lost their power of speech due to shock, to children with stunted growth, to young boys who are losing their hearing or sight. One person has a congenital disease and is losing mobility due to deteriorating brain membranes, Ahlam said.

"In other refugee communities congenital diseases are very rare - maybe we find an abnormality of one in a 100," she said. "Among the Iraqis, I see them in the tens."

Psychiatric problems

Psychiatric problems are also a growing cause for alarm within the Iraqi population in Egypt, Etefa said. Post-traumatic stress is increasingly becoming a problem.

"There certainly are an increased number of cases that have psychological problems because they are survivors of violence or they were kidnapped," Etefa said.

These may seem trifling compared to physical deformities, but the mental health of the refugees is a much neglected area.

Poverty among the Iraqi refugees is exacerbating their health problems, and the fact that non-governmental organisations - including Africa and Middle East Refugee Assistance (AMERA) and Caritas - have limited funds, has meant many have had to fend for themselves. The UNHCR also has budget limitations, Etefa said.

There's so much talk of these people being essential to rebuilding the country, however for them to be in the condition to requires international support. With that in mind I'll leave you with this piece from Witness' "Return to Iraq" special from Syria.

links for march 26, 2008

2008-03-26T17:14:00.004-04:00

The first deportation was March 11th-short report from NPR on Sweden's decision to deport failed Iraqi asylum seekers.

Kristele Younes of Refugees International answers questions on Iraqi refugees for Washington post. She recently came back from Syria and has reported back on her findings.

Iraqi Student Project-initiative to help Iraqis study in the US that would otherwise not be able to.

Canada to increase number of Iraqis taken in this year-to 2000.

Letter from Human Rights Watch to Lebanese authorities.

Leave or starve: chances of an Iraqi getting asylum in Britain are slim if they were not employed by UK forces.

Corruption fills passport offices-via Alive in Baghdad.

AUC page dedicated to the stories of Iraqi refugees in Egypt.

food for thought

2008-03-23T21:37:00.010-04:00

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) argued that with the military troop buildup having bolstered security in Iraq, "I don't think it's the time that we should be accelerating our refugee efforts. . . . Now is the time that we should be calling on the refugees from Iraq to go home."

Referring to funds the State Department is sending to Jordan to support refugees, Rohrabacher said: "It is not the job of the people of the United States to subsidize the existence and living standards of refugees in Jordan or anywhere else if they have the option of going home."
...
The Baghdad government encouraged 46,000 refugees in Syria to return in November and December, offering free transportation and $800 for resettlement. But 70 percent of those who responded could not return to their homes, which had been destroyed or occupied by others or lacked basic services.

It's interesting for the purposes of this blog to note the shift in the media's attention on the issues as of late, supposedly 3% of the stories filed in the American press were about Iraq so far this year. It's a little funny that as we're told we're sick of talking about Iraq now and one of the most pressing issues relating to the war is the millions of Iraqis looking for refuge being kept out of the US, the issue that has been dominating the American press is...immigration. Much of the coverage, unfortunately, comes at the subject from a negative angle. According to Al Jazeera (eng) a study late last year found that it was the most discussed issue in the election campaigns: 26% of campaign coverage was about illegal immigration, and discussion about it took up 15% of the debates, more than any other issue. However, in polling immigration actually ranked 4th in Americans' list of priorities, following the economy, health, and the Iraq war which actually ranked highest among voter concerns at the time.

silence equals death

2008-03-23T11:07:00.004-04:00

[Paulos Faraj Rahho's] death is the latest in a string of attacks on churches, priests and lay Christians.

In January, bombs exploded outside three Chaldean and Assyrian churches in Mosul, two churches in Kirkuk and four in Baghdad.

The attacks seem to have been co-ordinated all over the country to occur at roughly the same time. And this was not the first time violence had come close to Archbishop Rahho.

Last June, his secretary, a priest called Ragheed Ganni, was shot dead in his church along with three of his companions.

If this is news to you, you are not alone. Last January you would be very hardpressed to find any mention of these church attacks amongst all the debate about how great the surge was going, when you could find any Iraq coverage at all. Unsurprisingly they weren't mentioned in LA Times' article on the Archbishop's death either. However Iraq's minorities continue to be persecuted, and it's clear from these bombings and now the kidnapping and murder that it not simply a matter of the general insecurity in the country (just ask a Mandean, if you can find one.) It's incredibly tragic that something like this had to happen for the world to finally pay attention.

you forgot poland sweden

2008-03-15T16:16:00.008-04:00

On PBS the other day, Nir Rosen was adamant that the civil war would restart, but this time when it did, new refugees would have nowhere to flee to.

It's often forgotten that a factor affecting the reduction of the numbers of newly displaced is also a symptom of a reduction in the number of choices Iraqis have of places to flee to. As neighbouring countries have closed their borders to Iraqis, so has Kurdistan, numerous other Iraqi provinces, and now Sweden has had enough of the Iraqi invasion. Iraqis and Swedes had a good run for a while, Sweden has had by far the biggest influx of Iraqi refugees outside of the Middle Eastsince the war began, they (a country with a total population of nine million) took in 18,600 Iraqis last year alone, ten times the number the US did last year.

That era has come to an end as the Swedish government has recently decided that Iraqis entering Sweden will now have to prove their case for personally being in danger to qualify for asylum, and that being from central or southern Iraq alone is not enough of a reason. This means that in January of 2008 42% of asylum applicants were allowed to stay in Sweden, as opposed to 93% in January 2007. Not only that, but the Swedish and Iraqi governments have signed a deal stating that Sweden can forcibly send back failed asylum seekers.

As an aside, there was an interesting line in that article from a US homeland security official who was quoted as saying that the majority of Iraqis rejected for aslyum there were for "security, medical or other reasons," I'd be very curious to know what exactly those medical reasons are.

2008-02-27T13:03:00.004-05:00

On April 4th a massive forum will be held in Washington DC on Law and Public policy with respect to Iraqi refugees, held by Villanova University. It's free but requires pre-registration, details are here.

Found via the excellent Immigration Prof Blog.

i stand corrected

2008-02-20T18:44:00.003-05:00

Some Iraqis are having better luck at getting into the US. Finally!

links for february 20th, 2008

2008-02-20T14:39:00.027-05:00

Some are new stories, some not so much:

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.

iraqis in jordan and the cost of return-part 27326

2008-02-14T23:19:00.023-05:00

Catharsis/whatever he's calling himself now/an Iraqi blogger living in Jordan has a post on the Jordanian government cutting subsidies for fuel in the middle of what's been an especially harsh winter, not just for Jordan but the MENA region in general, causing heating costs to go through the roof. Meanwhile salaries were raised for government workers which, of course, doesn't help a lot of people including Iraqis living entirely off their savings there. At the same time fines for Iraqis overstaying their visa limits were dropped (or reduced??) to encourage them to return(these would have been paid upon their exit from the Kingdom.) However, there seem to be a few exceptions that were never subject to them:

There is a category of Iraqis in Jordan that have legal residency permits that enable them to travel and return again to Jordan whenever they want.
Part of that category is represented by Iraqi businessmen and investors that obtained legal residency permits in Jordan after making deposits of 75 – 100 thousand U.S. dollars in bank accounts based in that country. The other portion of this category are Iraqis hired, according to formal contracts, by Jordanian, Arab, or International organizations that operate in Jordan, such as Iraqi physicians and college professors

Good to know-though not very surprising. Regardless, there doesn't appear to be any respite from arrest or deportation, the same post details the continuing crackdown on non-wealthy Iraqis trying to live in the Kingdom, and that some of their employers pre-emptively firing them in anticipation of being searched by Jordanian authorities. Last of Iraqis recently posted about another rejection by customs in Amman despite having the paperwork for his visit and intending to only stay briefly on the way to London, which is an old story but still a heartbreaking one and his post is very strongly recommended reading.

Like I mentioned in the post below, Refugees International has criticized the Iraqi government not only for not doing enough to assist its citizens but also encouraging neighbouring countries to close their borders. Meanwhile the government continues organizing buses for those that want to return from Syria, and is now offering to pay half your plane fare from Beirut. Money (and the lack of it) remains a main motivator for returnees, not a perception of reduced danger. Noah Merrill also points out that returnees are expected to be accompanied by government forces, which may also be a factor in fear of returning as many were originally displaced by militia members that had infiltrated the Iraqi forces.

Finally, Iraq's IDPs really don't get nearly enough attention so here's a brief report on some trying to survive in Sadr city. Angelina Jolie may or may not know they exist.

still think the US' slow resettlement is an issue of logistics and not political will?

2008-02-14T11:47:00.007-05:00

The U.S. fell far short of its promise to permanently resettle 7,000 vulnerable Iraqis in the 2007 fiscal year.

# of Refugees Resettled in FY2007
Burma 13,896
Somalia 6,969
Iran 5,481
Iraq 1,608

Is the UNHCR in Burma or Somalia really that much better organized? Somehow I doubt it. Paul Rosensweig(sp?,) US government official told NPR last October, that he personally is not in a position to say a Burmese is any more or less deserving than an Iraqi to get in the US. Okay, but somebody obviously decided last year that they are nine times as deserving, so what gives? When the UNHCR did its part and referred more than 14000 Iraqis for resettlement to the US government last year alone, and the wait's an issue even for translators that have already been screened for security purposes, what's the excuse then?

The entire briefing by Refugees International should be read. They estimate almost a 5th of Iraq's population are now displaced and the UNHCR is (again) short of the resources necessary to effectively assist Iraqis, which last year amounted to about $30 per person. Criticism is also heavily on the Iraqi government for not aiding neighbouring countries enough, nor had it been doing such a great job with the millions displaced inside Iraq:

The Government of Iraq has finally provided $25 million to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to help meet the needs of Iraqi refugees in these countries. Yet, despite numerous requests from neighboring countries for more involvement, the Iraqi Government has failed to deliver additional assistance. Instead, the Government has actively encouraged a policy of returns, by asking neighboring countries to close their borders, providing financial incentives to refugee families, and issuing non-exit stamps when refugees return to Iraq. Similarly, the Government of Iraq’s inability to manage the Public Distribution System of food has led millions of displaced Iraqis inside the country to lose the only assistance they were receiving. Despite billions of dollars remaining in its national budget, the Iraqi Government is spending an extremely small amount to assist its internally and externally displaced populations.

uh, thanks, i guess?

2008-02-09T19:44:00.000-05:00

if it takes Angelina Jolie to attract attention to the plight of Iraqi refugees and displaced persons, then blessings upon Angelina Jolie. There's hardly an Arab newspaper or Western wire service which hasn't run a picture of Jolie's visit to Baghdad to raise awareness of the issue. That's a welcome change for a humanitarian disaster and a major political issue which rarely gets the attention it deserves. In the US debate, when it comes up it is usually over the marginal issue of whether America is granting visas to a few thousand former employees. The real issue is the 4-5 million Iraqis which the UN estimates have been displaced since 2003.

It's so easy to make fun of this kind of publicity, but I really couldn't agree more right now. The problem is that first "if" in that paragraph is a huge one. While the words spoken were calling for attention to Iraq's refugees, it's irritating that the cameras weren't following along:

If you were flipping through your paper and saw these pictures, what would you think was the subject of this story? Maybe you'd think Jolie was entertaining the troops, most likely a gargantuan humanitarian crisis would not come to mind. Out of sight, and slipping further out of public consciousness.

more iraqis leaving for syria than returning home in january

2008-02-07T02:23:00.000-05:00

Definitely one of the more frustrating aspects of the narrative of a success of the surge is that it encouraged the neglect of still severe humanitarian crisis, not to mention the perception that the displacement crisis is on the wane.

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqis are once again leaving Iraq for Syria in greater numbers than are returning, despite the lower level of bloodshed in their homeland, the UN refugee agency said on Wednesday.

A report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, citing Syrian immigration officials, said that in late January an average of 1,200 Iraqis entered Syria every day compared with around 700 who returned.

