Iraqi Refugees on The Huffington Post

Kathryn Schulz: Billie Jean in Baghdad

2009-11-16T14:40:21Z

On Watching the Michael Jackson Movie With Iraqi Refugees

Forgive me, but I am going to start at the end. I am sitting in a dark movie theater in Damascus, Syria. It is October 30 and This Is It, the Michael Jackson movie-slash-valediction, has just opened worldwide. In 24 hours, I will fly home to New York, after a month in the Middle East reporting on the Iraqi refugee crisis -- on the terrifying past, miserable present, and uncertain future of the estimated two million people who have fled the war. Right now, though, nine of those two million people are sitting next to me: my friend Z., who invited me to the movies, plus eight of his pals. Chronologically, they are just kids, college age or slightly older -- say, 19 to 25. Measured by life experience, they have nine or ten light years on me.

This is, as I said, an ass-backward way to begin. By rights I should start with the big picture: with those two million refugees, the other 2.6 million who are displaced within Iraq, the 1 million dead. I should tell you something about them -- about these doctors, engineers, artists, former U.S. Army interpreters, mothers of murdered six-year-olds, English teachers, hyper-articulate fifth-grade kids. I should tell you something about international refugee policy, about Sunnis and Shiites and Christians, about life in Iraq before and after the war.

Instead, here I am in this movie theater. Michael Jackson is up on screen: singing, sliding his astonishing feet, doing that thing where he points to precise, invisible spots in the air. Billie Jean is not my lover. I was in second grade when this song came out; I can barely remember a time when I didn't know it by heart. Down at the end of the row, a young Kurdish woman who sports a vintage MTV T-shirt and speaks perfect idiomatic American shouts, "We love you, Michael!" All around me, the other kids are singing. She's just a girl who claims that I am the one. They know every damn word. It is one of the happiest, strangest moments of my trip.

***

Here are five things you should know about these kids:

1. "College age" is a category, not a reality. Back in Iraq, kidnappings, gunfights, and bombings conspired to make going to school impossibly dangerous. As a result, almost all Iraqi kids have missed out on years of education. Z., a highly motivated student, persuaded his parents to let him keep going to high school throughout the war. When I asked him how he got there every day, he grinned broadly: "At top speed." But most kids just stayed home -- for months, for years.

In Syria, Iraqi refugees can go to school -- in theory. In practice, fewer than 20% of them do so. Some can't afford the books and uniforms. (Refugees can't legally work in Syria, so even families that were affluent when they first fled have long since burned through their savings.) Some are too busy being the sole wage-earners for their families, since minors who work are far less likely to be busted than their parents. (I met a former government functionary whose family survives on the $17 per week that his 13-year-old son makes by cleaning a print shop.) Some drop out from sheer frustration and shame -- the shame of being so far behind, so much older than their classmates, so unwelcome and displaced.

2. These particular kids, however, want to be in school -- more than any young people I've ever met. One of them almost started to cry when telling me about missing out on four years of school (and these are kids who can describe the bombing that killed their best friend without shedding a tear). Specifically, they want to go to school in the U.S. To get there, they are banking on a program called the Iraqi Student Project, which connects qualified Iraqi kids with American universities that are willing to waive tuition.

3. As the dream of studying in the U.S. suggests, they have all made some kind of peace with the country that invaded their own, bombed it (in the words of the first George Bush) "back to the stone age," and opened up a power vacuum inside which every imaginable monstrosity now flourishes. Like almost all the Iraqis I met, the kids show a graceful ability to separate the actions of a government from the intentions of its people. Perhaps that's one legacy of life under Saddam. Or perhaps it's just an awkward concession to a country that gave them, in no particular order, a model for a free and democratic society, a war, crippling sanctions that devastated civilian life, another war, Thriller, Beat It, and Bad.

4. They have lived through hell. Z. lost 14 friends in three years, enough to fill the row of seats in front of us. Another kid I met arrived at school one day to find a decapitated body on the doorstep, an experience that left her seven-year-old sister mute for a week. Another saw two of her friends kidnapped from the street in front of her. Later, the parents found their children's remains in the garbage. She doesn't know why she was spared.

5. Most of the time, looking at these kids, you would never guess any of this. They act like kids everywhere, not least because they need to. They do it for their parents; they do it to pay their debts to the dead. They do it because no one can live in a state of crisis forever. It is only in rare moments that you see the price they've paid. The rest of the time, they play soccer and World of Warcraft and ultimate frisbee. They negotiate with their parents over what time they'll come home. They have Skype names and tricked-out cell phones and 60 bajillion Facebook friends. And they are seriously in love with Michael Jackson.

***

So now Michael is up there on screen singing all I wanna say is, they don't really care about us. The kids are stomping their feet so hard the whole row of seats is rocking back and forth. Later, when we get to the half-spoken, half-rapped part of Thriller made famous by Vincent Price, they go at it in unison:

Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y'alls neighborhood.

To me, it sounds like the Iraqi national anthem. For them, though -- well, I hesitate to make too much of it. Part of Michael's beauty, after all, was just beauty. Thriller was brilliant when it came out, so brilliant that it did not age into campiness. Nor did its creator. Even at fifty, he could sing with the best of them, and dance everybody else into the ground.

Still, Michael Jackson's particular brand of genius had the fairy dust of American possibility and prosperity shining all over. Did he speak to the dispossessed, with his corny-yet-sincere bid to "Heal the World," and his indisputably successful bid to rule it? Of course. Ask Marjane Satrapi of Iran, or Helene Cooper of Liberia, both of whom have written movingly about their childhood obsessions with Jackson, that strange, single-gloved beacon of hope in dark times. And they are hardly alone. As a diehard Nabokov fan, it pains me slightly to say this, but for every five people who have read Lolita in Tehran (or in any other oppressive locale on earth) roughly a billion have tried, in the privacy of their own rooms, to master the moonwalk.

That is why -- let's face it -- Michael Jackson probably did more than anyone else in his lifetime to enhance America's image overseas. Granted, a plausible rival has recently emerged, in the form of another kinda-black-kinda-white guy who has lately come in for some serious global fame. But the jury is still out on that one. Not so Michael Jackson, King to Obama's president. Part of his allure was the way he threaded together the two great American fantasies: universal brotherhood (It don't matter if you're black or white) and collective progress through individual improvement (If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change). His ethos was our national one: just give a guy a fighting chance.

It's not perfect, but it is something. And it is, unquestionably, every refugee's dream. Watching This Is It in Damascus, next to my tough, sweet, somehow surviving Iraqi friends, it was impossible not to think that this is some of what they saw: Michael Jackson as (I think he'd appreciate the comparison) Lady Liberty.

UN Tests Text-Messaging Food Vouchers To Iraqi Refugees

2009-10-27T13:19:38Z

GENEVA (AFP) -Iraqi refugees in Syria will receive UN food vouchers through text messages on mobile phones, the World Food Programme said Tuesday.

Diane Tucker: Brutal Destruction Of Iraq's Archaeological Sites Continues (SLIDESHOW)

2009-09-21T16:46:10Z

Buried in Iraq's clay and dirt is the history of Western civilization. Great empires once thrived here, cultures that produced the world's first wheel, first cities, first agriculture, first code of law, first base-sixty number system, and very possibly the first writing. A brutal plundering of this rich cultural heritage has been taking place in broad daylight ever since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. These days Ancient Mesopotamia looks more like a scene from the movie Holes.

"I still find it hard to believe this is happening," Clemens Reichel told the Huffington Post. "Since the 2003 Iraq War, my work as a field archaeologist has changed forever. Sometimes it feels more like an undertaker's work." Reichel, a Mesopotamian archaeologist at the University of Toronto, is former editor of the Iraq Museum Database Project at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute.

The scope of the catastrophe taking place cannot be overstated, said Reichel.

Thousands of cuneiform-inscribed tablets, cylinder seals, and stone statues have illegally made their way to the lucrative antiquities markets of London, Geneva, and New York. Irreplaceable artifacts have been purchased for less than $100 on Ebay.

Beyond the loss of these precious objects, reckless digging has destroyed the ability of researchers to assemble a mosaic of meaning from the shards of ancient art and mud bricks buried in the ground. "Artifacts without context are decoration, nothing more. Pretty, but useless," said Reichel.

View slideshow:

Looters Aren't The Only Culprits

The United States military turned the site of ancient Babylon into Camp Alpha in 2003 and 2004, inflicting serious damage according to an exhaustive damage assessment recently released by UNESCO. Bulldozers leveled many of Babylon's artifact-laden hills. Helicopters caused structural damage to an ancient theater.

But don't be quick to pin the blame on the U.S. military. In the past, protecting antiquities was an important part of U.S. military planning -- that is, when the leadership at the Defense Department deemed it important. During World War II, American officers persuaded allied commanders to avoid combat inside Florence, birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. Members of the Third Army rescued ten works by Rembrandt from the salt mines of Germany, then shipped them to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. for painstaking restoration before returning the works to Europe.

Why, then, are military helicopters still landing on the remains of ancient Babylon? Why are looters still bringing shovels to the cradle of civilization and stripping it bare?

The Buck Stops With Donald Rumsfeld

Remember Rummy? The former defense secretary's jaw-dropping insensitivity was immortalized by the Washington Post's Thomas E. Ricks, after Army Specialist Thomas Wilson complained to Rumsfeld that he and his comrades were forced to root through Iraqi junkyards to improvise armor for their military vehicles:

TW: "A lot of us are getting ready to move north soon. Our vehicles are not armored."

DR: "You go to war with the Army you have."

Rumsfeld was equally indifferent about the looting of more than 15,000 objects from the National Museum in Baghdad on his watch. "Stuff happens," he said.

