Iraqi Refugees, and Palestinians Living in Iraq, Need a Little Help From Their Friends

By Delinda C. Hanley


	Trucks heading for Iraq park just inches away from tents at al-tanf refugee camp. Palestinian refugees fleeing violence targeted against them in Iraq were refused entry by Jordan and Syria and are stuck in no-man’s land. In 2006, a young boy was killed by one of these trucks on the road (Photo Adam Shapiro).

AHLAM MAHMOOD was a member of Baghdad’s city council until she was kidnapped in 2005. She was freed on condition that she leave her country, Mahmood told participants at a March 17 seminar at the American University Washington College of Law on the Iraqi refugee crisis. When she left Baghdad, she and her three young children joined more than two million Iraqi refugees who are living in Jordan, Syria and other neighboring countries, and an additional 2.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) within Iraq.

Mahmood fled to Syria, where she and her children lived with 20 other people in a one-bedroom flat. She had no savings and no permission to work. Her oldest son died in Syria, she said, due to poor health care. Mahmood became an activist, helping other Iraqi refugees, until she was arrested in May 2008, imprisoned, and finally, in November, put on a plane to the United States.

Last year some 13,800 Iraqis were resettled in the U.S., and this year’s goal is to take 17,000, Barbara Strack of the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services told the conference. Until two years ago the U.S. had no meaningful resettlement program, even for Iraqis whose lives were endangered by working for the U.S. government, contractors or media. Now Homeland Security personnel interview Iraqi applicants in Amman, Damascus, Cairo, Istanbul and Baghdad, Strack said, and begin the careful background screening and fingerprinting process to make sure no “bad actors” try to get into the U.S.

According to Syrian Ambassador Imad Moustapha, the presence of 1.5 million Iraqi refugees places an overwhelming burden on his country’s infrastructure, economy, schools and health care system. The cost is incredible, Moustapha said—but added that Iraqis, like earlier refugees from Palestine, Golan, and Lebanon, have a right to stay until they can return to a safe, stable country.

Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein, Jordan’s ambassador to the U.S., agreed, “My own father was an Iraqi refugee who made Jordan his home,” he explained. “My grandfather was stateless, too. He was forced out of Syria by the French and left Syria a broken man. It’s important for refugees to retain their dignity, not just security.”

Both Syria and Jordan need financial help to purchase extra garbage trucks, ambulances, and everyday equipment, as well as funding for other services to handle the flood of refugees.

Adberrahim Sabir, a former human rights officer for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), interviewed refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2007 to see who was leaving Iraq and why. He discovered that all sectarian groups were leaving—Shi’i, Sunni, Christian, Kurds—after being victimized or threatened by armed groups from every sect. They didn’t just pack up and leave the country, Sabir noted. They first stayed with relatives or friends and moved within Iraq before deciding to flee the country. Most are middle class Iraqis—the poor can’t afford to run, he said, and are displaced internally.

If they do escape, refugees often live among the poor in Amman or Damascus, Sabir said. The men stay home all day in fear of being picked up and forced to return to Iraq. For the same reason, they don’t register their children for school or seek medical help. The people in their host countries blame Iraqi refugees for the rise in prices and unemployment.

The refugees don’t fare much better if they make it to Europe. Bill Frelick, program director of refugee policy at Human Rights Watch, discussed Europe’s abysmal treatment of Iraqi refugees, whose numbers doubled from 20,000 to 40,000 in 2008. Greece, which has a “dysfunctional asylum system,” according to Frelick, is the gateway to Europe for Iraqis. If Iraqis arrive in Greece by sea, their rafts are punctured or their boat engines are disabled and they are pushed toward Turkey. If they’re apprehended on land they are detained in horrible cells, then shoved over the border to Turkey in the middle of the night. Frelick called for European countries to develop and harmonize their asylum system.

Iraq’s Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie said that the best solution for refugees is to create conditions for them to go home to a stable Iraq. Ambassador James B. Foley, appointed by the Bush administration to coordinate Iraqi refugee issues, also called for a voluntary return of Iraqis when it’s appropriate.

But when Iraqis do return to their country, 50 percent say they regret returning and more than 30 percent end up in a place they didn’t intend to be, according to Michel Gabaudan, regional representative for U.S. and Caribbean, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). They face the same human rights abuses and insecurity that made them flee in the first place, he said.

Everyone at the day-long seminar agreed that both Iraq and the U.S. should be doing more to help refugees. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) said he is sponsoring H.R. 578, a bill whose purpose is “to address the impending humanitarian crisis and potential security breakdown as a result of the mass influx of Iraqi refugees into neighboring countries, and the growing internally displaced population in Iraq.” The bill calls for an increase in assistance to Iraqi refugees and their host countries, facilitating the resettlement of Iraqis at risk.

One group of refugees is rarely mentioned in this country. Human rights activist Adam Shapiro showed a shocking documentary he filmed in November about the crisis facing Palestinians from Iraq. Before the 2003 American invasion, more than 34,000 Palestinians lived in Iraq, having fled there in 1948 and also in 1967, where they were treated as honored guests. More Palestinians settled in Iraq after being expelled from Kuwait in 1991, following the first Gulf war. Saddam Hussain seized homes from Shi’i Iraqis, gave them to Palestinians, mostly Sunnis, and made a big show out of his support for the Palestinian cause.

“They are paying a high price today,” Shapiro said. Many Palestinians have been either killed, imprisoned, or forced to leave. Without passports, no country in the region will take them, and about 4,000 live illegally in Damascus. Thousands more remain in Baghdad, and more than 3,000 live in tents in three desert camps on the borders of Syria and Jordan: Al-Hol, Al-Tanaf, and Al-Walid. They are cut off from the world, with U.N. agencies supplying food, water, education and health care, and they are in critical need of third country resettlement.

Mahmood and her two young children are luckier than many Iraqi refugees, having resettled in Chicago. Like other Iraqi asylum seekers, however, their troubles are far from over. “After being unsafe for six years, being kidnapped and tortured, losing your home and family—how can four months make you normal?” she asked. After navigating an obstacle course to get here, even highly educated Iraqis find themselves subsisting on welfare-level payments, and competing for jobs with out-of-work Americans in a country caught up in anti-immigrant fervor. Mahmood, again advocating for other refugees, said she’s asking the U.S. government to support Iraqi refugees for a full year.

Once they’re in the U.S., Iraqis can easily fall through the cracks. Public assistance may last only 30 to 90 days, even for Iraqis who had to flee because they were endangered by working for Americans, according to Kirk Johnson, founder of The List Project, which helps those Iraqis resettle in the U.S. After a brutal first few months here, some suffering from PSTD, others still struggling to learn English, Iraqi refugees have to polish up their résumés and interview in the midst of a recession, Johnson said.

Johnson first became involved with Iraqi refugees when an Iraqi co-worker, who for two years had sneaked into the Green Zone to work for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), was spotted by neighbors. He found the severed head of a dog on his doorstep, along with a note saying his head was next. Johnson’s friend was given two weeks unpaid leave and USAID gave his job to someone else. The Iraqi and his wife fled to the Gulf, looked for work until their visas ran out, and finally made it to the United States, where they now live with Johnson’s parents. There are 350 more vulnerable Iraqis on Johnson’s list, waiting to come to the U.S.

“I don’t see why we don’t do more to help Iraqis who worked with us,” said Johnson. “There is no investment from the White House,” he concluded, although this may soon change. In President Barack Obama’s Feb. 27 speech on “Responsibly Ending the War in Iraq,” the president spoke powerfully about Iraqis displaced by war: “America has a strategic interest—and a moral responsibility—to act.”

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.