Most of those Iraqis who return say they are doing so because their Syrian visas have expired or because they have run out of money, rather than because conditions in their homeland have improved, the report said.

"The UNHCR has observed that the return movement to Iraq that increased immediately after the imposition of new visa regulations appears to have subsided," the report, which was sent to AFP in Baghdad, concluded.

first world "problems"

2008-01-17T14:11:00.000-05:00

Mike Huckabee used the volatile situation in Pakistan Friday to make an argument for building a fence on the American border with Mexico and found himself trying to explain a series of remarks about Pakistanis and their nation.

On Thursday night he told reporters in Orlando, Fla.: “We ought to have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our borders and particularly to make sure if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country.”

On Friday, in Pella, Iowa, he expanded on those remarks.

“When I say single them out I am making the observation that we have more Pakistani illegals coming across our border than all other nationalities except those immediately south of the border,” he told reporters in Pella. “And in light of what is happening in Pakistan it ought to give us pause as to why are so many illegals coming across these borders.”

In fact, far more illegal immigrants come from the Philippines, Korea, China and Vietnam, according to recent estimates from the Department of Homeland Security.

There's a few things you could get out of this story. You could just say that it's a general reflection of hysteria and fear that's not just the domain of people like Tom Tancredo, which really we all knew anyways. But someone like Tancredo, a lone congressman who regularly spews racist hate, is just doing what's expected of him; that someone like Huckabee who's very carefully watched and coached about what he says and is seeking mainstream success, still very publically came out and said something like this in the middle of campaigning worries me more, and suggests that either a) he believes that's what the vast majority of his constituents want to hear b) he has people advising him that actually believed that this is right. The sentiment may not be surprising, but the singling out of Pakistanis as a "problem" in America so shortly after the Bhutto assassination and subsequent riots were all over the news, and not, say, any people from neighbouring countries, speaks for itself about the connections people make between what they see on tv and their opinion of whole peoples, regardless of how incredibly wrong they are. Even when the scraps of information they have have absolutely nothing to do with the conclusions that they're drawing.

I was thinking about this when I was listening to the American officials' security concern about Iraqis in the US. Also when I was looking at the comments on this story:

Over on Fox, it's not enough that the US keeps Iraqis out, it's an outrage that anybody in the Western hemisphere is accepting them, cause what other possible reason would Iraqis have for wanting to come over there than to eventually get into America and cause "problems?"

france's new resistance movment

2008-01-17T13:16:00.000-05:00

Sweden's $300 million Iraqi refugee trafficking business

2007-12-21T13:13:00.000-05:00

"If I knew that the way would be so difficult, Ninip says, I would never have had taken this way. I might as well have got killed home in Iraq."

Leyla and Ninip made it all the way -- but they were beaten on the way and feared for their lives.

70 A Day

Their story is fairly typical. We can certify that after reading a series of preliminary investigations, reports from Europol, Interpol, and the UN border agency Frontex, spoken to the Swedish Migration Board, the UN refugee agency, and police officers, been to trials and talked to numerous people who have been smuggled and are trying to make it to Sweden. There is a clear picture.

This year alone over 20,000 Iraqis will come to Sweden -- most of them with the help of smugglers, according to Swedish and European police. Around 70 people come here illegally -- every day. Since every smuggling usually costs around 12-15,000 dollars, the business turnover is around 2 billion Swedish crowns this year.

To Ninip and Leyla, the whole trip to Sweden cost 30,000 dollars in total, a bit more than 200,000 crowns -- but then food and accommodation along the road was at their own expense.

The criminal offence of smuggling of human beings is not given a high priority to by the Swedish police. The punishments are usually very light. Most of the work of the police is not co-ordinated over the country. But during the work of Kaliber, it becomes apparent that 30 to 35 loosely put together smuggling networks work from within Sweden. They buy the services they need on the spot: someone driving between Turkey and Greece; someone who can forge different types of passports and identifications; someone working at the airport in Athens, Milan, Munich or Paris, and who can get into the transit hall with new tickets and passports.
...
Deceived Several Times

Another refugee, Mohammed, is a Sunni Muslim and was threatened to death by Mujahideen, the Islamic militia in his home district of Dora in Baghdad. He does not dare to meet us in public, so we meet in a lumber room behind a café. Five times Mohammed has tried to escape to Europe, but has been left by the smugglers on the road between Turkey and Greece.

He has had the maximum of bad luck. Three times he has been left at the border and been arrested. Twice he succeeded in passing the border, but the promised truck did not show up. No trucks came. He had been deceived by the smugglers. They had bluffed. Every time he was arrested he had to spend ten days in custody. Every time he lied, and said that he was a Palestinian. Had he said the truth, that he was an Iraqi, he would have been deported.

Now Mohammed tries to earn money for yet another trip, but it is hard because the prices are increasing all the time. There is no guarantee that he will not be deceived once again, because deceiving desperate refugees has also become a business. We meet many -- both in Damascus and in Sweden -- who have been deceived by smugglers, or people claiming to be smugglers, into paying large sums of money.

"I will do anything"

But the trips are getting more and more expensive, something that Hana assures us. Her old mother is left in Iraq, and needs extra help on the way. Then it will cost 20,000 dollars, says one of the smugglers she has contacted.

And how will she obtain that?

"I will do anything to get her here. Anything. I can work as a slave. I do not want to reach this level, but there are women who sell their bodies," he says.

In Damascus itself desperation is increasing. Because what can one do when one's savings are ending? And everything is getting more expensive -- the rent, the food, the medicine. People do everything in order to survive -- a women tells us that her brother sold his kidney -- and now the operation scar is infected, and she is afraid that he will die.

An Iraqi we meet got the price of his trip reduced by smuggling diamonds.

"I only had 6,000 dollars. He told me that it cost 12,000, but that I could get help if I brought diamonds with me to Sweden. If anything should be missing, he warned, think about your family home in Iraq. Think about their safety."

Taken from a Swedish radio report transcribed and translated by AINA, found via Healing Iraq blog.

so apparently

2007-12-16T23:02:00.000-05:00

Financial desperation isn't just bringing Iraqis back into Iraq; many foreign labourers brought there are not even being told by the contractors hiring them that that is their destination.

extremely important internet news

2007-12-16T18:40:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to see that the facebook group "Syria without Iraqis" has just been successfully shut down. For the chronically curious some of the hateful stuff posted there was preserved here. Now if only facebook would get unblocked in Syria people would know. This group wasn't the first of its kind, last summer we had the "We hate Iraqis" group that also no longer exists.

These tensions that have been going on for a while and their implications are a massive subject, one I've posted about before but haven't done justice to lately, being overwhelmed with all the madness going on (or not going on) in the US and the supposed mass returns of late-but thankfully others have.

Speaking of which:

When the Iraqi government last month invited home the 1.4 million refugees who had fled this war-ravaged country for Syria -- and said it would send buses to pick them up -- the United Nations and the U.S. military reacted with horror.

U.N. refugee officials immediately advised against the move, saying any new arrivals risked homelessness, unemployment and deprivation in a place still struggling to take care of the people already here. For the military, the prospect of refugees returning to reclaim houses long since occupied by others, particularly in Baghdad, threatened to destroy fragile security improvements.

"It's a problem that everybody can grasp," said a senior U.S. diplomat here. "You move back to the house that you left and find that somebody else has moved into the house, maybe because they've been displaced from someplace else. And it's even more difficult than that, because in many cases the local militias . . . have seized control and threw out anybody in that neighborhood they didn't like."

I want this crisis resolved as much as anyone but is there really much doubt that this move was much more than an exercise in PR?

yes, money is still an issue

2007-12-07T15:56:00.000-05:00

There's a new petition, the Iraqi International Initiative, which calls for Iraq's oil revenue to be allocated to let Iraqis outside of Iraq live in dignity, the full text of the proposal is here. About one third of Iraqis living in Syria said they were skipping meals to feed their children, about 60% said they were buying cheaper, less nutrititious food to get by, and the World Food Program, which feeds about 50,000 Iraqis in Syria doesn't have the funds to maintain its current operation. Christian Science Monitor also pointed out the other day that aid is still shrinking while the need is on the increase, reporting that the UN emergency fund for Iraqi children only has collected $33.8 million US, about a third of what it needs for the year.

The petition has a lot of prominent supporters; one of them, Denis Halliday, former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, also had this to say on the subject:

Demanding of our attention and action today is the terrible plight of Iraqi refugees, both those outside the country and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They number to date a fifth of the Iraqi population.

This tragic human dislocation has been created by the active violation of the UN Charter and other aspects of international law. This violation was demonstrated during the American terrorism of “Shock and Awe”, and the invasion of sovereignty, disruption of culture, destruction of civilian infrastructure that it entailed and epitomised. Irreparable damage to society and fundamental human rights has ensued. This outrageous unprovoked act of aggression brought to Iraq yet again the horrors of war. Bush and Blair’s pre-emptive strike has led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Current credible estimations put the figure at over one million since 2003.
...
the initiative recognises that the refugees and internally displaced of Iraq, as citizens of Iraq, have a right to access national financial resources from oil revenue. And I believe that all of us who care about justice and peace need to provide active support. As a group, or as individuals, there is a role for each one of us.

The website www.3iii.org reminds us that the international community and the present government in Baghdad have legal obligations to support and protect refugees and the internally displaced adequately. (See the terms of reference of the UNHCR). Iraqi refugees are no different to others, and have equal rights under international provisions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to dignity, the right of return, safety for their families, employment, security, and the right to life.
...
Just as Iraq has and continues to pay billions of dollars in reparations through the UN for damage in Kuwait, it is clear that similar, although much greater, reparations are due to the people of Iraq. Thus in addition to Iraq's own revenues for refugees, I propose for consideration by public opinion that the Security Council be urged by the governments of member states of the General Assembly to endorse a resolution requiring the payment of an immediate advance on such reparations. I speak of the reparations that the US, UK and others involved in the war of aggression on Iraq must be forced to pay.

It is difficult to determine the size, but reparations from the US and others would seem to require some 2-3 trillion euros. We of the EU, UK, US, Australia, Canada and other wealthy collaborators -- aggressive nations all -- cannot be excused. Reparations are a must. The same UN that failed to stop Bush and Blair now has an obligation to determine the amount of reparations, and how and when payments begin. We cannot bring back the Iraqi lives we have taken, but we can support reconstruction and the return of refugees and IDPs, and the rebuilding of millions of shattered lives.

Full article here.

His argument is crucial. It's also a point that's been completely lost in the debate over whether the coalition should stay or leave. As the war is at its lowest point in popularity since its commencement, for some reason the parameters of debate are limited to whether it would be better to leave now or 12 months from now.

If you recognize that this war was immoral and illegal, and a humanitarian catastrophe was brought about because of it, with that comes the acceptance of responsibility. That doesn't change if the war lasts 5 and a half instead of six and a half years. I have heard very little talk in the past few years from anyone-including from the anti-war movement-especially from Democrats who almost unanimously voted for the war in the first place-regarding, after all this, what exactly America owes Iraq and Iraqis. I think it's a lot more than a cease and desist order. That is a discussion I'd love to see happen this coming election year, but I won't hold my breath.

overflow

2007-12-07T15:22:00.001-05:00

sign of the times

2007-12-04T16:19:00.000-05:00

Iraq and Syria set up a joint bank so Iraqis can easier access their pensions in Syria.

Three players and the assistant coach of the Iraqi football team are seeking asylum in Australia.

UNHCR says the situation in Iraq is still volatile and doesn't recommend promoting, organizing or encouraging the return of refugees.

The number of Iraqis seeking asylum in the UK has doubled in the last 3 months:
In the first nine months of this year, 9,900 failed asylum seekers and their dependents were removed, down from 14,170 for the same period in 2006.

Halt all UK deportations to Iraq, says a bunch of human rights groups. Apparently the UK's program of resettlement for Iraqi translators is only supposed to be for a maximum of 650 people over 2 years? Amazing.