According to U.S. military intelligence officer Major James B. Cogbill, the principal reason the U.S. failed to protect the National Museum in Baghdad and key archaeological sites was the relatively small size of the force sent into Iraq. "There weren't enough troops on the ground to guard known ammunition dumps, let alone cultural and archaeological sites," Cogbill told the Huffington Post.

Remember it was Rumsfeld who pushed hard to send as small a force as possible into Iraq. This failed strategy, now called the Rumsfeld Doctrine, resulted in unnecessary loss of life, and loss of history.

In 2003, museum officials in Baghdad had more on the ball than Rumsfeld. They wisely hid many premier objects inside an air-raid shelter and the Central Bank before the Coalition invasion. Even so, thousands of precious objects covering 5000 years of recorded history were stolen or smashed to bits. Today nearly 10,000 artifacts remain missing.

Even more devastating is the continued destruction of Iraq's reknowned archaeological sites. Here are three examples. There are thousands more.

Babylon

First built nearly 5,000 years ago, the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon was once the largest city in the ancient world. Hammurabi, whose principles of justice are still recognized today, lived here. So did Nebuchadnezzar, who reputedly established the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Alexander the Great once ruled this resilient city.

The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on the ancient site. Several areas were leveled to serve as parking lots. Heavy vehicles destroyed relics buried near the surface. Troops filled sandbags with soil full of archaeological fragments. (Something as simple as a broken plate can hold the key to how ancient cultures traded.) The remains of Ishtar Gate, the most beautiful of the eight gates that ringed Babylon's perimeter, was among the structures most abused.

"The damage to Babylon is so great," said Maryam Mussa, an official from the Iraqi state board of heritage and antiquities, "it will be difficult to repair it, and nothing can make up for it."

Samarra

The Great Mosque of Samarra, built in the 9th century, was once the largest mosque in the world. It's minaret, the Malwiya Tower, is a dramatic spiraling cone that rises more than 170 feet above the desert. Not only is the tower one of the most recognized buildings in the Middle East, it was featured on Iraq's currency. Despite protests issued by scholars, U.S. snipers occupied the Malwiya Tower as a lookout. In 2005, the top floor of the minaret was blasted by an insurgent bomb.

Umm al-Aqarib

Archaeologists uncovered a palace and a large temple complex more than 4,500 years old at the ancient site of Umm al-Aqarib, findings that were expected to help rewrite the history of Sumerian architecture. Today this buried treasure has been completely picked over by looters. Many of the illicit digs were massive efforts carried out by organized teams with backhoes and bulldozers, some financed by foreign operations. Stolen artifacts included fragile clay tablets etched in cuneiform script that revealed recorded decrees, business transactions, and other details of Mesopotamian life. Archaeological bjects like this are difficult to trace because they have never been recorded.

Who is going to step in and protect these sites?

The United Nations is trying to name Babylon a World Heritage Site, a designation that would bring additional support and protection. The hitch? The World Heritage Organization might deny the request if it decides Iraq doesn't have the personnel to maintain the site. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department has kicked in $700,000 to help with restoration, a figure most archaeologists consider too small to make a difference. "Of course it is not enough, but it is better than nothing," said Mussa.

Speaking of better than nothing, last fall the U.S. became the 123rd country to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict. (That date, 1954, is not a typo. It took 55 years for the U.S. to get on board.) The Hague Convention is the first multilateral treaty devoted exclusively to the protection of cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict.

Major Cogbill is pushing to institutionalize wartime cultural planning "so it is not marginalized as an afterthought in the junk drawer of the Pentagon."

The U.S. Government should create a permanent, dedicated structure within the Department of Defense that, at a minimum, ensures that appropriate cultural planning occurs and is disseminated to all levels of command. This organization should be fully integrated into the operations and policy directorates -- not marginalized as an afterthought in the "junk drawer" of the Pentagon. It would also be responsible for coordinating directly with whatever civilian agency has overall responsibility for protecting cultural arts and antiquities. Perhaps most importantly, cultural planning should not be relegated to the periphery as part of "phase IV" operations. Unless such planning is a formal aspect of all phases of the operation, it will not be executed properly.

The Department of Defense is "seriously considering this recommendation" said Cogbill.

Army cultural services manager Laurie Rush told the Huffington Post the Department of Defense has already started to do more than just talk about antiquities issues. In 2007, Rush developed a set of playing cards for U.S. soldiers that illustrate Iraq's wealth of ancient historical sites. "This summer, the Central Command Historical Cultural Advisory Group completed its first ever on-site archaeology training for military personnel in the Middle East. Next month, the group will return to Cairo to provide additional sessions with an international faculty," said Rush.

In the meantime, the U.S. military is in the process of slowly withdrawing its troops from Iraq. It begs the question: who is going to step in and stop the slow death of human history?

Anne C. Richard: Refugees Lose Three Inspiring Champions

2009-08-27T11:11:19Z

Over the past year, three Americans who served as leaders of humanitarian causes have succumbed to cancer. They shared an outspoken passion for the cause of aiding refugees and other victims of oppression, war and poverty, but they also shared something rarer: the ability to translate concern into action.

The Statesman and Legislator: Senator Edward Kennedy's interest in refugee issues dates from the 1970s, and I can personally attest to that. Nearly 30 years ago, as a student at Georgetown University in Washington, I walked to the State Department to hear him speak about Vietnamese refugees. I found the Senator's remarks and the energy he brought to the issue remarkable. He became the author and driving force behind the Refugee Act of 1980, which moved the country from an ad-hoc program to bring refugees to the U.S. to a formal partnership between government and private organizations with annual goals for refugee admissions His Senate office regularly produced staff members who would become foreign policy leaders in their own right. A year ago, I finally got the chance to meet Senator Kennedy in person. In a small room off the Senate chamber, the Senator met with a group from the International Rescue Committee, led by his sister, Jean Kennedy Smith. He had squeezed the meeting in between giving an interview to a Boston reporter, receiving a delegation of Irish officials, and votes on the Senate floor. He interrupted our rehearsed points on the Iraqi refugee crisis -- he already knew all about it -- and refocused the conversation on what should be done next. He had already overseen the passage of legislation that gave sanctuary in the United States to Iraqis whose lives were threatened because they had helped Americans. Now, he pledged both staff resources and his personal energies to continue to help refugees in need.

The Spokesman: Kenneth Bacon had been a long time Wall Street Journal reporter before accepting the post of chief spokesman at the Defense Department in 1994. In that role, he became known to a wider public as the unflappable bow-tie-wearing man behind the podium at the Pentagon, explaining U.S. involvement in wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. But it was in his third career -- as the president of Refugees International, a group that reports on humanitarian crises and advocates on behalf of refugees -- that Ken may have rendered his greatest service. He spoke out on behalf of the vulnerable, displaced and dispossessed all over the world, and put in many hours traveling to Sudan, Iraq, Cambodia and the Thailand-Burma border. While his colleagues at Refugees International may have written the essential reports analyzing crises, Ken was the one who translated their recommendations into plain English and got them published in newspaper op-ed pages and on television, radio, and the internet. He was a genius at finding ways to get often neglected stories covered by the media. He did all this with a clear voice that was always rational and never shrill, using the same reasonable, informed tone whether talking to refugees in camps, policy wonks in Washington or world leaders at conference tables.

The Advocate: Julia Taft died a year ago, in August 2008. She was born Julia Vadala, the daughter of an army doctor and his wife, and married into the famous Taft family of Ohio. She and her husband, Will, moved comfortably in Washington foreign policy circles and took turns serving in government while raising a family. Julia Taft directed the Interagency Task Force on Indochina Refugees for President Ford, led the government's response to foreign disasters in the Reagan Administration and served as an assistant secretary covering refugee policy in the Clinton Administration. In between these tours in the government, Taft led Interaction, the coalition of relief and development aid agencies, and spearheaded reforms at the UN. I worked alongside her in the Clinton Administration and afterwards and learned a great deal about the importance of speaking out. I adored her fearless approach to seemingly intractable problems and her ability to convince decision-makers (often all men) to cooperate. In times of crisis, whether in Southeast Asia, the Horn of Africa, or the Balkans, Julia became the hub through which information flowed, decisions got made and government assets, from food to military cargo planes, moved. She was approachable and could always be found outside after a meeting taking a cigarette break and ready to mentor younger staff. She would be up to speed on emerging crises and several steps ahead of the rest of us. Her greatest talent may have been spurring the reluctant to take action. In the last weeks of her life, she was working the phones from her sickbed challenging us to do more.

With the passing of these three heroes, the community of activists, aid workers and donors who care about refugees and relief work has been diminished. In reflecting on their lives we see that they had several things in common: a passion for and mastery of the issues; a strong desire to help the most vulnerable; the ability to work in a bipartisan fashion and inspire platoons of younger colleagues; and voices that could make themselves heard. Their examples challenge all of us to do what we can to carry on their important work.

Anne C. Richard is a Vice President at the International Rescue Committee, www.theIRC.org.

3 Iraqi Refugees Fleeing Violence Languish In A Federal Lockup

2009-08-24T12:16:48Z

PEARSALL, Texas -- One fled the Iraqi city of Irbil when militant Islamists threatened his life for befriending local Christians. Another bolted from Kirkuk after the murder of his father and kidnapping of a brother for past ties to Saddam Hussein's government. A third took flight after angering extremists by resisting a local cleric's call to jihad.

Iraqi Refugees In Denmark Begin Hunger Strike To Avoid Deportation

2009-08-14T16:49:30Z

PARIS - Iraqi refugees who were arrested this week in Denmark, setting off a violent confrontation between their supporters and the police that was captured on video, have gone on a hunger strike to try to avoid deportation, lawyers and activists said Friday.

Iraqi Refugees Struggle To Adjust To Life In US

2009-08-12T13:44:02Z

Advocates for immigrants in New York and elsewhere say that Iraqis have had more difficulty getting settled than most migrant populations. Many are well educated and arrive with unrealistically high expectations of the life that awaits them.

Philip Jacobson: From A Syrian Prison To A Chicago Apartment: An Iraqi Refugee's Story

2009-08-10T20:07:28Z

Kasim Kasim couldn't believe his eyes. Coming from the elevator was the woman who had taught him in Sayeda Zainab, home to Damascus' greatest concentration of Iraqi refugees, where she ran English and math classes out of her apartment despite pressure from Syrian authorities. The woman who'd let him assist her humanitarian work, using his wealth of contacts to locate specific refugees for the journalists, aid workers and NGOs that relied on her. He hadn't seen her since his family's resettlement over a year ago. He had agonized ever since he'd heard, five months earlier, that she had been imprisoned in Syria, and he'd heard, but could not bring himself to believe, not until he actually laid eyes on her, that she had been released from prison days ago and resettled right here, to apartment 512, 6011 North Kenmore Street, in the Chicago neighborhood of Edgewater. Find her, his friend Firaz had told him hours earlier from Washington D.C., after receiving word of her arrival. Make sure she is okay. Through a family whose phone she'd used earlier that day, Kasim had tracked her down. Now, at nearly one in the morning, after repeated knocking had yielded no response, and after laying on her doormat to wait because he didn't know what else to do, there she was, Ahlam Ahmed Mahmoud. "Mom!" he exclaimed, unable to hold back tears. "It's you! I can't believe it!"

Hugging, crying, they went inside and called Kasim's family. They talked. As in Damascus, Kasim remained plugged in to the Iraqi community here, and he told Mahmoud about their problems. Unable to find work, their benefits running dry, and struggling with depression brought on by post traumatic stress disorder, culture shock and loneliness, Iraqis were struggling to pay rent, to provide food and clothes for their families, to survive. Mahmoud, Kasim reasoned, could help Iraqis here, just as she'd helped them in Damascus.

But Mahmoud was tired. In the span of three days, she'd gone from a Syrian prison cell to a sudden release and reunion with her two children to a plane ride through Budapest and New York City to Chicago. She'd arrived wearing the same clothes she had on during her arrest five months earlier. Two hours before reuniting with Kasim, plagued by a brutal headache, she'd gone out into the October night looking for a pharmacy and quickly got lost, without knowing her address or phone number. The police had helped her home. How she could possibly solve the problems Kasim now told her about, let alone her own, with no idea how things worked in this foreign country, this alien world, she did not know.

"They expect me to help them," she said later. "Like I was helping them down there in Syria. Well I'm just here, I'm just a person. I don't have anything to offer them."

But Mahmoud's trepidation would not last long. As word of her arrival spread and Iraqis, as they had in Damascus, began knocking on her door asking for help, Mahmoud decided she needed to do something. Her plan: start an organization to help Iraqi refugees.

- - -

By the time Mahmoud began running a makeshift school out of her Sayeda Zainab apartment in mid-2007, Syria had taken some 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, the most of any country. In a nation of less than 20 million, social repercussions such as huge increases in prices of living spurred resentment toward Iraqis. Syrian military intelligence closely monitored them, paying special attention to any organizations they formed. According to the 2007 Human Rights Watch report "No Room To Breathe," Syria's powerful security forces would "routinely harass human rights groups and scrutinize their leaders, activities and funding," a statement Mahmoud's experience confirmed.

Back in Baghdad Mahmoud had worked as a fixer, (a translator and general guide for journalists and NGOs,) then as a city counselor and prominent aid worker for the U.S. Army before she was kidnapped for five days, beaten and interrogated, released for $50,000 ransom, and forced to flee the country, all of which was documented in a 2007 Salon article.

In Damascus, she continued the kind of social service work she'd done in Iraq, but primarily of her own volition. Engaging in what Deborah Campbell, a journalist who worked with her, described as "self initiated community organizing," Mahmoud helped people with the problems they came to her with, connected NGOs like UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with the needy families they sought, assisted individuals and organizations looking to donate food, clothing or money, and became an unofficial community leader.

"All roads led to Ahlam," Campbell said. "She was a one woman NGO, basically the center of the Iraqi refugee community in Syria. If you didn't know her, you weren't paying attention."

SMI did pay attention, and as her teaching operation expanded to include a downstairs apartment and over 70 students, pressure increased. Intelligence officers came about every week, Mahmoud said, always unannounced. They'd search books and watch classes, threatening to shut down the school if they found anything suspicious. Nonetheless, Mahmoud and her volunteer teachers continued. Iraqi children often did not or could not attend school, and Mahmoud, the first girl of her Sunni tribe to finish high school and its first, period, to graduate college, wanted to make sure the children, girls especially, had the same opportunity.

"The Iraqi people, the first concern in their life is education," said Mahmoud, now 44. "Every one of the children, I can say they are my children. They just need somebody to encourage them, to support them, to push them ahead to join the school and never quit from it." She pauses, taking a drag of her cigarette. Her eyes fall as she breathes smoke. "I don't know what's happening with them now."

Early in May 2008, Mahmoud gave her contacts and passport to her friend Sheryl Mendez, a photographer. It was a precaution, she said, just in case something bad happened to her.

"By this way I saved my life," Mahmoud said.

- - -

As she headed through Sayeda Zainab's dusty alleyways, Campbell had the feeling she was being followed. She'd returned to Damascus to follow up on a piece she'd written for Harper's Magazine and was on her way to visit Mahmoud, as she often did in the mornings. Now, the morning of May 31, 2008, that disconcerting thought flashed through her mind. She ignored it.

Campbell arrived and found Mahmoud making breakfast for her son Abdullah, then 12, who'd returned home from the hospital the previous day after breaking his hand. Mahmoud made tea. After 15 minutes, they heard knocking downstairs. Mahmoud opened the door to four intelligence officers.

"She went downstairs to talk," Campbell said. "Apparently they didn't want me to see them. I'd had that feeling I was being followed, and then it turned out they didn't want me to see them."

The intelligence officers told Mahmoud to come with them to their office to talk. They wanted her to do something for them. They didn't say what. Mahmoud went upstairs and told Campbell not to worry, that she wouldn't be gone long, and left with the officers in a white station wagon.

Since Mahmoud had been similarly summoned before, Campbell didn't think it was serious. But if the officers had taken Mahmoud because of her association with her, a blond foreign female journalist, she didn't want to jeopardize her other Iraqi contacts. So she ceased all phone calls and became extremely circumspect about email.

A few days later, Campbell got a call from an American friend who ran a magazine there, asking her over to talk about something. When Campbell arrived, the friend asked what had happened to Mahmoud. Nobody had heard from her, she said, and nobody knew where she was.

The white station wagon had taken Mahmoud to SMI's local office. In a small, dark room, officers told her they wanted her to spy on the American journalists and aid workers with whom they knew she associated and write a weekly report. Surprised by their questions, she refused.

"I'm just a humanitarian activist," Mahmoud said. "I can't do anything like this. How can I betray anyone who gives me their trust?"

Without letting her contact anyone, they locked her in a cell. After a few days, they moved her to a prison in Damascus' outlying Kfar Sousa district. To everyone she knew, Mahmoud had simply disappeared into the Syrian prison system.

Over the next several months, Mahmoud passed the time praying, reading the Qur'an, talking to the women around her--anything to keep her mind off her children. Prisoners came and went, and new ones told stories of the outside world.

Once, she heard a noise outside the cell. Peering through holes in the door, she saw guards moving a man's limp body, their clothes covered in blood. From their conversation, she knew he had used his glasses to cut and kill himself.

One day, Mahmoud had heavy chest pains. Fearing a heart attack, officers took her to the hospital for a night. The next morning, back in prison, they opened her cell door and told her she had one minute to prepare herself. For release.

Over the past five months, Campbell and others had been endeavoring for Mahmoud's freedom through a variety of channels, pushing international human rights groups like UNHCR and various governments to pressure Syria's. Earlier that week, Amnesty International had finally threatened to go public. Whether their efforts worked or some other force set Mahmoud free, neither she nor Campbell can say.

Mahmoud was brought to the UNHCR offices, where her children were waiting. As a condition of her release, UNCHR had made an agreement with SMI, taking her into their responsibility and ensuring she'd leave the country in seven days. They told her she was to be resettled in the United States. They let her call her brother and sister, and she only said goodbye, because she did not know when or if she would see them again. That night, October 26, 2008, Mahmoud and her two kids were on a plane to Budapest.

"The first sunshine after five months," she said, "I saw it when I was up in the sky."

- - -

Smiling faces, Iraqi and American, on Mahmoud's computer screen. She points out a blond woman, then a shaggy haired twenty something wearing a San Diego Padres t-shirt.

"There's Deborah," Mahmoud says. "And Kasim. He moved to New York to find a job. He's a mechanic now."

Back in December, Mahmoud hosted a gathering of Iraqi and American families. Now she cycles through pictures of them sitting on her apartment floor, nearly bereft of furniture. They shared food, talked and played with one another's children until past midnight.

"Now they are friends," Mahmoud says. "The Iraqis can call them if they have any kind of problems or need anything. The most difficult thing is the mail they have. They cannot read it so they ask help to explain what's going on. Even this tiny thing, it helps so much."

For Mahmoud, a vast personal network provided that initial support her first few weeks. Friends like Deborah sent people to visit or flew in themselves, helping her with things like setting up internet or going to the eye doctor.

One person sent to check on her was Beth Ann Toupin, a 26-year Amnesty International volunteer who coordinated work in the Middle East. As Toupin helped her, Mahmoud told her her story and they became friends. Mahmoud saw that unlike her, Toupin knew the system here. So one day, about a week after they met, Mahmoud asked if she would help her start an organization to help Iraqi refugees. I need your help, she explained, because you're an American.