Maps:
Iraq's IDPs by governate
Iraq's post-Samarra bombing IDPs by governate of origin

politics of bodycounts

2007-12-03T20:57:00.000-05:00

NYT has another article which brings up that the Iraqi government estimates of returnees in October is based on the total number of Iraqis crossing the border:

“We didn’t ask them if they were displaced and neither did the Interior Ministry,” said Sattar Nowruz, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration.

As a result, the tally included Iraqi employees of The New York Times who had visited relatives in Syria but were not among the roughly two million Iraqis who have fled the country.

The figures apparently also included three people suspected of being insurgents arrested Saturday near Baquba in Diyala Province. The police described them as local residents who had fled temporarily to Syria, then returned.

Some Iraqi lawmakers said that overly broad figures were being used intentionally.

“They are using this number because they want to show that Maliki is succeeding,” said Salim Abdullah, a lawmaker and member of the largest Sunni bloc, known as the Accordance Front, referring to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. “But this does not make the number correct. I think dozens of Iraqis return home daily, but not 1,600.”

Yet those that are returning to Iraq are still afraid to go home, and still displaced. The effect of visa restrictions in neighbouring countries is also noted:

A United Nations survey released last week, of 110 Iraqi families leaving Syria, also seemed to dispute the contentions of officials in Iraq that people are returning primarily because they feel safer.

The survey found that 46 percent were leaving because they could not afford to stay; 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security.

Underscoring a widely held sense of hesitation, many of those who come back to Iraq do not return to their homes. Clambering off the bus on Sunday, a woman who gave her name as Um Dima, mother of Dima, said that friends were still warning her not to go back to her house in Dora, a violent neighborhood in south Baghdad. So for now, she said, she will move in with her parents in southern Iraq.

Raad al-Kihani, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Baghdad and supporter of the prime minister, said that most people returning were still restricted by the fear of sectarian violence. “There are no Shiite families moving back to Sunni neighborhoods and no Sunnis moving back to Shiite neighborhoods,” he said.

security for who?

2007-11-23T23:28:00.000-05:00

Forty one percent of foreign militants found in Iraq in the last year were from Saudi Arabia.
So I guess Saudi Arabia's 550 mile fence on their Iraqi border, patrols, and other security precautions are only supposed to be effective against Iraqis. Interestingly enough Yemeni nationals were the third largest group among foreign fighters, who would also need to get through the same Saudi-Iraqi border, not to mention past their own border with Saudi Arabia. 56 were Syrian and zero were Lebanese, which were previously thought to make up a fifth of all foreign militants.

Too bad this didn't make Al Jaz English's Walls of Shame series.

to put things in perspective

2007-11-21T11:26:00.000-05:00

BAGHDAD, 12 November 2007 (IRIN) - Broke and desperate, Ziad Qahtan Naeem and his family have returned to their house in war-battered Baghdad, a move they likened to a “death sentence”.

The six-member Shia family fled the Sunni-dominated Mansour neighbourhood of western Baghdad nearly two years ago and took refuge in Syria, joining more than one million Iraqis there.

But they have become part of a growing wave of Iraqis leaving Syria - not because they are confident of Iraq’s future but because they have run out of money.

Others are returning because the Syrian authorities have made it more difficult for them to stay as most Iraqis cannot work legally in Syria and have been surviving on savings or handouts from relatives.

One more that says the same.

New York Times:

Earlier this month, another Iraqi refugee estimate — this one claiming that 46,000 had returned during October — turned out to be based on a simple count of border crossings, according to The New York Times’s Baghdad bureau. Indeed, several Iraqi employees of the bureau who traveled to Syria to visit displaced relatives were included in the count, along with businessman going back and forth to Amman, Jordan.

Yes, I also saw the Times article which for some reason quotes the Iraqi government's estimate of the number of IDPs being 170,000, which is well under one tenth the size of any other estimate I've seen.

I'm not here to speculate on the security situation and how tenuous it is, lots of people are already doing that, but people have always been returning to Iraq while tens of thousands were still leaving their homes, either because of a desperate financial situation or because they're simply not allowed to stay. In short, things aren't so clear cut.

Meanwhile since my last post Basra has added itself to the large list of provinces that cannot accept any more IDPs due to being completely overwhelmed.

links for november

2007-11-12T14:41:00.000-05:00

1. The last family has left Al Ruweished camp in Jordan.

2. Meanwhile, the camps on the Syrian border are still almost 2000 strong.

3. French port towns are swamped with Iraqi refugees, according to NPR, aiming to get into Britain.

4. The French government aims to deport 25,000 illegal immigrants by the end of the year.

5. US: Talk to Syria for the sake of Iraqi refugees (Human Rights Watch.)

6. Between 500 and 600 Iraqis entered Syria since October 1; those who had visas to enter for the purpose of business, university education, or family unification.

7. At its peak, over 500 asylum cases were on indefinite hold, as the administration sorted out what to do with individuals who had cleared every other security hurdle but were being described as “material supporters of terrorism” because they had been forced against their will to provide food, water, or services to armed rebels. Tens of thousand of others who have already been granted asylum have been told that they cannot naturalize because of these bars.
According to Human Rights Watch, the Material Support Bar kept the number of refugees admitted last year 12,000 lower than expected.

8. Backgrounder on Iraqi refugee claimants and Canada by the Canadian Council for Refugees, and an analysis of the criteria for denying asylum claims. About half of those that have a sponsor's applications are rejected, and last year Canada took in 90 Iraqis referred by the UNHCR.

9. General facts and figures on the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

10. Of all the Iraqis seeking asylum in the UK, only about one in six is allowed to remain.

To qualify for special help, Iraqi staff must have worked for the Brits since 2005, and for 12 months continuously. Roughly 800 people might fulfil these criteria - a tiny fraction of those who have helped sustain our army's appallingly difficult mission in southern Iraq since 2003.

11. Refugees International talking to NPR on roadblocks for Iraqi refugees.

12. Heavy Metal in Baghdad is taking a collection to keep the subjects of their documentary in a safe third country.

it could always be worse, right?

2007-11-04T11:49:00.000-05:00

Treasure of Baghdad has posted about how the $125 million earmarked for Iraq's displaced still has yet to be spent; according to the ministry of finance there's no mechanism to distribute the money.

Vice president Hashimi is also urging Iraqis who've fled the country to return to Baghdad, but is a little sketchy on the details.

If you have any doubts that Iraqi refugees are a political football I would suggest reading the comments on his post that seem to be solely concerned with how this impacts on any claims to an American success story in Iraq, and whether things are worse or better than Darfur. This is probably in reaction to people like Juan Cole suggesting that continued displacement may be an indicator of continued violence (though he admits there's a possibility it isn't.) While a few thousand Iraqis returning to their homes are lauded as a sign of improvement in the security situation, the numbers of internally displaced have more than quadrupled since the start of the year, currently at 2.1 million, calling into question how many returns are due to force and new visa restrictions imposed on Iraqis in neighbouring countries.

Iraq's displaced now make up 14% of the total population.

Electronic Lebanon reports on the 500 Iraqis are being held in Lebanese prisons here. Once arrested they have a choice of remaining in prison or going home. Lebanon, like all of Iraq's neighbours, is not a signatory of the UN's conventions on the Status of Refugees and does not grant asylum.

syria revisited

2007-10-24T09:10:00.000-04:00

Syrian officials estimate that Iraqis are costing it $2 billion a year in services.

Brookings recently published a detailed report on Iraqis' lives in Syria that details how they are getting by (or not.)

According to the report Iraqis' support comes largely from the Syrian state and the Syrian Red Crescent, which is closely affiliated with Syrian authorities. There is little support from the international community though the UNHCR is providing some financial support for the health system and the Syrian Red Crescent, as well as some some Christian organizations and NGOs, also some monetary support for some of the needy 85,000 refugees that have registered with the UNHCR. There also appears to be a dearth of local charities outside of a few Christian organizations(40), and little within the Iraqi refugee community, which seem to be limited to networks of friends and kin. This means there's a heavy reliance on Syrian government services and subsidies, though only some 30,000 Iraqis are enrolled in Syrian schools costing about $18 million.

According to a paper presented to a recent international conference on Iraqi refugees by the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Iraqi refugees markedly increased Syria’s domestic consumption of subsidized goods in 2006. The demand for bread rose 35 percent, costing the state $34 million; the demand for subsidized energy spiked, including electricity (27 percent), diesel (17 percent) and cooking gas (11 percent); the demand for potable water rose 21 percent, which at 125 liters per capita cost the state almost $7 million.

Syria, already not a rich country, taking in equivalent to one tenth of its population, was also struggling with the influx of Lebanese from the war with Israel of 2006. Now as the borders are closing and new visa restrictions are in place, more Iraqis are moving West onto Lebanon and Turkey, but life is hardly easier there.

One can't help but notice, however, that while Iraq has many wealthy neighbours those that have actually accepted Iraqis are poor, and while in the case of the Lebanese displacement of 2006 the outpouring of aid from the West, international community and the region was rapid and encompassing, here the response has been slow and quiet. I have my guesses about why that is.

what's this "political will" you speak of?

2007-10-24T05:02:00.000-04:00

The Saigon precedent is a powerful one but what we have to remember is that we didn't start making plans for the evacuation of Saigon untill the very last minute.. and also the country had agreed that the war was a failure, and we were already initiating withdrawal. For a policy maker to look back at the Saigon example-that's the one that they are least likely to. They don't want to make any assessment, nor do I frankly, about the state of the war or what our chances are over there...we're still trying there(7:30.)

Has anyone else ever explicitly drawn lines between the American reluctance to take responsibility for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq and admitting that the war is a failure? I mean besides the aid groups that have been saying so for a while.

Also: settling 10,000 refugees in the US could take two years.

"but why is the amount of aid actually decreasing?"

2007-10-24T04:05:00.000-04:00

Great interview here discussing the challenges NGOs have in meeting the needs of Iraqis.

get in line

2007-10-04T19:31:00.000-04:00

I thought it was 7,000, or we were told at the conference last April that it could be "as many as 20,000" but apparently only 1,608 Iraqi refugees were resettled in the U.S. so far this year, according to Refugees International, and the American government has scaled down their original goal to 2,000. The UNHCR has referred 11,844 Iraqi refugees to the American government for resettlement.

Late last week, the Senate passed the “Refugee Crisis in Iraq Act,” to increase resettlement of Iraqis by establishing a special P 2 category as well as a special immigrant visa for Iraqis who have been targeted because of their affiliation with the U.S. government. Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass), Gordon Smith (R-Ore), Sam Brownback (R-Kan), Joe Lieberman (D-Conn) and a number of liberal and conservative Senators signed on to the bipartisan legislation. Currently, refugees can only be processed for resettlement once they flee the country. The new legislation addresses this issue by creating processing centers within Iraq, and by providing special coordinators to facilitate the visa process.

The 7,000 target was to be included in the total 70,000 slots the US sets aside for refugees each year, not in addition to it. In contrast Sweden, which has a population of 9 million, took in 9000 Iraqis in 2006 and are estimated to see as many as 40,000 new arrivals this year.

In September, the Senate took a step in the right direction when it unanimously passed an amendment to a defense bill that grants privileged refugee status to members of a religious or minority community who are identified by the State Department as a persecuted group and have close relatives in the United States. But because so few Mandeans live here, this will do little for those seeking asylum. The legislation, however, also authorizes the State and Homeland Security Departments to grant privileged status to “other persecuted groups,” as they see fit.

A Yahoo article today lamenting how slow the process of resettlement to the United States has been, also notes that the U.S. has been snubbing Syria, who hosts by far the largest share of Iraqi refugees, nearly twice as many as Jordan. Both a slow approval of visas for referred Iraqis currently in Syria to get to the U.S. and a total lack of support funding are an issue: hundreds of millions of dollars have finally recently been pledged to the governments of Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt so that basic services can be provided for Iraqis, but not Syria's. Syria was also the last country to close its borders to Iraqis, just this month; Human Rights Watch has also expressed concern:

The Syrian government explicitly cited as its reason for shutting the door on Iraqi refugees the lack of international support. “No one in the international community is helping us,” a Syrian government spokesman told the Financial Times. “The Syrian government can no longer shoulder the responsibility alone.”