Toupin was skeptical at first, but Mahmoud, the persuasive advocate people often describe her as, convinced her. They began gathering information, talking to Iraqis about needs and looking into what services existing organizations weren't adequately providing. In late December they met 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky at their shared Edgewater office. Smith arranged for a meeting that day with Steve Brunton, executive director of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association. He agreed to help them apply for a joint grant along with potential Burmese, Congolese and Nepalese organizations, and they became the Iraqi Mutual Aid Society.

They've since assembled a board of directors, attended conferences and tried to figure out exactly how they can help without repeating what's already offered. They had trouble engaging Iraqis at first, as almost no one came to their first life skills class in May, but 40 showed up to a recent meeting, a huge breakthrough. They've had a few events; Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed spoke at their inaugural Third Friday Salon, a monthly discussion of Iraqi art, music and literature, on July 17.

Since entities teaching English and job search skills already exist, they've decided to focus on "information and referral" and building an Iraqi community center. An ethnically specific organization would help Iraqis overcome the cultural misunderstandings, language issues, post traumatic stress disorder and suspicion of bureaucracies and false promises that impede communication, Toupin said, bringing the messages they receive closer to the message intended. And by pulling them together to solve their own problems and giving them a place to go, it would create more of a community among Iraqis here, easing them into life in America and teaching them about civil society.

They also want to establish regular professional groups, like health professionals or engineers groups, and address re-certification, because so many Iraqis were affluent professionals before the war. And in the spirit of Mahmoud's December gathering, they want to train American mentors to assist new refugees.

"She's got the Iraqi end and I've got the American end," Toupin said. "All the administrative stuff is mine. She's the one who can tell the story and work the people."

A private donor recently gave $5,000, allowing the women, among other things, to begin paying Mahmoud a small salary. But it's not much, and Mahmoud is still searching for a job. Most of her public aid benefits ran out months ago, and she's getting by on friends and food stamps. A lawyer she knows pays for her phone and internet, which she needs for her IMAS work and to talk to her family in Iraq every morning at five. And she's three months and over $2,000 behind on her rent.

But all she can do is keep trying.

"I cannot stand it," Mahmoud said. "The Iraqi people, they suffer a lot. They deserve a better life." She sighs. "I try to help. It's a long way. I know it's a long, long way."

Indonesia Braces For New Wave Of Refugees

2009-06-29T15:24:34Z

INDONESIAN authorities are bracing for a huge influx of boat people, anticipating as many as 10,000 asylum-seekers are waiting in Malaysia to transit through the archipelago and on to Australia.

Crossover Dreams: Iraqi Refugees in the U.S.: Strangers in Paradise

2009-06-28T22:11:18Z

By Peter Costantini ~ Seattle, Washington

Wars often drive people from their homes. But in Iraq, a discretionary war, launched through deception by a rogue administration in search of good targets for "shock and awe", produced refugees with industrial efficiency.

Hajer, an Iraqi refugee, and her children. Photo credit: International Rescue Committee

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 4.5 million Iraqis were refugees at the beginning of 2008: 2.3 million internally in Iraq and 2.2 million abroad, including those displaced before the U.S. invasion in 2003. In a country of about 28.8 million, more than one out of every seven citizens has been forced into internal or external exile.

Syria hosts the most Iraqi refugees of any foreign country, with 1,200,000; Jordan follows with 500,000. U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, in a neighborly gesture, was reportedly building a 560-mile fence along its border with Iraq to keep out illegal immigrants and insurgents.

The United States resettled only 202 Iraqi refugees here in 2006, according to the International Rescue Committee. In fiscal year 2009, that number grew to roughly 17,000. The IRC, however, called the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program "outdated and under-funded" and said it is "resettling Iraqi refugees into poverty rather than helping rebuild their lives in the country that offered them sanctuary."

According to an IRC report released this month, "The resettlement program in the United States fails individuals with high levels of vulnerability, especially during difficult economic times." The report called for increased emergency funding and an overhaul of the program.

In an example cited by the organization, Hajer, a 38-year-old Iraqi refugee, arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, with her three kids last year speaking very little English. She could afford only one semester of English classes at a local college. Last December, she fell ill and lost her job at a daycare center. The public assistance she receives, $335 dollars a month, leaves her short $481 after paying rent of $816.

With the economic crash, only 51 percent of refugees are becoming self-sufficient after 120 days in 2008, down from 74 percent in 2007. Twelve percent of the refugees newly resettled by the IRC are at risk of homelessness.

"Few imagined that they would receive such short-term and limited assistance upon arrival or that they could become homeless in the country that offered them shelter," said IRC President George Rupp in a public statement. "They deserve better."

If the Bush administration had suffered a sudden seizure of honesty, here is how it would have greeted the tempest-tossed: "Welcome to the home of the brave, huddled Iraqi masses, especially those of you who risked your lives working with us. Breathing may be free here, but everything else is expensive. Please accept a temporary monthly check far too small to live on as a token of our appreciation, and a valuable lesson in how your new government treats vulnerable poor people."

President Barack Obama has promised better. On February 27, he said: "Diplomacy and assistance is also required to help the millions of displaced Iraqis. These men, women and children are a living consequence of this war and a challenge to stability in the region, and they must become a part of Iraq's reconciliation and recovery. America has a strategic interest - and a moral responsibility - to act. In the coming months, my administration will provide more assistance and take steps to increase international support for countries already hosting refugees; we'll cooperate with others to resettle Iraqis facing great personal risk; and we will work with the Iraqi government over time to resettle refugees and displaced Iraqis within Iraq - because there are few more powerful indicators of lasting peace than displaced citizens returning home."

Let's hope he'll be able to transmute worthy sentiments into appropriations. For the moment, this failure of basic decency really pegs the injustice meter.

A more variegated but still sobering portrait of Iraqi refugees in the Los Angeles area is painted by Hanna Ingber Win, Huffington Post World Editor (and friend to this blog), in a story in the L.A. Weekly.

In El Cajon, a corner of the southern California megalopolis a couple of hours south of L.A., Win found a thriving community of Chaldean Christians, a persecuted religious minority in Iraq. Their Catholic church there, St. Peter Chaldean Cathedral, counts 37,000 members.

Chaldeans are legitimate refugees if anyone is, targeted in Iraq by religious extremists and militias of various stripes. But Win found numerous stories as harrowing as those collected by the IRC. One man highlighted in the story, Kamil Silewa, left Iraq under threat of death, walked for days across Mexico, and then was detained for eight months by U.S. authorities when he asked for asylum. Finally granted refugee status and living in El Cajon, he is separated from his wife and two sons, whom he last saw three years ago and who ended up in Germany. They face years of waiting for the family reunification process to bring them here.

Meanwhile, Silewa has no car and has found only a few days of temporary work. He told Win: "I want to work. I need to work. I need the job. But nobody calls me. What can I do?" As the government that started the war that tore his country apart confronts a deep recession and other more pressing crises, no one can offer an easy answer to his question.

Related Web Sites

Hanna Ingber Win. "Between Iraq And A Hard Place" (blog post). May 21, 2009.

International Rescue Committee. "Flawed US Refugee Admissions Program is Failing Iraqi Refugees". June 16, 2009.

Related IPS Stories
Katie Mattern. "POPULATION: The Worst Places to Be a Refugee". June 17, 2009.

International Rescue Committee: Iraqi Refugees in the United States - In Dire Straits

2009-06-20T17:41:00Z

By Alaa Naji

Every day the violence was getting worse in Baghdad. Every day we saw death, destruction and suffering. It all touches a place in your soul that you want to keep pure, but you cannot. My husband and I knew we were in danger and decided it was time to flee. But three days before we were to escape to Jordan with our two small children, my husband, who worked for the UN, was killed in a bomb attack.

I was 28 at the time and numb with grief. How do you tell your 3 and 4-year-old children that their dad will not be coming home tonight or ever again? I knew I had to pick up the pieces and search for a job to support my kids. It was extremely dangerous to go out, but I did find work as a translator for the US Army. It was a good job, even though it was risky, and I thought I was doing my part to help rebuild my country. But the terrorists were everywhere. They threatened to kill me if I did not quit my job with the Americans.

This time, I had no choice. My children and I fled to Amman. And there, I joined many Iraqi refugee war widows who also felt scared, unsafe and uncertain about the future as we struggled, as single mothers, to provide for our children.

When the United States opened its door to Iraqi refugees, I was praying that we would be given the opportunity to come here and start a new life, a safe life. Last year, our chance finally came and we were resettled to Georgia, a place where people are so helpful and quick to smile.

I knew life was not going to be easy at the beginning, but I also knew that the only way that my family could begin again was to find a job as soon as possible. I could not rely on government assistance, because there was so little available.

Even though my background was working for international organizations, I started searching everywhere for a job. I was willing to do anything. I sent my resume to shops, groceries, schools and community organizations. And eventually, with determination and God's grace, I found a job as a case manager at the International Rescue Committee in Atlanta, helping other newly arrived refugees to get on their feet.

I realize now how lucky I am to have found this job. Most other refugees who arrived when the economy was going bad are struggling to survive. The government program that brings refugees here does offer financial assistance, and Iraqi refugees are grateful for it. But it is usually not enough to cover rent and other basic necessities and it expires within months of their arrival. The program works when we can find jobs for refugees fast. As you can imagine, the program is not working very well now.

Today, many Iraqi refugees, even highly qualified professionals, are losing their benefits before they are able to find jobs. Case by case, organizations like mine are doing everything we can to help with rent and utilities, but we can only do so much, and for so long, with private donations. Many refugees now face eviction.

Iraqi refugees always tell me that they are thankful to be in a place where they are safe. But they never dreamed that they would be struggling to survive here in America. They never imagined they could be homeless in the country that invited them here and offered them shelter. They thought that the country that was involved in the violence that destroyed their land, their homes and their loved ones would provide better care.