Movement is becoming difficult even within Iraq's borders. 11 province Governors are restricting entrance of Iraqis from other parts of the country due to a lack of resources to support them. Maybe this has something to do with the Iraqi government being expected to shoulder the financial burden for their citizens outside of Iraq as well. Of course within the mandate of the Kurdish Regional Government security is much tighter; entrants must have a Kurdish sponsor and register with the government.

interrupting our regularly scheduled programming

2007-09-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

alive in baghdad has been doing amazing work bringing to light the stories of displaced Iraqis as well as many other difficult stories to get out of Iraq. Iraqslogger has recently become subscription only; if you'd rather not see them continue on, you might consider donating now.

Remember Youssif? Well there are many more like him. Electronic Iraq has started the Direct Aid Initiative project which identifies and assists Iraqis in need of financial assistance to meet their medical needs.

The intention of our work is to facilitate long-term relationships of trust and communication between Iraqis and Americans. Through this process, we believe this initiative can play a significant role in bringing the voices, concerns, and perspectives of Iraqis more fully into the discourse on Iraq in the United States, supporting an engagement with the Iraqi people that is not solely predicated on a US military presence.

This effort is not intended as charity. Rather, it is an attempt at ongoing restitution to Iraqis for all that has been lost as a result of devastating sanctions, the 2003 invasion, and the ongoing occupation.

I like Electronic Iraq and Noah Merrill and this project is worth supporting. War or no war, political solution or not these people still exist.

old story

2007-09-25T19:31:00.000-04:00

I'm slowly catching up on the news, it's been far too long a break.

Buried in the back of this already pretty scary article about Kurdistan is something very telling

Rights advocates explain that the introduction in the past several years of inexpensive mobile phones and e-mail to Kurdistan have made dating and casual sex easier, even as the old patriarchal social structures remain in place. "The explosion of technology has alienated people from themselves," says Samera Mohammad of the Rassan women's rights center in Sulaimaniya. She says that a disturbing number of the suicides involve boys who take pictures of their girlfriends with their camera phones and then show their friends. But rights advocates say that even something as simple as bad grades can be a motive for self-immolation.

The Iraq war only made things worse. Refugees from Iraq's cities, some of whom have turned to prostitution to earn a living, have flocked to Kurdistan from elsewhere in the country, challenging rural sexual mores and the religious beliefs of the mostly Sunni Muslim Kurds. Kurdistan's lakeside resorts are said to be a popular destination for sex workers in search of easy income. "With the arrival of prostitutes, men have become more suspicious of their daughters," says Paiman Izzedine of the Women's Union of Kurdistan.

Such a weird way to put the effect of refugees on their host population.

Last year I posted about the trend of young girls desperate to leave Iraq being recruited for regular jobs outside the country with too good to be true salaries and advances, that actually were brought into prositution rings in Dubai and Syria. Of course this is not a new problem nor one unique to Iraqis, it's simply one that's amplified in light of the current crisis.

Inexpensive Iraqi prostitutes have helped to make Syria a popular destination for sex tourists from wealthier countries in the Middle East. In the club’s parking lot, nearly half of the cars had Saudi license plates.

Hat tip to Amal.

Yet another issue is for those that are employed to do domestic work it's not uncommon to be sexually abused, but of course many also have their hand forced by desperation:

According to the non-governmental organisation Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), 15 per cent of Iraqi women widowed by the war have been desperately searching for temporary marriages or prostitution, either for financial support or protection in the midst of sectarian war.

Nuha Salim, the spokesperson for OWFI, told Al Jazeera: "Widows are one of our priorities but their situation is worsening and we are feeling ineffective to cope with this significant problem. Hundreds of women are searching for an easy way to support their loved ones as employers refuse to hire them for fear of extremists' reprisals."

She said the NGO has documented the disappearance of some 4000 women, 20 per cent of whom are under 18, since the March 2003 invasion.

OWFI believes most of the missing women were kidnapped and sold into prostitution outside Iraq.

Although few reliable statistics are available on the total number of widows in Iraq, the ministry of women's affairs says that there are at least 350,000 in Baghdad alone, with more than eight million throughout the country.

According to OWFI some families are selling their daughters outright for sums equal to less than $500US.

I don't think this is something that will be going away any time soon.

2007-09-22T00:20:00.000-04:00

the International University for Iraq will open in August 2008. The initiative that started in 2003 to help salvage Iraq's "lost generation" is going to be hosted at Kalamoon University outside of Damascus will host 20 graduate students and more undergrads, while there are negotiations going on with the University of Petra in Amman and the Connecticut State University system. All Iraqi students will recieve tuition, housing and food from the host university. Its parent group the Global Partnership for the International University for Iraq is now officially a Canadian NGO.
Full article.

Read this post by arab woman blues if you want your heart to break, keep reading through the comments if you want your head to explode.

Tal 'Afar refugees at the Mosul Camp

2007-04-23T17:26:00.000-04:00

c/o AFP.

These photos were taken just after March 27th when (largely Turkmen) residents of the village fled after the bombing and massacre that left 152 people dead. Unfortunately the violence didn't stop there.

Invisible Lives

2007-04-23T16:21:00.000-04:00

I'm working on some longer posts but in the meantime there's a truly great indepth article in the Electronic Intifada here about the status of Iraqis living in Lebanon by Serene Assir that's definitely worth your time.

At present conditions for Iraqis in Jordan and in particular Syria are poor. Neither country is signatory to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and are therefore not bound to guarantee refugees protection. Instead, incoming Iraqis are classified as illegal migrants. Only Syria, according to International Medical Corps findings, guarantees access to public health and education services. In Jordan, the number of Iraqis now accounts for at least a full fifth of the total population, and are hence perceived as constituting a burden to an already fragile economy.

As for refugees arriving in Lebanon, in response to the growing influx and bearing in mind the continual deterioration of security in Iraq, UNHCR Lebanon has provided Iraqis from Baghdad and southern Iraq with prima facie recognition as refugees ever since February 2007. However, fewer than 10 percent of Iraqis arriving in Lebanon actually register with UNHCR, according to Carole El Sayed, assistant community services officer for UNHCR Beirut. Such recognition affords the refugees partial protection: resettlement is by no means a right, nor is full protection. Lebanon, like Syria and Jordan, is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention. The Lebanese authorities therefore have little regard for proof that UNHCR has recognised an Iraqi as a refugee; in practise, they are illegals. "Because of this, many feel there is no point in registering with UNHCR at all," said El-Sayed.

In addition, Iraqis in Lebanon fear they may be detained and ultimately deported should they be intercepted by police on their way to the UNHCR office in Verdun, west Beirut. "We don't know where we stand with regards to the security forces," said Moufiq, also from Baghdad. "My two nieces are now in jail. They became my responsibility when my brother was killed in Baghdad last year. They were caught trying to get into Lebanon from Syria -- they were travelling here to come and join me and the rest of my family. They have been in prison for 23 days. Once their period of detention hits a month, I don't know what will happen to them. I need to do something, or else they will get sent back to Iraq, where they cannot be safe." At the time of writing, his nieces were being held in Tripoli, north Lebanon. As for his fear for their safety in Iraq should the state deport them, he has strong grounds: his 24-year-old son and his ageing father were killed in Baghdad before they were ever able to flee the violence.

And the rest.

palestinian refugees stranded on the syrian border protest

2007-04-15T23:49:00.000-04:00

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees who are stranded on the Iraq-Syria border have staged an open sit-in since 12 April to draw international attention to what they say is their ongoing suffering.

"Our situation is getting worse from day to day, yet no one sees what we're going through and helps us get through this ordeal," Qussai Mohammed Saleh, a 32-year-old Palestinian refugee, told IRIN in a phone interview from al-Waleed border camp.

Saleh is a truck driver who was born, and later married, in Iraq. He now lives with his wife and two children in a tent at the al-Waleed border camp, where 758 Palestinian refugees are undertaking the sit-in protest. Another 826 Palestinian refugees are scattered in three other makeshift camps.

Saleh said the refugees were tired of short-term solutions to their predicament. "We're refusing all assistance. The solution to our problem does not lie in giving us assistance. We rejected two truckloads of aid two days ago, donated by an Italian aid agency," Saleh said.

"It's been raining cats and dogs for the past two days and the heavy rain has filled our tents with water. We demand that Arab and international leaders take an immediate decision about us. There's only one goal for us and that's to get out of Iraq as soon as possible without being hurt. We'll continue with our sit-in until we achieve this goal."

Some Palestinians (as well as Kurdish and other refugees of various nationalities), have been stranded at the border living through the winter in tents and dependent on aid for upwards of three years. Now negotiations are under way to get Israel to agree to allow for them to be absorbed into the Gaza strip.

jordan again

2007-04-14T16:43:00.000-04:00

I wouldn't say they're the face of he refugee crisis, but one of many. It's overwhelming sometimes and difficult to know what to discuss in a situation that's constantly growing and changing, what with the conference the UN is holding this week, the other day US congress voted to increase the number of total Afghan and Iraqi translators given VISAs to a whopping 500, and the Red Cross now warning that there is an extremely serious humanitarian crisis, that there are negotiations to absorb Iraqi Palestinians stuck in refugee camps at the Jordanian and Syrian borders into the Gaza Strip and the good news that the Dutch government is loosening its regulations for Iraqis.

Tons upon tons has been written about the economic status of Iraqi refugees in Jordan, but less has been written about other barriers that keep Iraqis from being able to stay. Jordan especially is taking on a huge burden absorbing a number of Iraqi refugees equal to one sixth of its population. At first welcomed, they are resented more and more as the cost of living increases and housing and jobs become scarce. However there is also a fear that such a large number of people will likely bring political instability.

Several weeks ago Iraqis blogged that Iraqis are subject to random questioning by Jordanian security forces to be sent back. According to this excellent bbc radio report on the deportations of Iraqis from Jordan, even independent charities that were educating Iraqi children were a problem for Jordanian authorities (8 minutes in) and had to be shut down. Meanwhile 23 Iraqis were deported from Jordan for allegedly "spreading Shi'itism."

Stories of sectarian discrimination and tension with regards to Iraqis from other Arab countries are not unheard of. Earlier I posted about fear of Iraqis bringing the Sunna/Shia split with them to the countries in which they took refuge, and Jordan barred Shia Iraqis from holding their rites at a shrine. While Saudi Arabia spends billions building a security fence along their border to keep out "extremists," last December four Iraqis died from not being allowed to enter Saudi Arabia not as refugees, but as religious pilgrims, claiming that the Iraqi government was giving too many VISAs to Shia muslims.

While in Britain and the US' reluctance to recognize the disaster they've sown in Iraq fuels their looking the other way with respect to their people's suffering, in other Arab countries the resentment has passed from a hatred of the occupation and the current Iraqi government and has bled over to some hostility for its people, particularly Shia. The process hasn't been helped by the Bush administration and Israel's policy of divide and rule which is explained at length by Seymour Hersh here (and much more briefly here.)

Hala S:

Last week a man from the United Arab Emirates was sitting next to me in the plane praising Saddam. He told me bluntly “He was a hawk, wasn’t he?”.
A hawk in the Arab culture in case people don’t know is a symbol of courage, strength and intelligence as well.
The more I ignored that stupid man the more he persisted. So I finally told him “Listen I will answer your question only if you answer mine."
“How did Dubai look like 35 years ago?”
“A desert” he replied “And now?” I followed “A paradise” he said.
“How you people from the UAE are treated around the world today?” He twisted his head “respectfully” “and what do you think the attitude towards Iraqis is?”
He did not answer back.

britain

2007-03-31T12:01:00.000-04:00

Lina and Nasir are two Iraqi doctors, who travelled to Britain to study in order to further their work on the mass graves where victims of Saddam's regime are buried.

The insurgents tracked them down and started sending terrifying threatening emails.

They were refused even an extension of their visas to stay in Britain, and were told not to bother even applying for political asylum.

"It's unbelievable", said Nasir. "If you just send me home you send me to die. It's a matter of life or death, it's nothing in between."

In fact the number of Iraqis being granted refugee status or political asylum in Britain has actually gone down since the invasion in 2003.

Only five Iraqis were granted refugee status by the British government in 2005.

coalition to stop deportations to iraq (uk)

British policy on Iraqi refugees is not only morally indefensible, but also shortsighted (human rights watch.)

europe

2007-03-23T15:26:00.000-04:00

graphic c/o npr.

the common thread i find in stories of immigrating outside the middle east is paying thousands of dollars for smugglers, even when going to ultra-tolerant sweden, like this one. and i just wanted to link to freespace beirut. but of course many do not have that luxury.

30% of respondents to this poll said they would leave the country if they could. of those 42% said they had plans to leave.

the unhcr is having an int'l conference on the humanitarian crisis on iraq next month. they should at least hold it in damascus.

the surge [the other way]

2007-03-19T22:06:00.000-04:00

1. piece on iraqi refugees in the middle east and sweden for the bbc. check the interview with prince hassan of jordan at the end.

2. this minority rights group report tells us alot of things most people following iraq probably already knew, a few things the news has missed. that the government has taken to not renewing residency permits for palestinians since last year, and that women require the presence of a male guardian to apply for a passport.

3. according to the bbc 80% of iraq's mandaeans have fled the country.

4. DOUCHE ALERT: australian edition. somebody please pie that man.

5. jordan to iraqis: just don't come at all if you don't already have a visa.

6. on getting citizenship in the US

a friendly reminder

2007-03-12T11:22:00.000-04:00

BAGHDAD - Ali Tofiq, 29, didn't want to leave Iraq for Syria, but he felt he had no other option. He hoped to start a new life with his family - but things did not go according to plan.

A former army officer, Tofiq lost his job when the army was dissolved in 2003 and became a taxi driver. In March last year, he sold his car and all his family furniture to scrape together the money to take his wife and four children to Syria.

However, nine months after emigrating, he was still without a job. He had run out of money and felt he had no choice but to return home to Iraq.

Since he cannot afford to rent a house of his own, Tofiq and his family live with his parents in al-Ilam in eastern Baghdad. Their only source of income is Tofiq's meager pension of 55 US dollars a month.

SO.

while it's definitely a good thing that the united states and the eu are at least starting to move in the right direction[the uk is another story], most refugees will still be very vulnerable. only about 20,000 asylum claims were submitted in the eu last year, half of which were in sweden, and the UNHCR hopes that 20,000 of the most vulnerable refugees will be resettled this year; a mere fraction of the number of iraqis leaving their home in a single month. and the US' share of 7,000 still a relatively small percentage of the 70,000 slots it allows for refugees a year.

the international organization for migration estimates the number of iraqis to flee the country this year to be around one million if the security conditions continue, and it's unclear where they will go. according to the bbc in january jordan is letting in between 10 and 15 car loads a day and no iraqi men between the ages of 18 and 35 can enter, forcing families to split up at the border. syria will now only allow for a [maximum] six month stay for iraqis not studying or working, and healthcare and education are in short supply, as is permission to work[economic oppourtunities are generally in pretty short supply in the countries with the most refugees].

the unhcr's goal of $60 million to assist the 2 million refugees in the region pales in comparison to the cost of living almost as much as it does the $8 billion the united states spends on the war in a month. meanwhile [british and american] security concerns that have invalidated old iraqi travel documents meaning that if iraqis want to travel outside the middle east [and recently to jordan as well] they have to get a new passport [only] in baghdad...and if the potential death sentence isn't enough, it can take as long as a month.

noah merrill:

The announcement of this new initiative does not mention the critical need for bilateral aid given directly to countries hosting the largest numbers of refugees (for what will undoubtedly be several years at a minimum), something seen as essential to all parties working with Iraqi refugees here in the region.

Given that the total number of refugees resettled worldwide last year was 50,000, and given the clear desire of most Iraqis to return home to Iraq when security conditions permit, it would be impossible and undesirable to resettle the close to 2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq. Resources to support a growing population of Iraqis for several years must be made available to support the governments of those countries bearing the greatest burden: Syria and Jordan. That the US makes no mention of an initiative of this kind in its new approach raises serious questions about its commitment to a viable solution for Iraqis who continue to suffer.

baghdad squatters are being told to leave

2007-02-21T04:07:00.000-05:00

baghdad squatters cleansed from their neighbourhood were apparently being told to leave by iraqi forces as part of the new security plan according to npr, in addition the government is offering enticements of $200 to families that return to their home.

you can hear an interview with the unhcr here.

arabs and turkmen protested in kirkuk at the decision to relocate the [mostly shiite] arabs that moved there decades ago during the "arabisation" campaign of the baath party. though their removal would be compensated the city, which is already prone to conflict, could easily see a serious escalation in the coming months.

in limbo [tangenital posting]

2007-02-20T20:40:00.000-05:00

not specific to the peril of iraqi refugees but still atrocious: there's a cbc story about the treatment of france's illegals here.

meanwhile in taylor texas the t. don hutto "residential centre" (ie prison) holds 3 year olds amongst 200 other children of the 400 detainees. at the for profit facility run by the corrections corporation of america for immigration and customs enforcement children wear dark green prison uniforms and are allowed 30 minutes to eat and bathe, 1 hour to exercise, and 4 hours of education (it used to be 1 untill recently). 3 palestinian families were held in the facility were since released, one was deported to jordan, but 5 iraqi families still remain, and of course many more innocent women and children whose only crime is crossing a border.

more on the subject here and here

on that note in canada we have this appeal from the coalition against the deportation of palestinian refugees.

it's important to remember that the recognition of iraqis' general insecurity is a very recent phenomenon to appreciate how difficult gaining asylum can be, and how challenging life is for those without it. last year iraqi blogger hala s. wrote about her friend whose application for asylum in britain was rejected despite having immediate family as sponsors, fayrouz posted about a german court's decision that all iraqi christians could be deported on the logic that they could simply move to kurdistan for safety, along with this you have britain's high profile deportation flights of failed asylum seekers to kurdistan. according to a european council on refugees and exiles report from march 2006 poland was also taking to deporting iraqis, while the netherlands chose to end blanket protection for asylum seekers from southern and central iraq in january of 2006 despite an increase in applications. while switzerland granted subsidiary protection, and hungary and austria at least granted that to a majority of applicants, the numbers for france, britain, denmark, france and greece all showed extremely low rates of granting either asylum or protection to iraqi applicants.

from hala s. last october:

My friend has to go home. His application for asylum has been refused.

Omar came four months ago to visit his brother and sister. Both are willing to support him, and they signed a declaration to this effect. “No recourse of benefits or public money”. But all that did not count, not even an exceptional leave to stay was granted.

As it was his first time out of Iraq. Omar suddenly realised the hell he had been living in. The comparison was too much to handle.

When we go out I could see his eyes glowing with joy. He just couldn’t believe that people can get on with their lives without fear. People can plan and fulfil, can go out and stay late, can commute and reach their destination and can sleep soundly.

He once told me that the difference here is not only you feel secure but the bliss of waking up in the morning and say to yourself here comes another day and with it another hope not another bomb.

He reminded me of my mother when I met with her in summer. She used to move around the room in the dark, and when I questioned why, she told me that she lost the habit of switching lights on and off. She was always reluctant to go out at night; something in her subconscious told her it is dangerous.

What is upsetting me really is that the media in here is full of detailed news about Iraq. Reports are very hard to catch up with, and you can hardly find a Newspaper without an extensive article about what is taking place on that day. Sometimes I phone my family to check on them, only to find out that they are oblivious to my worries imprisoned in the house, and I start to tell them what happened in their own city.

Tony Blair was discredited, humiliated and kicked out of office because of Iraq.
For once he was speechless and stopped his theatrical lectures because the damage done is beyond covering up.

And yet, the Home Office reports consider Iraq not at war since May 2003, and in their refusal letter they stated “We couldn’t find one single convincing reason to why Omar is under threat!”

Two years back another friend whose application for asylum was submitted just before March 2003 received a refusal for a different reason, and that was “You should go back now, Iraq is free from tyranny, just keep away from Falujja!”

borders mean a lot: souriya

2007-02-06T13:48:00.000-05:00

Dozens of Iraqi refugees held a sit-in protest in the Syrian capital against new residency limits for civilians and their families fleeing the bloodshed across the border back home.

"In Iraq: kidnappings and murder: How can we go back?" read the banners of the demonstrators gathered outside the Damascus offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

"We are your guests, Bashar" was marked on another banner, as the protesters numbering more than 100 waved Iraqi flags and portraits of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

Until January 20, Iraqis were entitled to permits allowing them to stay in Syria for three months -- and then the permits could be renewed.

But now the Syrian authorities will only provide "two-week permits that can be renewed just once and with certain documents, including a rental contract," according to the refugees.

"We refuse to go back, whatever the conditions," said one of the protesters, who gave his name only as Mohammed.

"We are ready, if needs be, to camp on the borders of Syria," Mohammed, who has sought refuge in Syria for the past 18 months and whose residence permit has since run out, told AFP.

a lot needs to be said on this subject [later] but SPEAKING OF WHICH, the number of palestinians camping out by the syrian border has now reached 700:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2007/02/02/syria15239.htm

in other news the mexican government has caught 11 iraqi chaldeans using fake mexican passports, hoping to find their way to california where there is supposedly a large chaldean community. the mexican government has chosen not to deport them, which is more that i could say for some european countries, and i have add that it's fortunate they were not discovered north of the border.

2007-01-26T17:10:00.000-05:00

http://iraqiscientists.blogspot.com/

Scholar Rescue Fund Fellowships

The Institute of International Education's Scholar Rescue Fund provides fellowships for scholars whose lives and work are threatened in their home countries. These fellowships permit scholars to find temporary refuge at universities and colleges anywhere in the world, enabling them to pursue their academic work and to continue to share their knowledge with students, colleagues, and the community at large. When conditions improve, these scholars will return home to help rebuild universities and societies ravaged by fear, conflict and repression.

How the Scholar Rescue Fund Works:

*Academics, researchers and independent scholars from any country, field or discipline may qualify. Preference is given to scholars with a Ph.D. or other highest degree in their field; who have extensive teaching or research experience at a university, college or other institution of higher learning; who demonstrate superior academic accomplishment or promise; and whose selection is likely to benefit the academic community in the home and/or host country or region. Applications from female scholars and under-represented groups are strongly encouraged.

* Fellowship recipients are expected to resume their teaching, lecturing, research, writing and publishing at an academic institution outside the region of threat.

* Fellowships are awarded for visiting academic positions ranging from 3 months to one calendar year. The maximum award is US $20,000.

* Fellowships are disbursed through host academic institutions for direct support of scholar-grantees. In most cases, host campuses are asked to match the SRF fellowship award through partial salary/stipend support, research materials, medical insurance, and other in-kind assistance.

* Applications are accepted at any time. Emergency applications receive urgent consideration. Non-emergency applications will be considered according to the following schedule:

Winter 2007: Applications received by January 23; decision by March 1.
Spring 2007: Application received by April 1; decision by June 1.
Fall 2007: Applications received by September 1; decision by November 1.

For more information about the Fund, contact:

IIE Scholar Rescue Fund Fellowships
809 U.N. Plaza, Second FloorNew York,
New York 10017
Tel: (USA) 1-212-984-5472
Fax: (USA) 1-212-984-5353
E-mail: SRF@iie.org Web: www.iie.org/SRF

brain purge

2007-01-20T10:03:00.000-05:00

1. iraqi academics on measures that should be taken to help their situation.