Many people say that now is not the time for America to bring in more Iraqi refugees. I tell them that Iraqi refugees cannot wait for the economy to improve. Resettlement is saving their lives. If the United States doesn't help and protect them, especially the ones targeted for assisting Americans in Iraq, who will?

Alaa Naji is a case manager with the International Rescue Committee. This week, she helped launch a new IRC report, "Iraqi Refugees in the United States: In Dire Straits," which calls for an overhaul of the US refugee resettlement system.

She has a Bachelor's Degree in English literature from Baghdad University and a Master's Degree in Arabic-English translation. She has worked for the World Health Organization in Iraq and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jordan.

Luis Carlos Montalván: Iraq Refugees Look to President's Lincoln and Obama

2009-06-20T08:56:52Z

Today is World Refugee Day. The United Nations designated June 20 as the annual day "...to recognize and celebrate the contributions of refugees throughout the world." 

But for millions of Iraqis, today is hardly a day to celebrate.

"The country [Iraq] is dealing with one of the largest humanitarian and displacement crises in the world," reports Refugees International (RI).

The United Nations still reports government estimates of up to 4.8 million Iraqis displaced within the last 6 years, with 2 million fleeing, primarily to Syria and Jordan.

On April 21, 2009, the General Accountability Office (GAO) released, "Iraqi Refugee Assistance: Improvements Needed in Measuring Progress, Assessing Needs, Tracking Funds, and Developing an International Strategic Plan," a comprehensive assessment of the Iraqi refugee crisis.

The 78-page assessment paints a bleak picture of the situation.

"According to U.S., UN, foreign government, and NGO officials, the international community lacks a comprehensive international strategy to address the Iraqi refugee situation."

It looks as though the US response to the Iraqi refugee problem has come up wanting, on every front.

It's time for a change.

Historically, dealing with refugee crises is not something the US does very well.

Arguably, the US government responded to its first refugee crisis under President Lincoln's administration in the aftermath of the Civil War.

To help deal with the colossal scope of the problem, on March 3, 1865, Mr. Lincoln signed legislation to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.

The Bureau was formed to aid Civil War refugees, and through education, health care, and employment, the Bureau became a key agency during Reconstruction, assisting freed ex-slaves in the South.

The Bureau was located in the Department of War.

The very next day, March 4, 1865, President Lincoln gave his now famous Second Inaugural Address. In his speech he remarked about the importance of Reconstruction after the war,

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds...which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

But Lincoln was struck down the following month and the Bureau was officially abolished in 1872. Consequently, from 1877 to 1965, States and localities enacted "Jim Crow laws" thereby stifling Lincoln's vision of assisting the refugees (mostly former slaves). It would take 99 years for the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 to renew what Lincoln began.

Today's contemporary refugee bureau, the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, (PRM) exists within the US Department of State.

Among the responsibilities of a US Assistant Secretary of State, who directs the PRM, is the oversight of "...efforts to encourage greater participation in refugee assistance and resettlement on the part of foreign governments."

So, then why is there still no US-formulated "international strategic plan" to deal with the world's largest refugee crisis caused when our nation invaded Iraq over 6 years ago?

President Obama and Acting Assistant Secretary (for PRM) Samuel M. Whitten may do well to ponder one of the inscriptions in the Memorial that is two blocks from the Department of State.

On this World Refugee Day, can we do better?

Yes, we can.

Queen Noor of Jordan: Honoring World Refugee Day

2009-06-19T18:40:53Z

For 35 years, my home has been one of the world's major conflict regions, home also to over 10 million refugees and displaced inhabitants. World Refugee Day (June 20) is a time to honor and support these individuals and families who persevere through devastating tragedies.

I have lived and worked with the nearly 6 million Palestinian refugees and now nearly 5 million displaced Iraqis, many from each group now making their homes in Jordan. I have also worked with displaced people from Afghanistan, Colombia, Somalia, and those seeking safe haven during the first Gulf War. I have witnessed first-hand the anguish of those uprooted from their homes -- people who have had their lives threatened, homes bombed, and family members kidnapped or murdered.

The global displacement crisis is both a humanitarian and a security issue. History shows that mass migrations pose a serious threat to regional stability, as we have seen in Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan and West Africa. The Middle East is particularly vulnerable as ongoing tensions are further strained by such large scale displacement.

Yet, I have also seen that refugees are a tremendous inspiration. Supporting these vulnerable people not only reduces their suffering, but also brings peace to troubled regions. Despite the pain and trauma they have experienced, refugees and displaced people hold on to the hope that they can someday return home and rebuild their lives. Like all of us, they want to be able to contribute to society, earn incomes, and send their children to school. An investment in refugees is an investment in whole communities and a clear way to promote peace and prosperity.

Over the past few weeks, conflict between the Pakistani government and militants has made world headlines as some two million people have been forced to flee. In December 2001, I traveled to Pakistan with Refugees International and saw refugees pouring over the border from Afghanistan. Today, Pakistanis who seek protection from the current violence have had no alternative but to live in some of the very same camps built for Afghan refugees. Many more are living with families in small, over-crowded homes, struggling to access emergency aid.

Refugees International just returned from Pakistan again this week, where staff members spoke directly with displaced people, aid workers and government officials to ensure that the needs of displaced Pakistanis are not ignored. RI is now steering through the corridors of power providing the most credible information to policy makers on how to resolve this humanitarian crisis.

The world simply must respond more effectively to this crisis than it has to date. The U.S. has been generous, but other governments are lagging and the UN and private agencies are struggling to meet the massive needs. I have taken the initiative to write a letter to the Foreign Ministers of leading Arab and Islamic governments urging them to respond to the need for humanitarian aid to displaced Pakistanis.

Yet, there are also those refugees whose suffering is no longer making frequent headlines. According to the UN, there could be as many as 4.8 million displaced Iraqis, more than half inside Iraq and the rest scattered throughout the region. Many remain reluctant to return home due to continued violence, the creation of ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, and poor government services. Others have tried to return, but found their homes occupied or destroyed.

While we wait for the situation in Iraq to improve, we must continue to help those who cannot go home. We in Jordan have committed ourselves to providing aid and support to this population. The Noor Al Hussein Foundation, which I chair, is providing health care, rehabilitation services, and psycho-social counseling to thousands of Iraqis in Jordan through our Institute for Family Health. We have also expanded the Foundation's services to provide training to Iraqi youth in home business management and livelihood skills. This encourages entrepreneurship and strengthens their potential to earn incomes. These efforts are a small contribution to addressing the challenges these Iraqi families face while waiting to return home, but there is much yet to be done.

Refugees International continues to lead the call to support Iraqi refugees, as well as millions more displaced people fleeing the world's worst crises. The organization's 30 years of experience has contributed to peace and stability and improved the lives of displaced people in countries like Jordan, Iraq and Pakistan. On World Refugee Day, we should reflect on those we have helped. But we must also focus our gaze on how much more is needed to end the vicious cycle of violence and intolerance, and support a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Her Majesty Queen Noor has been a member of Refugees International's Board of Directors since 2001.

Ken Bacon: Obama's Speech and Displacement in the Muslim World

2009-06-08T18:30:41Z

President Obama's speech to the Muslim World in Cairo was a complete home run.

He highlighted the shared religious values of peace and justice that unify the People of the Book - -Jews, Christians and Muslims who live by their Holy texts, the Talmud, the Bible and the Koran. He addressed the differences that currently divide the faiths, and he proposed paths for dialogue, partnership and peace in the future.

Yet no speech, even one as comprehensive as the June 4th address in Cairo, could address all the vital issues. One fact that President Obama did not touch on at length was the massive displacement in the Muslim world. There are more refugees and internally displaced people in the Muslim world than anywhere else. Over four million Palestinians are victims of diplomatic stalemate in the Middle East; some five million Iraqis have been displaced by sectarian violence following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Millions of Sudanese have been displaced by ethnic violence in Darfur and South Sudan. In the last few months about three million Pakistanis have fled their homes to escape fighting between the Pakistani military and increasingly aggressive Taliban forces seeking to acquire territory and expand their rule.

In February, the Brookings Institution calculated that "there are nine to ten million refugees in the Muslim world, and at least 14 million internally displaced. If this was the case in the United States, there would be two million refugees and three million American internally displaced persons."

Why is displacement so high in the Muslim world? One answer is impact of conflict, as in Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the explanation is broader, including bad governance. "Unfortunately, the majority of the present refugees are Muslims who are suffering from political and economic injustice in their respective countries," Dr. Muhammad Nur Manuty, Director of the Centre for Studies in Modernity and Civil Society in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, asserted in an article in the Refugee Survey Quarterly last year. One of the signal themes of President Obama's Cairo speech was the need for new understanding and cooperation to advance political and economic development.

The duty to protect people in exile, both Muslim and non-Muslim, is an important theme in the Koran, and many Muslim countries -- Syria and Jordan and Iran are important examples -- do provide refuge.

But the cost of providing refuge can be high to host countries, and, of course, displacement can destabilize entire regions by creating economic and political tensions, while impeding development and education. Reducing displacement in Muslim countries and elsewhere is an important step toward creating a more peaceful, prosperous and stable world.

The benefits will reach far beyond the Islamic world.

Catholic Relief Services: After Trauma, Iraqi Refugees Look for Healing

2009-06-03T11:05:23Z

In 2006, a 1-year-old boy was playing with neighborhood children in a yard near the family home in Baghdad. Suddenly a white car pulled up: Men came out and took the toddler. "They didn't take any of the other children," says his mother Qahira, an Iraqi woman in her 40s who had already lost her husband to terrorists. "Just him."

"He had just started to walk."

For many Americans, a stranger kidnapping a child is a plot point in a movie. A child is grabbed by someone. The hero gets furious, beats the bad guys, and saves the day.

But for thousands of Iraqis, kidnapping is a nightmare they cannot wake up from. Especially between 2004 and 2007, hundreds of children and adults were abducted, tortured and often killed -- all while their frantic relatives scrambled to scrape together enormous ransoms.

Qahira never found her little boy. The kidnappers called her on the phone, but not to ask for a ransom: "We just want to break your heart," they told her. They had killed her husband for his political views soon after she'd learned she was pregnant with the baby.

After fruitless attempts to track the boy down, and after increased threats against another son, Qahira and the rest of her family fled Iraq for Amman, the capital of nearby Jordan. Qahira's eyes glaze with pain when she speaks of her little boy now. "I don't know what happened to him. Some people say [the militants] would throw children in a ditch."

"No one can bear what has happened to me."

Kidnapping is only one atrocity that Iraqis have had to endure. Mutilation, torture and rape have left enduring psychological scars on thousands of the refugees. At Caritas offices distributing CRS-funded food and medical care, refugees share their horror stories. Munjit, who now lives in Amman, had five children and a pregnant wife when his house was bombed; "It killed my whole family," he says. Noor, a 15-year-old girl, witnessed her father's murder at the hands of militants.

Karim, an Iraqi man now living in Lebanon, was a successful car dealer in his home country. In June 2005, he was kidnapped; his abductors demanded tens of thousands of dollars. The family borrowed money to pay the ransom and later, sold their house to pay back the loans.

But Karim, like many others, wasn't released after his family paid the staggering ransom. He was beaten, shot and left for dead.

Thanks to a kind woman who found him and used her headscarf to stop his wounds from bleeding, Karim was reunited with his family. He recovered, and the family fled to Lebanon, where they live rent-free in two small rooms in exchange for taking care of their landlord's house and garden. They are safe for now, but fear still sparks in Karim's eyes as he describes his ordeal.

Sometimes there is a slightly happier ending. Imad had a 14-year-old son kidnapped for a week in 2005. His kidnappers demanded a $15,000 ransom, but after several negotiations, the family paid $5,000 and the boy was returned unhurt. They fled to Lebanon, where Catholic Relief Services provides diabetes medicine for Imad's wife along with other aid.

For years, Catholic Relief Services has been helping Iraqi refugees with rent, food, medical care and shelter. Now, CRS is expanding its psychosocial programs for Iraqi refugees in Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon, hoping to heal some of the trauma Iraqis have experienced.

An Iraqi refugee couple whose teenage son was kidnapped and then was returned after they paid a ransom. The family fled to Lebanon. Photo by Laura Sheahen/CRS

"Some Iraqi refugees I meet look shellshocked," says Doug Ryan, subregional representative for Catholic Relief Services in the Middle East. "CRS has given them heaters and blankets, helping them with basic human needs so that families can stay together," says Ryan. "They can give each other support, but what they don't have is a forum where they can talk about the horrible thing that has happened to them."

Both adults and children need help. "Some Iraqi children remember the time when they were kidnapped," says Yasmine Serry, a CRS staff member who works with Iraqi refugees in Egypt. "Some of the children saw their brother or sister killed in front of them."

With money raised by U.S. Catholic colleges like Villanova and Catholic sisters like the Dominicans, CRS is helping. In October 2008, CRS brought partners from Jordan, Syria and Lebanon to Virginia for a weeklong training session in trauma awareness and resilience.

During the course, they learned how to identify the effects of violence, break the cycle of reliving it and build hope. "The training helped us realize how war and violence affect people, even years later," says Vivian Manneh, program manager for CRS' Iraqi refugee work in the Middle East. "I hope we can relieve some of the suffering and pain that Iraqis have endured."

The CRS project trained Arabic-speaking social workers to address trauma in culturally appropriate ways among the Iraqis they are already serving. The social workers have earned the refugees' trust by helping them with needs like food and medical care, so the refugees feel more able to share their experiences.

Gathering small groups of Iraqi women for hourlong sessions once a week, trained leaders guide them as they share their fears, sorrow and anxiety. Sometimes a psychologist will lead along with the social workers. "In one group session, an Iraqi woman said that she hadn't yet told her children their father had been killed. She told them he was away, working, but it had been several years," says Manneh. "The psychologist said the children might think the father is neglecting them, and that the mother needed to tell her children the truth."

The CRS program also funds activities like games or field trips for Iraqi refugee children who have experienced terrible violence. "As refugees, their lives still aren't 'normal,' " says Manneh. "But we can try to give children a feeling of stability, a sense that good things can happen too."

The psychosocial support groups will never erase the tragedies Iraqis have experienced, but can help them build resilience as they start new lives in other countries. "It's incredible what Iraqi refugees have gone through," says Ryan. "We want to offer them a safe space where they can talk about it, begin to heal and rebuild their lives."

Laura Sheahen is CRS' regional information officer for Europe and the Middle East. She is based in Cairo.

Iraqi Refugees, Seeking A Better Life In America, Face Threat Of Homelessness

2009-05-21T12:50:47Z

The ongoing violence in Iraq has forced 4 million people to flee their homes and communities in search of safety elsewhere. About 2 million remain displaced within Iraq, whereas the other 2 million or so have fled to neighboring countries. In countries like Syria and Jordan, these Iraqis, many of whom were professionals back home, now live a life of poverty and fear. They struggle to find jobs to feed their families and can get kicked out at any time.

For years the Bush administration refused to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. After significant political pressure, the administration began to allow a limited number of Iraqis to resettle in the United States. President Obama, who made it a campaign promise to help displaced Iraqis, has acknowledged that the United States has a moral responsibility and security incentive to help people displaced because of a war the United States started.

However, despite the apparent political will in the Obama administration to help those Iraqis still in danger, the United States now faces a massive financial crisis. The economic downtown threatens to derail Obama's efforts to resettle more Iraqis and provide more aid to the countries that harbor most of the refugees. The crisis has also caused a financial nightmare for the Iraqis who have already resettled in the United States. Struggling to compete for a limited number of jobs with laid-off Americans who speak the language and have experience working in this country, these Iraqis face a dire situation. Many Iraqis, who came to America in search of safety and a better life, now live on the brink of homelessness.

Read my LA Weekly story about the Iraqi refugees who have resettled in El Cajon, California. Most are Chaldean Catholics who fled religious persecution in Iraq.

See a slideshow of Iraqi refugees living in Jordan by Jessica Malter with the IRC here. And one with Iraqi refugees in Syria by Erika Solomon here.

Here is a slideshow from El Cajon in Southern California:

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Freddy Deknatel: Refugee Chess

2009-04-22T15:06:44Z

They lived well in Baghdad; their eldest daughter had two cars. Six years later, the Iraqi couple moves their mattresses out of the bedroom each night to sleep on the living room floor. The only bedroom is left for their daughters while they live in this concrete refugee suburb of Damascus.

It was Friday and quiet on the balcony above the street. The fried fish lunch was over and the mother was reading fortunes in the bottom of coffee cups. The father skulked past the couch and flashed his pack of cigarettes. He didn't smoke before the war. He was a chain-smoker by the time he arrived in Damascus. He shrugged when his wife explained his new habit -- "he's always with a cigarette, always, but he never smoked before." She brought her index and middle finger to her mouth and mimed puff after puff.

The father talked of his construction company in Baghdad. "We sold huge pistons for Caterpillars and other large machines," he explained. "I can know just by putting my ear to the gears or the engine if it's working well or not," he grinned behind his cigarette. "I'm very clever."

A few weeks later in their living room, the table was cleared for a gorging of rice, grilled fish, kibbeh stuffed with egg, and salad eaten by plucking the cheese-draped lettuce from the bowl by hand. The family's hospitality is typical of Syria, but their food is much better.

A wealthy Christian family, they became refugees when Shia militias began enforcing a fanaticism of piety in Baghdad's streets and thieves started roaming their neighborhood. Their son's fatal kidnapping and a younger daughter's death drove them to Damascus.

"But we are here," he said, as he always said in response to his wife's war stories. "We are here, with new friends" -- he calls us, two Americans, his children, extending an amount of kindness that circumstance should have blunted -- "so thank God."

Then he launched into jokes, spurred by the dessert of sugary cardamom tea and date cookies covered in sesame seeds. With the help of his wife, he explained Uday Hussein's speech impediment and its lethal effect on the players of the Rashid Football Club. Saddam's elder son meant to say "congratulations" to his players after a big win, but what came out was a command to line them all up to be shot. And we heard of the man from Ramadi, a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, who was asked to name the color of his wife's underwear and needed a life-line: "Can I phone a friend?"

The last joke they told involved the church. A pauper goes to the alter every week, but instead of dropping a few coins in the donation box, he asks the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus in her arms, if it's alright if he takes the money. She always says yes. Eventually the priest grows suspicious, until one day he waits behind the statue for the pauper, who arrives and pleads his usual request, expecting the same silent consent.

"No!" comes a male voice in response.

"Shh!" the pauper replies. "I'm not stealing from you! Just your mother!"

They could joke about Iraq as they sat in their small one bedroom apartment, the television on in the background showing American cooking shows and Dr. Phil. They are another once-prosperous family from Iraq displaced in Syria.

The country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs counts 1.2 million Iraqis living here with valid visas, designating them "Arab guests and visitors." The number of illegal residents is unknown but pushes the total number above 1.5 million, as Syria has hosted the bulk Iraq's refugees. In the fall of 2007, the government effectively closed its borders, though many refugees still arrive, including a wave of hundreds of Christians who fled violence in Mosul last fall. There is a slow trickle of Iraqis returning home, mostly for financial reasons: they cannot legally work in Syria and, when the money runs out, going back is the only option.

The insistence on eating helping after helping of grilled fish -- "Iraqi food combines all the spices of Indian, Persian, and Turkish food," the eldest daughter said -- and the seemingly endless amount of family jokes reveal what the fall of Baghdad, the occupation, sectarianism, and callous American adventurism cannot erase: a sense of humor, of food, of hospitality and humanity that go widely unreported in so many stories from Iraq and its new diaspora.