2. this week's attack on mustansiriya university in baghdad was indeed devastating for a few different reasons. like juan cole said, most of the 65 victims were teenage girls and the past two decades have seen female literacy rates in the country plunge from 75-25%. women educated at the university level there today are a rarity.

one of few things keeping educated iraqis in the country were the universities, once among the most prestigious in the region, they were also free as opposed to other schools in other arab countries that had very high tuition fees. it's then not really surprising that they have also been an important battleground; most notably in the very high profile raid several months ago on the ministry of education by shia militias, heated accusations of government involvement thrown around. and also last december as insurgents circulated leaflets warning the youth not to attend classes.

My friend, who was a pharmacist and doing his doctorate in toxicology, was killed a week ago just because he was a doctor and nothing else

everyone by now is well aware of targeted assassinations in the country and as a result the education system has taken a serious beating, the ministry of higher education estimating that a third of academics have fled since 2003, as well as a quarter of their physicians, with increasingly large numbers on the waiting list to practice in the north. the result is a system on the verge of collapse despite efforts to stem the flow with higher salaries.

3. Leading Iraq archaeologist flees

4. iraqi-american blogger fairouz posts here about iraqi professors in damascus who've managed to found their own private university. a gain for syria and for those who can afford it.

and people accuse the war's detractors of being irresponsible

2007-01-20T06:30:00.000-05:00

BY NOW, MOST Americans are probably familiar with Colin L. Powell's "Pottery Barn rule" for Iraq: You break it, you own it. This notion of responsibility has been invoked to justify extending or increasing the U.S. troop presence there. But it is mysteriously absent from discussions about Iraq's 2 million refugees.

One of eight Iraqis is displaced, and the number is growing rapidly. An estimated 1,500 people flee their homes each day, especially in mixed-religion neighborhoods and cities. Of those, an unknown but significant number are Iraqis who have risked their lives to provide assistance to the U.S.-led coalition, to foreign journalists or to international nongovernmental organizations.

By any possible interpretation of the "Pottery Barn rule," the U.S. has a deep responsibility to assist in the well-being of these Iraqis. Yet the number of Iraqis granted political asylum in the U.S. last year was appallingly low: 202. In September, the administration set its 2007 asylum target at a miserly 500.

Why? One former Bush administration official has said that granting too many Iraqis refugee status would be a tacit admission that Iraq "is a losing cause." This is politics at its most cynical. Iraq's refugee crisis competes with Darfur's as the worst in the world (and it is certainly the one the U.S. is most responsible for), yet the welcome mat has gone missing. More than $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer money will be spent on war and reconstruction in Iraq this year, but only $20 million has been allocated for migration and refugee assistance.

US wants canada to take refugees from iraq.

god forbid they do the same, that would just look bad.

The administration of President George W. Bush, which is currently spending roughly 30 million dollars a day on military operations in Iraq, has earmarked only 20 million dollars for Iraqi humanitarian needs in bilateral aid for all of 2007, the administration's senior refugee official, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, told a Senate hearing Tuesday.
...
The State Department has 70,000 slots set aside for refugees to be admitted to the U.S. each year, but less than 6,000 are allocated to refugees from the Middle East and South Asia. An additional 20,000 slots, however, are "unallocated reserves".

The committee's ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter, urged Sauerbrey to immediately allocate those slots to Iraqis who are now at risk as a result of their association with the United States. "Why not use them now when there is such a crushing need?" he asked.

Sauerbrey agreed in principle but stressed that financing for them must still be found. "This issue is the very top priority in my bureau," she said.

she also made the point that many iraqis in jordan and syria were there before 2003. however she didn't point out that half a million fled iraq in 2006 alone, which is a number larger than five hundred.

one in eight [links ahoy]

2007-01-13T06:02:00.000-05:00

In light of this dire security situation, the UNHCR advisory to governments recommends that Iraqi asylum seekers from Southern and Central Iraq should be favourably considered as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention given the high prevalence of serious human rights violations. And it notes that if an Iraqi from Southern or Central Iraq is not recognised under Convention grounds, a complementary form of protection be granted. It says no Iraqi from Southern or Central Iraq should be forcibly returned to Iraq until such time as there is substantial improvement in the security and human rights situation in the country.

UNHCR also advises against returns to the three Northern Governorates of persons not originating from there and recommends that asylum claims of Iraqis originating from the north be assessed based on 1951 refugee Convention criteria, taking into account the individual merits of the claim.

why is it every time the refugee crisis makes the news at all something else huge comes and totally eclipses it? so the US plan calls for $1.5 billion to go to development and job creation, $10 billion of iraq's money to go to reconstruction, but humanitarian issues were again left off the table.

there's something especially disturbing about being able to express the effects of the war on iraqis as a percentage of the whole. first with the lancet study and now the UNHCR saying that ONE IN EIGHT, or 12% of iraqis have fled their homes; upto two million in neighbouring countries and 1.7 million displaced in the country, estimating that the number of IDPs could reach 2.3 million by the end of this year.

reports of child labour and prostitution are also increasing as emigrants' resources run low and the desperation of the situation increases, and still significant numbers of refugees having a lack of access to services and school, as well as the ability to work. in syria it was found that 30% of children were not attending school, 4% were disabled, and 10% of families were headed by women, but this is as true within iraq as in neighbouring countries.

the appeal is for $60 million, a little over a third of what their regional budget was in 2003, still more than twice the $23 million (out of the 29 that was asked for) that they recieved last year.

the BBC also reports on the iraqi government invalidating old passports, and the limited and slow issuing of new ones further complicating the process of emigration. why that's happening now i'm not really sure.

the fallout of the red crescent leaving baghdad, here; ie other NGOs are pulling out and the government not filling the gap.

read here about iraqis paying tens of thousands of dollars to immigration brokers to get asylum in european countries and not always getting what they pay for.

in some positive news the UNHCR seems confident that it will resettle the remaining residents of the al ruweished refugee camp, while in najaf land is being alot to displaced families.

where to go

2007-01-07T03:50:00.000-05:00

108 thousand iraqis fled their homes last month.

there was so much going on in that new york times article in the post below i wasn't sure what to comment on as there's many of the same old themes; accusations of the united states not recognizing the situation for political reasons, the UN's slowness of assisting refugees for a lack of funding, US slowness of addressing the refugee claims for post-911 security reasons, US slowness in simply acknowledging how dire the situation is, abuse of iraqi citizens in neighbouring countries, iraqis paying exhorbitant fees to get visas, forcing many iraqis to move back to iraq either to sell off their few remaining posessions or for good as they can't afford to stay outside the country. really it's just best to read the whole thing and draw your own conclusions.

one story i keep hearing lately is of iraqis fleeing and being rejected repeatedly wherever they apply. i thought i would post just one such example from the iraqiscreen blog.

Ammar, a shiite engineer lives in Hay Al-Adel, after the deterioration of the security situation in Iraq, he left to Jordan and waited there for four months after buying a visa to Canada with $11,000 to flee the hell of Iraq and the government of the national unity.

The flight to Canada was not direct but Ammar has to stop in Moscow for few hours and then continue, but in Moscow, Ammar told that he is not allowed to continue his trip and he has to go back to Jordan.

Ammar was dying to reach Amman and ask the guy who got him the visa why it was refused though he paid such a huge amount of money, he could not wait the security officers to check him to run to the guy but again the security men looked in his documents and told him that he is not allowed to get in Jordan, he has to find another place.

So,he decided to go to Syria and would contact the guy from there and question about the visa, when he got at the Syrian airport and the officers there found that Ammar was not allowed to access Amman, they told him that they can't allow him too.

The only choice left to Ammar was to go back to Baghdad, so, he booked his flight to Baghdad and headed home to Hay Al-Adel.

read the whole thing here.

it's apparent that the treatment of iraqis in neighbouring countries is completely deplorable, what with the ridiculous sums required to avoid a death sentence in the form of deportation back home, lack of access to basic serives, lack of recognition as refugee and an inability to work. it also looks that security concerns of the host countries are also becoming sectarian concerns of the givernment. i wrote briefly about sectarian attitudes towards iraqis in egypt and jordan in a previous post. saudi arabia in addition to building its security fence along the border has also gone as far as to keep out religious pilgrims because it claims the iraqi government was giving a disproportionate amount of visas to shiites, resulting in four deaths thus far. but it's also apparent that the burden placed on those host countries is massive. taking in the bulk of refugees are syria, jordan, egypt and lebanon who are not resource rich like many of their arab neighbours and have high unemployment rates among their own citizens to contend with. a massive influx of funding is imperative if the fallout is not to get even more catastrophic.

waking up in the united states, sort of.

2007-01-07T03:17:00.000-05:00

the brookings institute: time for the united states to recognize iraq's humanitarian crisis.

Billions in international funds have been allocated for recovery and development projects in Iraq, most of which cannot be implemented because of the violence. Yet humanitarian programs have been largely neglected. The assumption that the domestic situation would stabilize and that the displaced of Iraq would return home has been proved terribly wrong. A reassessment of donor priorities is urgently needed.

the new york times: few iraqis are gaining US sanctuary.

Until recently the Bush administration had planned to resettle just 500 Iraqis this year, a mere fraction of the tens of thousands of Iraqis who are now believed to be fleeing their country each month. State Department officials say they are open to admitting larger numbers, but are limited by a cumbersome and poorly financed United Nations referral system.
“We’re not even meeting our basic obligation to the Iraqis who’ve been imperiled because they worked for the U.S. government,” said Kirk W. Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Falluja in 2005. “We could not have functioned without their hard work, and it’s shameful that we’ve nothing to offer them in their bleakest hour.”

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat who is taking over the immigration, border security and refugee subcommittee, plans hearings this month on America’s responsibility to help vulnerable Iraqis. An estimated 1.8 million Iraqis are living outside Iraq. The pace of the exodus has quickened significantly in the past nine months.

Some critics say the Bush administration has been reluctant to create a significant refugee program because to do so would be tantamount to conceding failure in Iraq. They say a major change in policy could happen only as part of a broader White House shift on Iraq.
“I don’t know of anyone inside the administration who sees this as a priority area,” said Lavinia Limón, president of the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental refugee resettlement agency based in Washington. “If you think you’re winning, you think they’re going to go back soon.”

For Iraqis, a tie to the United States is a life-threatening liability, particularly in harder-line Sunni neighborhoods.
...
Many Iraqis who worked for Americans have already fled the capital or the country, and many plead for help or asylum on a daily basis. Of some 40 nationalities seeking asylum in European countries in the first half of 2006, Iraqis ranked first with more than 8,100 applications, according to the United Nations.

Remarkably few apply for refugee status in the United States, mainly because most Iraqis, even those who have worked for the United States government here, simply assume that getting American status is all but impossible. Iraqis cannot apply directly for refugee status in the American Embassy in Baghdad.

Another interpreter, Amar, who did not want his full name used, went to at least 10 embassies during a trip to Jordan last fall, but found only blank faces. He counts his sacrifice for America in bones and skin. He is missing a finger, an eye and part of his skull, after a large bomb exploded next to his Humvee last year. He has received two threats to his life. Two bodyguards accompany him everywhere. He stays in three different houses to confuse potential attackers.

“They said they have nothing for Iraqis,” said Amar, sitting in a small house in western Baghdad. “We feel just like stupid trash.”
Until recently, the administration did not appear to understand the gravity of the problem. State Department officials say they are now open to increasing the number of refugee slots the administration formally requested for Iraqis in September. That request already allows for as many as 20,000 more refugees from unspecified countries.

But advocates for refugees say that such an increase is unlikely if no special measures are taken, namely designating Iraqis as a group in peril and formalizing a system for receiving them.

Officials at the United Nations refugee branch acknowledge that they have moved slowly in identifying refugees, largely because of procedural obstacles and lack of money. The agency’s budget for Syria last year was $700,000, less than one dollar for each Iraqi refugee in that country. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in October that its Iraq program was $9 million short and that some employees were going without salaries.
The State Department spent $35 million on Iraqi refugees in Iraq and the region in 2006. The United States spends approximately $8 billion a month on the war.

But there is no legal requirement for the United States to rely on the United Nations. It has run its own programs in the past, notably in Southeast Asia. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese were ultimately resettled in the United States after the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. In that instance, a number of aid groups in neighboring countries divided the work of interviewing and assessing refugees, a system Ms. Limón and many other advocates for refugees are pushing for Iraqis today.

The United States has even run similar programs in Iraq, helping to resettle about 40,000 Iraqi refugees in the United States and other countries after a failed uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991. In 1996, about 6,500 Iraqis who had links to an American-sponsored coup attempt against Mr. Hussein were granted asylum.

The Bush administration suspended resettlement of Iraqi refugees after the Sept. 11 attacks, and it did not resume until April 2005, after the process had begun for other Arab countries. A total of 198 Iraqis were resettled in the United States as refugees in the fiscal year of 2005, and 202 in 2006, but most were in the pipeline before the 2003 invasion, and few of the cases address the increasingly dire situation for Iraqis today.
..
Congress approved one program last year to help get special immigrant status for Iraqi interpreters who have worked for the United States military. Laith has tried to apply. The law, which also applies to Afghan interpreters, is capped at 50 a year. Laith was told he needed a senior officer to vouch for him, but he has not worked with one recently, and the one he had worked with is now back in the United States.

Getting such letters, Laith said, has become increasingly difficult, because the interpreters for the most senior American officers now tend to be Arabic speakers hired from the United States, not from Iraq.

The State Department has made it clear that it is deeply concerned about the fate of Iraq’s religious minorities, including Christians. Officials at the department say that any refugee program must also be geared to those vulnerable groups.

As many as 100,000 exiled Iraqi Christians have relatives in the United States and would want to resettle there if given the chance, said Joseph T. Kassab, the executive director of the Chaldean Federation of America, a Michigan-based umbrella group that represents Iraqi Christians. Mr. Kassab said his group’s estimates were based on questionnaires devised by University of Michigan professors and filled out by several thousand Iraqi Christian refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon in recent months.

State Department officials and some advocates for refugees agree that the United States is not likely to begin resettling large numbers of Iraqis anytime soon. New counterterrorism laws after Sept. 11 have slowed immigration, particularly from countries in the Middle East, and Iraqi applications would be bogged down by those security issues.

A State Department refugee official said that any American resettlement effort would deal with only a small part of the overall refugee problem in the region.
Ms. Limón agreed, saying, “We’ll have trouble with the few thousand who work in the Green Zone.”

A quicker way to help would be to increase financing to countries that are accepting Iraqis — Jordan, Syria and Lebanon — and press those governments to improve their treatment of Iraqis by allowing them to work and travel, officials and advocates said.

That would be a real service for Iraqis in Jordan, who speak of rude and sometimes abusive treatment. Jordanians often do not allow Iraqis to bring in suitcases, travelers said, and have been known to turn away young men, forcing families to continue on without them.

“Put yourself in my shoes,” said an Iraqi working in an American Army base who spent eight hours in the January cold last year with his wife and infant at the Jordanian border. “You take your family to another country and they interview you like you are a terrorist.”

A residency permit is required, and Iraqis must deposit 50,000 Jordanian dinars — about $70,000 — in a bank without drawing on it for a year to obtain one. The worker, who wanted to be identified only as Abu Hussein, eventually moved his family back to Iraq, to the south, because he could not afford to stay in Jordan.

“The Americans are in control of this country,” he said, talking about Jordan. “Why don’t they become angry at how they are treating us?”

egypt/jordan protest, and what could be worse?

2006-12-04T17:41:00.000-05:00

protests are breaking out in egypt, host to the third largest number of iraqi refugees, in reaction to their crackdown on residency for iraqis. it should be noted that syria, whose population is less than half of egypt's and whose borders remain open to a steady stream of 2000 iraqis a day and provides education for free, is host to roughly five times as many iraqis.

sectarian discrimination is also cited, though it's defintitely not the first time i have heard something about it:

After their arrival in Egypt, Iraqis get a one-month tourist visa and then apply for a three-month, renewable residency permit. But authorities have begun refusing to grant residency status, or are turning down those who seek to renew it.

Dozens of angry Iraqis protested on Sunday at the Education Ministry after schools expelled their children because their visas were no longer valid, the Al-Gomhoria newspaper reported. The demonstrators demanded their children be allowed to take midyear exams this month.

On Monday, another group gathered at the Interior Ministry's residency department in downtown Cairo to protest "delays and procrastination" in issuing residency permits.

Many Iraqis say they have to pay bribes to get or renew their permits.

"There is a price for every stamp and every signature you get on your residency," said one Iraqi, who only agreed to be identified as Abu Wa'el for fear of reprisal.

Officials said the new restrictions would remain in place, expressing concerns that extremists might infiltrate Egypt or that ordinary Iraqis might bring sectarian rivalries with them.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.

The Interior Ministry, which handles visa and residency issues, and a spokesman at the Foreign Ministry refused to comment.

Concerned that Iraq's Shiite-Sunni split could spread to Egypt, authorities last week rejected a request by Iraqis to open a Shiite mosque in Sixth of October City, a Cairo suburb where many Iraqis live, refugees said. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by Egyptian authorities.

Egypt's Muslims — who make up 90 percent of the population of 77 million — are overwhelmingly Sunni.

Last year, Jordan, which is also mainly Sunni, barred Shiite Iraqis from holding rites at a shrine outside Amman, to protests from refugees.

Jordan has all but closed the door to Iraqis and has stopped renewing residency permits for the approximately 500,000 already there.

The kingdom has also increased immigration enforcement efforts, imposing heavy fines or even deporting Iraqis caught overstaying their visas, according to the United Nations.

the article cites that experts are speculating that the iraqi refugee crisis could rival that of the palestinians in scale.

as for kofi annan's infamous comparison of the current situation to civil war (that this is much worse), i will refer to juan cole:

Annan is right, of course. Historians think that between 80,000 and 100,000 Lebanese were killed in the Civil War of 1975-1989, 20,000 of them during Israel's 1982 invasion. The death toll in Iraq since March, 2003, has likely been at least 420,000. Even the recent figure announced by the Ministry of Health in Iraq, of 150,000 Iraqis killed by Sunni Arab guerrillas or "insurgents," is larger than that for Lebanon (and it does not count those killed by the US military and by the Shiite militias).

the same post cites an article in al sharq al awsat saying that iraq has become a smuggling route for narcotics to the gulf and europe. one more reason to seal their borders i guess.

beyond sunni and shia

2006-12-02T08:01:00.000-05:00

a few notes on other groups within iraq that are persecuted and getting less attention than than the cleansing of sunni and shia minorities, and also have no area of majority to flee to:

most of iraq's palestinians have been there since 1948; that saddam's regime sympathized with their cause fostered resentment at their percieved favourable treatment and makes them a target of death squads. their situation is especially perilous as almost all neighbouring countries already host hundreds of thousands of palestinian refugees and simply refuse to accept any more. still 97 refugees remain at the al ruweisheid camp at the jordanian border and 347 still at the syrian border that have yet to be resettled. according to the UNHCR in october 2006 it's estimated only 5,000 to 6,000 remain of the 30,000 that had registered in iraq in 2003.

iraq's christian population is one of the oldest in the world, the church is believed to have been founded around 30CE. the community today is a mix of orthodox, catholics, armenians, assyrians and chaldeans. they maintained a good relationship with past governments but since the fall of saddam they have been targeted and threatened as "collaborators with the occupation" and seen as pro-western by extremists, islamists, and insurgents; more recently attacks have intensified with the backlash at the pope's comments regarding islam. others have been targeted for selling alcohol and not observing islamic dress and also are more likely to be kidnapped because of the perception that christians are on average well off. the last census in 1987 said the chrisitan population was 1.4 million but today it's estimated at around 600,000, or 2-3% of the total population. IRIN reports that since the pope's speech 60% of churches have closed due to threats, and less than 20% of the community continue to attend services. since the speech priests have also been kidnapped demandng ransom as well as a rejection of the pope's comments. there are no overall numbers on how many have left but in syria alone it's estimated that 35,000 have immigrated since 2003, but there are also sizable iraqi christian communities in lebanon and jordan.

mandaeans are a tiny religious community that follow john the baptist. in 2003 it was estimated they numbered between 50,000 and 60,000 while in october 2005 the UNHCR estimated that the number was at 40,000 and shrinking. mandaeans were historically persecuted; unlike christians and jews they are not under the umbrella of "people of the book" that gave the former two some protection. they also lack tribal affiliation that leaves them vulnerable and as many are traditionally goldmiths and regarded as wealthy they are often a target of robbery and kidnappings demanding very high ransoms.

oh semantics <3

2006-11-30T14:02:00.000-05:00

women's work

2006-11-30T12:19:00.000-05:00

two stories about women finding ways out of the country.

IWPR reports on women marrying men they barely know that live abroad.

the second is an old one: young women desperate to escape difficult circumstances being exploited; recruited for legitimate, well paying jobs and then forced into the sex trade. the guardian tells one such story:

Um Ahmad, as she was known to the girls, had it all planned out. From Baghdad to the border and on to Damascus and a new life, Mona and her three Iraqi friends didn't need to worry about a thing.

The job in the textiles factory outside the Syrian capital would pay $300 (£160) a month, travel for the long journey was already arranged, a place for the girls to stay was ready and waiting and - best of all - Um Ahmad would pay Mona's father one month's salary in advance.

For the 26-year-old eldest daughter of eight children whose parents faced a daily despair of car bombs and poverty in their Baghdad slum, the offer sounded too good to be true.
It was.

Within a week of arriving in Damascus, Mona - whose name has been changed to protect her identity - had been plied with alcohol by Um Ahmad, required to dance for "friends of the factory owner" and had lost her virginity.

Unable to return to her family due to the perceived shame she had brought upon them, Mona began her new life in Syria as a prostitute working for Um Ahmad, dancing in bars outside Damascus and having sex with clients.

the article also notes that it's one of the few types of employment most of the estimated 800,000 iraqis can get in syria, or any of the countries where they are taking refuge, due to their ambiguous legal status.

IRIN tells another story of a teenager in dubai who met the same fate, told she would be working for a family and her father was given a $6000 advance, again too good to be true. it also reports an NGO estimate that 3500 women have gone missing since 2003, and that 25% have been trafficked abroad. much blame is spread around, from the iraqi government for not doing more, to hotels owners and gangs in dubai that feed the demand, syria has given attention to the problem as well:

Trafficking and prostitution are illegal in the six nations of the Gulf, although the region is a popular and common destination for trafficked women. An estimated 10,000 women from sub-Saharan Africa, eastern Europe, Asia and parts of the Middle East may be victims of sex trafficking in the UAE, according to a US State Department report entitled 'Trafficking in Persons', published in June.

Gulf gangs

Sharla Musabih is a human-rights activist in Dubai who runs a shelter for abused and trafficked women. She says sex workers in the UAE operate predominantly from hotels and organised gangs are behind much of the trade.

According to the US State Department report, the UAE government has failed to address the problem adequately, although inroads have been made.

"Instead, many victims [of trafficking] are jailed along with criminals and deported," the report reads. "Prosecutions for sex trafficking are extremely low relative to the scope of the problem."

The report states that despite 100 reported complaints of trafficking for sexual exploitation in 2005, the UAE government reported only 22 convictions for sex-trafficking crimes.

However, the report praised UAE authorities for the closer screening of visa applications by its embassies in source countries; for having set up a human-trafficking division to investigate trafficking crimes; and for training police, prosecutors, judges, and other government officials in combating trafficking.

...

A report released in May by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), the UN's Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Food Programme (WFP) spoke of "organised networks dealing with the sex trade" in Syria. It made a correlation between the deteriorating conditions of Iraqi citizens and an increase in prostitution and trafficking of Iraqi sex workers.