"When Saddam's statue fell, I knew Iraq was finished," the father said. Weeks earlier, on the balcony after the fish lunch talking about his pistons, he said emphatically that he was not a Ba'athist.

That same afternoon the mother talked about an old friend who was Sunni. "We were in university together," she said. "Our children were schoolmates." Then, after Saddam fell and the occupation worsened, "all of sudden, she was speaking of me as a Christian and she as a Muslim. She started scolding relatives -- an uncle and his niece -- for kissing when they greeted each other in an apartment. 'A man and woman should not kiss like that,' she would say." The mother stirred her tea with force. "This is crazy."

Before the table had been set for dinner and bowl after bowl of salad and rice and fish had been placed on the folding table before the couch, the father's phone rang as we finished a game of chess. A friend had just gotten the call from the United Nations and was going be resettled in America. They all cheered congratulations, and the father blessed his friend on the phone.

Then he turned back to the chessboard. We were playing slowly, smoking cigarette after cigarette, barely speaking. His daughter sat next to him and was whispering strategies. "Come on Fredo, move!" he said. He told me he had loved playing chess in Baghdad, though it was hard for me to imagine him sitting in a cafe there, over a chessboard like this, and not smoking. But I easily imagined him playing with his son while his third and youngest daughter whispered her own strategies in his ear.

I looked through the haze and down at the ashtray and pictured their smoke-free house in Baghdad and unlimited games of chess. Then he took a long drag and, exhaling, made a move and put me in checkmate.

This article was originally published in Wunderkammer Magazine.

Freddy Deknatel: Anniversary in Damascus

2009-03-24T10:33:45Z

DAMASCUS, SYRIA -- The screen showed "shock and awe" and Saddam's family scrambled to pack their bags. "I've seen this three times here since it came out," Khalid* said as the next scene opened. At a birthday party in the late 1970s, Saddam's daughter received a gift from President Ahmed Hussein al-Bakr before Saddam took him into his office and forced him to resign.

We were watching House of Saddam six years to the day after the American invasion. Damascus spread out below the balcony of Khalid's apartment in one of the myriad suburbs of hastily built concrete sprawling up the dry mountains that hug the city. Over a few hours of sitting and talking, with glasses of whisky and spoonfuls of hummus and Iraqi cheese, talk of the war and its disasters came up plenty, but Khalid and his friend Hussein* never remarked on the anniversary of the war.

Instead they focused on the film. In a smoky assembly hall, Saddam, holding a cigar, purged the ranks of government after his take-over. "Like Capone," Hussein said as a lineup of political opponents were shot point-blank. "Like Chicago, no?"

They talked freely of Iraq, describing the insurgency, the Mahdi Army and Al Qaeda less as the fault of American troops than the inevitable legacy of Saddam. On the screen, Saddam flirted with an Iraqi schoolteacher after her students sang to him.

"The actor, I don't know if he's Iraqi, but he speaks English with the perfect Iraqi accent," Khalid noted.

He said slyly that the film was forbidden in Syria as he cautiously loaded it into his computer. But in fact I've seen the docudrama on sale at bootleg DVD shops throughout Damascus (not so Waltz with Bashir, which one shopkeeper told me plainly was "not available here, anywhere").

Khalid and Hussein are two of the 1.2 million Iraqi refugees here. The numbers are probably higher, but that is the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs official count of Iraqis with valid visas - though the government designates them "Arab guests and visitors." Syria has taken the bulk of Iraq's refugees and that has been widely reported. But too often the stories of Iraqi lives in distant suburbs of Damascus are reduced to details amid the politics of how to solve the crisis.

Khalid and Hussein are friends from Baghdad, though Hussein in his forties is a bit older. He is Shi'i; Khalid is Sunni. None of this matters to them.

"Older relatives of mine, generations ago, they were Christians," Hussein explained.

"Really?" Khalid asked.

Hussein talked about the mix of religions in Iraq; he seemed intent on not talking about sectarianism. "I am Shi'i and he is Sunni," Hussein said. Khalid interrupted. "And I am Sunni and he is Shi'i." They both nodded and said together that this was no problem. "We are after all Iraqis, really."

They turned off the film after thirty minutes, long enough to see the start of the Iran-Iraq war and a scene of Saddam walking through a tented vegetable market, dismissing the questions of a foreign journalist.

Khalid showed grainy cell phone videos from a recent trip home: Baghdad's famed book market, the reopened National Museum, an old man playing a qanun near the banks of the Tigris to a small audience, and his young niece running around the caked garden of his parent's house.

"See the women in the crowd?" he said as the camera panned over a mix of people - including unveiled women - listening to the old man and his qanun along the Tigris. "Six months ago, even three months ago, that wouldn't have been possible."

Yet he does not go back except for brief visits. Hussein arrived more recently, and like Khalid has close family still in Baghdad. Khalid told me some time ago that he left because his name alone had made him a target for the Mahdi Army. "I still can't live the kind of life I want to in Iraq," he said, and that's why he's in Damascus.

Hussein left Iraq after receiving his own threats. Being Shi'i and keeping Sunni friends made him a target for the Mahdi Army, he said, just as in the reverse you are a target for Al Qaeda or other radical Sunni groups.

Khalid let out a string of dirty jokes - it was getting late - and then returned to talking about the National Museum. "We think we are the Sumerians, after all, their descendents, and we should have protected it," he said.

The conversation darted in different directions and I remembered the live footage of American bombs on Baghdad six years ago. Between the distance of those images and sitting on a couch past midnight hearing Khalid and Hussein's stories, I wondered where they had taken cover during that time. Then I remembered what Hussein told me weeks a few weeks ago:

"I went to the countryside south of Baghdad with my family, to wait for the war to stop."

*Names have been changed to protect their identities.

Sarah van Gelder: Six Years into the Iraq War: Can We Still Be a Superpower?

2009-03-23T15:56:46Z

This week marks the sixth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an event some have called the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history. I won't repeat here the tragic statistics of American lives lost and damaged, Iraqi death tolls, and the stories of the millions of displaced who are still trying to pick up the pieces of their lives.

Nor will I recount the extraordinary failure of the media to question the rationale for war. To those who say they didn't see it coming, I can tell you that two of my colleagues, working from our Bainbridge Island, WA., office, with no access to hidden information or insider sources, provided compelling evidence that undercut every one of the rationales for war, well before the invasion began. That evidence was missing from the lopsided media accounts that dominated the mainstream press.

Today, we have the Obama administration in Washington and a Democratically controlled Congress in large part because the American people have so soundly repudiated this aggressive military posture.

But if we are clear, now, about the failure of the neoconservative agenda of global dominance, the question remains: How should the U.S. relate to the rest of the world? Will we try to hold on to our place as the world's sole superpower -- and if so, can we? Writing in the "Superpower: Get Over It" issue of YES! magazine, John Feffer said that's not what Americans want:

"Americans want their country to stop being the neighborhood bully and instead act like a good neighbor. In this, Americans are not giving voice to utopian aspirations. The polls in fact reflect a new realism. The nation's economy is flagging, our military is over-stretched, and our global legitimacy is exhausted. The public no longer wants to shoulder these various costs of empire."

In the year since Feffer wrote this piece, the global financial collapse has further undercut the capacity of U.S. taxpayers to continue pouring billions into weapons systems, two foreign wars, massive long-term medical needs of veterans, nuclear weapons programs, and, oh yeah, our 700-800 overseas military bases. And ironically, we are discovering that with "asymmetrical warfare," much of this military expenditure offers us plenty of opportunities to kill and destroy, but few opportunities to win the peace.

So, as Feffer describes, we face a choice of future roles in the world. We could insist on claiming the role of empire ...

"Burdened by debt, armed to the teeth, and isolated from the world, the United States would become the "sick man" of North America, as the Ottomans were once labeled in Europe. Like many failing empires, we would be all the more dangerous the weaker we got.

"Or the United States could try something unprecedented. We could turn our back on empire, much as Spain and Portugal did in the 1970s and the Soviet Union did in the late 1980s. But rather than waiting until the bitter end as these countries did, the United States could use its still considerable power to help create a more equitable world order that operates on a truly level playing field."

As we start into the seventh year in Iraq, and begin a military build up in Afghanistan, let's consider that second option -- that we gracefully let go of the empire role. In my December '08 blog, I laid out a five-point plan for doing this.

In these tough economic times, we could start by transferring the spending on budget-busting weapons systems to an investment in the super-efficiency, green energy, and sustainable transit projects that can create jobs now and improve our security by preparing us to live in a climate-constrained world. The Obama stimulus package is a good down payment, but we will have to make a sustained investment if we are to transfer to an economy that can provide lasting peace and prosperity.

Baghdad Real Estate Booms With Return Of Refugees

2009-02-18T15:41:04Z

As the price of housing collapses in the rest of the world, it is soaring in Baghdad. "Property is the fastest way to make money here," says Mohammed al-Hadithi, who runs a real estate office in the wealthy Yarmouk district of west Baghdad. "Over the past two years there has been a big rise in the market because the security situation is calmer."

Until recently anybody wanting to sell a house in Baghdad avoided putting up "for sale" signs because they were closely watched by gangs who would wait for the purchase to go through and then kidnap the seller or one of his children so they could demand the selling price as ransom.

House prices have risen by 50 per cent in many parts of central Baghdad during the past year, and rents have almost doubled. Mr Hadithi says that this is explained primarily by the end of the war. "Refugees are returning, but not to the places where they once lived," he says. "A Shia who owns a new and expensive house in a Sunni area will want to sell it and buy a cheaper one in a Shia-majority district for safety reasons."

Baghdad has become wholly divided into sectarian enclaves since the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2005-07. Long grey concrete walls snake through the city, cutting off neighbourhoods from each other. Exits and entrances are closely guarded. Checkpoints every few hundred yards create horrendous traffic jams. There is far less violence than two years ago, but there are still daily bombings and assassinations.