"It is not possible to say how big the trafficking problem from Iraq to Syria is but we know it does exist," said Ann Maymann, a protection officer with UNHCR in Damascus. "It is something that has been kept quiet because people are afraid to talk about it."

Local activists in Syria say much more needs to be done to protect this vulnerable and increasingly exploited community.

Last September, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) co-hosted a workshop with the Ministry of Interior to raise awareness on counter-trafficking.

Maria Rumman, IOM chief of mission in Damascus, said the organisation was assisting a Syrian government committee established to draft a counter-trafficking law, and was waiting for international donor funds for a proposed shelter to assist victims of trafficking. Without such a facility, she said, surveying the number of people trafficked into Syria was impossible.

but again, here is a story we have heard before:

"The government agrees there is a need for new legislation and for a shelter," said Rumman. "But we have not received any reply from donors, including the US, for a year. The minute we have any donor commitment we will begin."

no surprise here.

civil war goes on

2006-11-15T16:20:00.000-05:00

first a disturbing consequence of sectarian violence: the break up of mixed marriages.

the day after the american election after the announcement of the saddam verdict, the washington post published this column acknowledging iraq is in a civil war. most of it is devoted to the question of what role the united states should take, if any, but there's some interesting predictions going on here about how the conflict could play out, and for how long:

civil wars last longer than interstate wars. The average civil war since 1945 has lasted 10 years, and the median (or typical) one has lasted seven years. If we date the start of Iraq's civil war in 2004 or 2005, we probably have at least another five years of fighting.
...
In three out of four cases since 1945, civil wars have ended when one side has crushed the other. If the United States were prepared to use its troops to force the victory of Shiites or Sunnis, perhaps it could hasten the war's end. But neither side makes for a palatable ally.

The United States could stay in Iraq in the hope that it may be one of the unusual civil wars that ends with a political compromise. This is possible, but the academics do not believe it to be likely. In his analysis of 50-plus civil wars, Collier finds that sectarian conflicts such as Iraq's are harder to end than ideological conflicts such as El Salvador's. Meanwhile Fearon emphasizes that wars in which each side is splintered are less susceptible to negotiated conclusions, because you can't trust the other side to stick to a deal if the other side consists of multiple uncoordinated death squads. Both Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq are divided among competing militias.

Moreover, wars that end in negotiation tend to do so only after the combatants have fought to a standstill. Iraq seems a long way from that: Leaders on both sides appear to believe that, once the Americans are out of the way, they can get what they want by fighting. It may be that neither side will give up this belief until it has been tested.

i'm not sure how much i agree with the conclusion about sectarian warfare, the fact that there is intra-sectarian fighting suggests to me that their militancy cannot be purely along ethnic or sectarian lines, that there must, on some part, be some ideological/political motivation at play as well. at least to some degree. to what degree that is is an enigma for the time being.

iraq's IDPs

2006-11-15T11:39:00.000-05:00

the numbers of families registered with the ministry of immigration circa october 2006. map brought to you by the excellent healing iraq blog. the ministry of displacement estimates 16,000 people are fleeing their homes on a weekly basis.

and life goes on

2006-11-14T15:09:00.000-05:00

i'm reading about this at this same time as the other iraq is launching a campaign to attract foreign investment and tourism. yes i know what you're thinking but don't book your plane ticket just yet.

the plight of iraq's million-and-a-half-plus internally displaced people (more specifically the international organization for migration's study) made the bbc today, with regards to their lack of access to basic food, medicine and water, and again the IOM's lack of funds. the study cites the oil rich kirkuk region as one of the worst, with families often renting facilities that don't have basic amenities like running water and lack access to rations while the IOM request another $20 million so they are able to continue assisting iraq's IDPs. according to IRIN the province of karbala just south of baghdad is overwhelmed and has said it will not host any more displaced families. note that while there's talk in the news of schools and universities shutting down today some 70% of iraq's children are not enrolled in school anyways.

meanwhile bechtel aren't the only ones pulling out. last week iraq's NGOs asked the european union to reconsider their withdrawal of humanitarian aid. while the security situation has deteriorated making it very difficult for foreigners to work in the country, NGOs have adapted by basing themselves in neighbouring countries and paying locals to do their work within iraq's borders. like the unhcr the NGOs main obstacle to doing their work is a decline of funding as the humanitarian needs become more acute, causing many to "close down or reduce their actitivies since 2005."

yesterday refugees international appealed to the syrian government (iraq's only neigbour still taking in refugees) over the plight of some 347 palestinian refugees in a makeshift refugee camp near the border for six months while an additional 97 are still remaining at the al ruweisheid camp at the jordanian border. the statement includes a rather terrifying story of one young woman who's friend was murdered, the video of the gang raping and murder sent to her family, who were told all palestinians would meet the same fate.

the organization's recommendations were as follows:

Donors immediately and significantly increase their funding to UNHCR and UNRWA, as well as to other agencies assisting refugees from Iraq;

National governments assist the Syrian and Jordanian governments in absorbing Iraqi refugees that continue to arrive there in massive numbers. Syria in particular needs international support to continue to keep its borders open;

Arab governments immediately agree to host the Palestinians stranded in Al Tanf and Al Ruweisheid, as well as other Palestinians fleeing Iraq. Should Arab countries refuse to do so, they must accept resettlement in third countries as a potential solution for these groups.

Western governments begin to accept referrals for the resettlement of extremely vulnerable individuals, including Palestinians from Iraq seeking refuge in the future.

syria already hosts about 450,000 palestinian refugees in addition to an estimated 700,000 iraqis.

oh the irony

2006-11-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

this little gem seems to have slipped under the radar.

apparently the saudi government is spending a third of a billion dollars to build a 550 mile long security fence along their iraqi border, to help prevent the infiltration of radical islamists. the non-saudi ones at least.

the basics: donations towards relief fall, unhcr works for nothing to keep iraq projects running

2006-11-05T14:00:00.000-05:00

a unhcr spokesperson in a briefing to donors in geneva last week painted a very bleak picture where donations towards humanitarian relief projects for iraq have significantly declined as the demand steadily continues to increase in staggering numbers:

As part of our preparations for a possible exodus of up to 600,000 refugees in 2002-03, for example, we had originally set a budget of $154 million. Today, we are faced with hundreds of thousands more displaced than we had planned for then, but have a $29 million budget that is only about 60 percent funded. In fact, we have already had to suspend a number of crucial activities - to the extent that some of our staff in the region are volunteering to forego their salaries for the next two months just to keep some of these projects going.
...
UNHCR officials just back from the region reported that we now estimate there are at least 1.6 million Iraqis displaced internally, and up to 1.8 million outside the country in neighbouring states. Many were displaced prior to 2003, but an increasing number are fleeing now. Of the internally displaced, we estimate some 425,000 Iraqis have fled their homes for other areas inside Iraq this year alone - largely due to sectarian violence sparked by the Samarra bombings in February. And internal displacement is continuing at a rate of some 50,000 a month. This displacement amid the ongoing violence in Iraq is presenting an enormous humanitarian challenge and extreme hardship for both the displaced and the Iraqi families trying to help them in host communities. The enormous scale of the needs, the ongoing violence and the difficulties in reaching the displaced make it a problem that is practically beyond the capacity of humanitarian agencies, including UNHCR. And the longer it goes on, the more difficult it gets as both the internally displaced and their host communities in Iraq run out of resources.

Outside Iraq, the figures in the immediate neighbouring states are still imprecise, but we now estimate there are up to 700,000 Iraqis in Jordan; at least 600,000 in Syria; at least 100,000 in Egypt; 20-40,000 in Lebanon; and 54,000 in Iran. Many of those outside the country fled over the past decade or more, but now some 2,000 a day are arriving in Syria, and an estimated 1,000 a day in Jordan. Most of them do not register with UNHCR.

Donors were told that the population movements showed no sign of abating and that the needs of those who have fled are dramatic and to a large extent unmet.

the reduction of the budget to $29 million cuts the regional budget in half and "had led to the suspension of a number of priority UNHCR projects. These include work to identify and aid the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, including single mothers, the sick and the elderly" in what is idenitified as the largest and most recent displacement of any unhcr project. about one quarter of that budget was intended for iraqis living in neighbouring countries.

the situation has grown more dire not only as a result of a greater influx of displaced peoples on host countries since the samarra mosque bombing, but also as refugees that left earlier on in the conflict deplete their savings and the burden becomes heavier, especially on bordering countries.
from the same article:

Laurens Jolles, UNHCR acting representative in Damascus, told IRIN that his office had requested a 2006 budget of $1.3 million but received only $700,000. This means its budget for 2006 amounted to less than one dollar a year to spend on each Iraqi refugee in Syria, without taking into account the refugee agency's operating costs and its expenditure on non-Iraqi refugees. The majority of Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the suburbs of Damascus, in deteriorating socio-economic conditions. They have access to public schools and health care but have to travel out of the country every six months to renew their visas and cannot hold work permits, resulting in high unemployment. "When Iraqis first came here they brought resources and many were not in need of assistance. Two years on, that situation has changed and many refugees are no longer able to look after themselves," said Jolles.

the article reports that the unhcr is requesting that donors fund another $25 million budget for 2007, but what's baffling is why in the current situation they are having so much trouble raising even a fifth of the funds they did in 2003 when their chief objective was simply aiding the return of refugees to post-saddam iraq. meanwhile the cbc's nahlah ayed reported this week that syria has stopped giving free healthcare to iraqis as it cannot afford the burden and resentment grows as the massive influx of people raises rent and other costs of living. the effects are spilling beyond the region as iraqis seeking asylum in europe have increased by 50% since last year.

the briefing also highlights the case of some palestinian refugees at al-rweished camp stranded to spend a fourth winter on the jordanian border. the canadian government has agreed to take about a third of them, but still nearly a hundred face an uncertain future as jordan refuses to accept them. syria as a "humanitarian gesture" took in some 287 palestianians fleeing iraq but says it will not take any more.

the point.

2006-11-04T08:10:00.005-05:00

This blog was created to highlight the challenges for Iraqis seeking asylum outside of Iraq as well as its internally displaced people and current diaspora. It was started out of concern for what I feel is a very underdiscussed issue, one whose urgency is growing exponentially as the war goes on. As Iraq has become one of the most dangerous countries to live in in the world Iraqis hoping to leave face exceptional challenges, not only due to a trend of european countries in recent years to tighten their immigration policies but also because of a refusal of many countries to acknowledge that Iraq is a country at war, which complicates the status of those that are seeking refuge.

Iraqi refugees and internally displaced total about five million. As the refugee crisis has begun to be recognized in the past year or so, the scale and speed of action on behalf of countries involved in Iraq does not reflect either their capacity or the severity of the crisis, nor do their priorities reflect their responibility as actors who have been directly involved on the ground in Iraq since 2003. In 2007 the United States took in more than eight times the number of Burmese than Iraqis, and more than three times as many Somalis and Iranians respectively. That year the US set the goal to resettle 12,000 Iraqis (of which 1600 actually arrived in the US,) while the target set for the resettling of displaced Bhutanese(of which there are a total of 106,000 in the world) in the US in the same year was 60,000. Meanwhile the UK, whose population is roughly one fifth the size of the US' has pledged to take in 200 a year, with a total of 24 actually recorded in 2007. Deportation flights from the UK are now being organized for not only failed asylum seekers from Kurdistan, but those from central and southern Iraq as well.

Meanwhile the Iraqi government is promoting and paying for the returns of Iraqis who have fled the country while services for its current displaced are severely lacking.

I chose the name of the url because it first popped in my head from the documentary of the same name. I also chose it as a reference to my concern that we are going to see iraq fatigue in the media and in public consciousness, that as atrocities continue they will be taken for granted as normal and will be mentioned less and less and this little piece of webspace exists to help combat that.

Groups linked to in the sidebar do not necessarily have my endorsement. I have been critical of some of them in my posts, but I'm leaving any related info up for people to judge for themselves.

God bless Iraq and Iraqis.

Last edited October 1st, 2008.