The property market reflects the outcome of the Sunni-Shia war, in which the Shia were by and large the winners. Baghdad is today probably about 75 per cent Shia. The Sunni - traditionally the richer community - have been pushed into smaller enclaves. "It is very well known that the majority of the Sunni areas, like Mansour, Yarmouk, Amariya and Khadra, are expensive in comparison with Shia ones," says Mr Hadithi. "So the Shia living there think it is better to save their lives and buy a cheaper house in a Shia area like Palestine Street."

Refugees who fled either to other parts of Iraq or abroad - mostly to Jordan and Syria - are beginning to return to the country. From the 4.2 million people who fled, the UN refugee agency expects that 500,000 will come back this year if the violence stays at present levels. This will have a disproportionate affect on Baghdad because, of the 1.6 million who became refugees after the al-Askari Mosque bombing in February 2006, some 63 per cent came from Baghdad.

The returning refugees will not find it easy to secure housing. Many never were rich and others have used their savings to wait out the war. A typical middle-class house in Yarmouk costs $340,000 (£240,000), while a similar one in Palestine Street costs $240,000, according to estate agents.

Even before the civil war Iraq was chronically short of housing. Ms Bayan Dezayee, the Minister of Construction and Housing, said last month that by 2015 the population of Iraq would be 39 million and there is a need for 1.9 million extra housing units. Very little has been built over the last six years.

The spectacular rise in house prices is not good news for the majority in Baghdad. Nadia Salem, a 42-year-old accountant at al-Rafidain Bank, says: "It is really hard for any employees to own a house in Iraq and Baghdad for many reasons, the most important of which is the impact of the new rich. These are the people who made money after the occupation, either because they stole from the banks in the week after the fall of Baghdad, or contractors who got millions and millions for construction, though in fact they built nothing."

Mr Hadithi confirms that in central Baghdad businessmen and contractors "who won tenders from the Americans and the government became rich very fast". They are buying up big houses in expensive areas like Mansur either to live in or as an investment, expecting embassies and foreign companies to start to return to Baghdad. There is also a rumour that the government will ask international companies to move out of the Green Zone, which means they will have buy or rent elsewhere."

The rich in Iraq are not just those who did well out of the war since 2003. Saddam Hussein's wars, starting in 1980 with the Iran-Iraq war, and UN sanctions, created a stratum of wealthy Iraqis. Jassem Ibrahim, a 49- year-old technician at the Ministry of Oil, says: "It is becoming so difficult, not just for poor people, but for the middle class, to own a house because of the high prices, and the government does nothing to protect us from greedy house owners. I got land in 1987 but I did not have enough money to build on it. I sold it in 1989 because my cousin joined the Dawa party and was executed and I was dismissed from my job. All my life I have rented houses."

Under Saddam Hussein, army officers and officials were often rewarded by being given state land on which they built. This secured their loyalty and also defused popular anger over the high price of housing. But this course may not be so easy for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki because of the fall in the price of oil. As the price of oil has dropped to below $40 a barrel, he is seriously short of money. The housing price boom is a sign that peace is returning to Iraq, but it is also underlining the vast gap between rich and poor in the country.

Read more from the Independent.

Sarah Jessica Parker, Matt Dillon Bring Attention To Iraqi Refugees

2009-01-13T16:21:20Z

There's still a week before inauguration, and already celebrities are trickling into town, some for related do-gooder events. Sarah Jessica Parker and Matt Dillon were in Washington yesterday to bring attention to the plight of Iraqi refugees, especially those who worked for the Americans but were apparently unable to get help leaving Iraq even after they had become targets of violence. The stars hosted Refugees International's one-night showing of Betrayed, a play about three Iraqi translators who risked their lives to work at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone.

"I think there seems to be more concern about what we're going to do to get out of there and how we are going to get out of this mess that nobody is really thinking about the wreckage we are going to leave behind us," Dillon tells us. "It's a humanitarian crisis.

Iraq: Key Figures Since The War Began

2009-01-02T16:03:10Z

U.S. TROOP LEVELS:

_October 2007: 170,000 at peak of troop buildup.

Deborah Amos: Iraqi Refugees Still Too Scared to Return Home

2008-12-04T10:23:23Z

The Iraqi government is in a hurry to get Iraqi exiles to come home. When I was in Damascus a few weeks ago there were big black banners on the Iraqi embassy advertising the government program "We will help you go back to your houses and you'll find out how much money you'll get when you register!"

Iraqi state television broadcasts emotional public service ads that reach into the Iraqi exile communities in Damascus and Amman. The campaign features a family just returned to Baghdad. A smiling policeman helps them carry the luggage into the house as the neighbors come to offer welcome. It is an idyllic scene, but Iraqi exiles are not convinced.

U.S. military officials and the Iraqi government claim the country is becoming a less dangerous place. For most Iraqi refugees, the upbeat assessments don't count for much. The judgment that matters is reports from the ground, families that say it's still not safe to return.

In November, Syria's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported 1.2 million Iraqis residents have valid visas. There are some two million Iraqi refugees scattered in the Middle East, also in Amman, Beirut and Cairo. Most have refused to take advantage of the Iraqi government's campaign because they are too traumatized, or too scared to return, or because they belong to a targeted religious minority. The Iraqi refugee crisis is far from over. The subject just doesn't make the headlines any more.

And that is a problem for the UN and the NGO's caring for this displaced population. The exiles are drawn from Iraqi's commercial and professional class as well as Christian minorities. They could support themselves in the first few years of exile, but most are sliding into destitution, and the UN warned in its latest report, "with no immediate prospect of Iraqi refugees massively returning to Iraq and the rising cost of living in Syria, pressure is mounting to cope with growing assistance needs."

I interviewed many Iraqi refugees in a two week trip to the region in October. I met Khadim al Zawi at a coffee shop in Damascus. Sixty years old, al Zawi, a charming retiree from Iraqi's Oil Ministry, told me he had fled Iraq in 2006 and despite the hard life in Syria, he has no plans to go home yet. "I left everything behind. I'm still scared," he told me. His cars have been stolen, his farm outside of Baghdad was still occupied by another displaced family who refused to leave. When I asked him about his Baghdad neighborhood he said his area was still a battleground between the Shiite militias and Al Qaeda in Iraq. "I will go home when the government has some control, when you can go to a police station. Now, nobody helps you." That minimum of safety was still far off. For now, al Zawi lives on his meager savings and waits. "I can survive, but it is hard and there is nothing nice in life on that money."

Since this crisis began, most of the media attention has been on resettlement, especially when the U.S. settlement numbers were dismally low. After a barrage of criticism by the media, humanitarian groups, and more quietly by the U.S. military, the number of resettlements is rising. The U. S. State Department exceeded the goal of twelve thousand Iraqi resettlements in 2008 and is expected to resettle more than thirteen thousand in fiscal year 2009. But even at this pace, the back log of cases will take twenty years.

For the Bush administration, the Iraqi refugee crisis was invisible because it didn't fit into the victory narrative for Iraq. Those days are now over and a more efficient resettlement process is in place. But there are many of Iraqi's educated middle class who are not asking for resettlement. They are waiting for a reasonable and safe future in Iraq. It is up to the new Obama administration to address the long term consequences of the exodus.

Deborah Amos reports on the Middle East for National Public Radio. She is working on a book on Iraqi refugees which will be published by Public Affairs in the fall of 2009.

Queen Noor of Jordan: Hillary Clinton -- A Champion for Human Security

2008-12-04T08:05:01Z

Hillary Clinton will be a strong, effective Secretary of State in the new Obama administration.

I observed first hand her commitment to peace and justice during the presidency of Bill Clinton, when Jordan's King Hussein, my late husband, and I worked closely with the Clintons in an attempt to achieve a Middle East peace. When they take office next year, I know that President-elect Obama and she quickly will begin looking for ways to bring security to Israel and justice to Palestinians, including four to six million Palestinian refugees.

In the Senate, Mrs. Clinton has worked hard to protect other displaced populations, including those from Iraq and Darfur. Just two weeks ago, I was part of a delegation from Refugees International that met with Sen. Clinton to discuss the need for a comprehensive plan to deal with five million displaced Iraqis, one fifth of the country's population. Nearly two million of the displaced Iraqis have sought refuge in Syria and Jordan, while the rest have fled their homes and violence within Iraq.

I know the utter despair and hopelessness of both Palestinian and Iraqi refugee families, having lived and worked with both communities over the past 30 years through the Noor al Hussein Foundation and other Jordanian institutions.

Sen. Clinton has introduced legislation to help displaced Iraqis. In the Obama administration she and her colleagues will have to come up with a comprehensive plan to help Iraqis return to a safe and secure Iraq as U.S. troops withdraw. This will be a challenge, but she understands that displaced Iraqis threaten the stability of Iraq, as well as the stability of the region, and potentially beyond.

During the campaign both Sen Clinton and President-elect Obama called for more aggressive U.S. action, including the possible use of force, to stop the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Their agreement on this point could open an opportunity for a diplomatic push to bring peace to Darfur, something the government of Sudan says it wants but has done little to promote. Any successful peace conference will be complex, requiring full participation by the government of Sudan, rebel movements, Sudanese civil society organizations, neighboring countries and economic stake holders, such as China. While the prospect of success is small, the cost of failure would be extremely high, particularly for the government of Sudan and the people of Darfur.

As Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton will face many challenges, but I know from personal experience that she is up to them all.

EU To Accept 10,000 Iraqi Refugees

2008-11-28T12:34:56Z

The European Union says it is ready to accept up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees, many of whom are living in extreme hardship in Jordan and Syria.

The agreement came at an EU meeting in Brussels on Thursday, where interior ministers received a new report on conditions at refugee camps.

Germany said it would take in about 2,500 of the refugees.