RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month!
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 4/27/2007 2:46:29 PM
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azinorum
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Iraqi refugees become a headache
Mohammad Amjad Hossain - 27 April, 2007
It seems that President Bush does not appear to have learnt any lesson during the last four years of fallacious war in Iraq. He is of the view that "contagion of violence could spill out across the entire country and region as well, if American forces were to be withdrawn from Iraq". He saw some progress being made to quell the violence. The President Bush vowed on April 23 to strongly reject an artificial timetable for troops' withdrawal while Senate majority leader Harry Reid defiantly said Congress would approve legislation requiring that a withdrawal begin by October 1, with the final troops removed within six months. Last week the majority leader drew harsh criticism from Republicans for saying that the war was lost and President in state of denial about Iraq.
Last four years of arrogance of President Bush and the war and occupation of Iraq have wrought the county on the verge of breaking down. There has been unabated violence and killings, of both Shia and Sunni alike, apart from American soldiers. The government of Nouri Al Maliki, a shia and a puppet regime of Bush administration is seen as an architect of killing of Sunni community. The greatest tragedy of war is the worst refugee crisis in the Middle East.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, some two million out of 26 million Iraqi population have fled their home. Most of them took shelter in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey. Most of them fled with little more than the clothing on their backs. None of them went to the United States, which claimed to have liberated them from the oppression of dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein. The United States has done nothing to address the great human tragedy that it made in history. According to one estimate, another 1.9 million are displaced, driven from their homes and neighbourhoods by US occupation and civil war that followed between Shia and Sunni. This is the largest exodus of Iraqis in the Middle East ever since the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland by Israelis in 1948.
The influx of Iraqi refugees to Jordan and Syria would certainly cause economic burden on these countries as both Jordan and Syria are economically poor countries. According to Voice of America, the living condition in Jordan is deplorable. Jordanian journalist Rana Sabbah told VOA that "the international community has not done enough to help the Iraqi refugees or Middle Eastern countries that are struggling to host them". America ironically gave asylum to only 200 Iraqis. Unless the UN High Commission for Refugees has initiated humanitarian effort to save the lives of refugees in Jordan and Syria, the lives of these refugees would be at stake.
As one of the wire services report indicates that some Iraqi women have adopted prostitution in Syria, it is slur on human civilization. This is the direct result of illegal invasion of Iraq by Bush administration.
Meanwhile, the invading country, America, has agreed to resettle around 7000 Iraqi refugees. Bush administration has also committed $ 18 million aid to UN High Commission for Refugees for their rehabilitation in Jordan and Syria. This is one third of the total amount requested for Iraqi refugees by UNHCR.
US should be held responsible logically for causing unprecedented massacres in human history in Iraq as an illegal invader violating international law and the United Nations should ask US to compensate for the human tragedy by providing shelter and food for Iraqi refugees. Jordanian journalist also told VOA that many people she had interviewed thought America should be morally and legally responsible for the refugees.
On the other hand, US soldiers continue to die from road side bombs, and sniper fire. More than 3300 US soldiers lost their lives as of March this year. Nearly 24,000 have been wounded. Another 80 civilian contractors were killed. For the first time since World War II, the US has sent large numbers of National Guards and the reserves into combat. More than one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have died. As Congressional research service puts the figure of cost of Iraq war, it would exceed $ 456 billion by September, 2007.
The worst scenario is that many American soldiers returning home are suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Jonathan, marine, who won purple heart award in the war in Iraq, committed suicide on return home in the depth of despair and hopelessness at 25. Also the treatment to returnee war veterans in the hospital in America has raised question. One of the Surgeons General of the Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley has to resign as a fall out from the scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC.
Iraqis are questioning the purpose of US mission in Iraq. US congress and majority Americans are demanding for definite timetable for withdrawal of US troops. As against this bleak backdrop, Bush administration and supporters of Iraq war are resorting to a last desperate rationale for staying in Iraq: "to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn". As of now Bush administration has failed to sell the rhetoric on Iraq.
Last November the mid-term election of the congress demonstrated the will of the people of America. They expressed their indignation against the administration on its handling of war in Iraq and voted out the Republicans from majority position in the Congress. The verdict was clear and loud: get out of Iraq. Thousands of anti-war people around the United States were on the streets on March 17 to voice their protests against continuous fallacious war.
There has been tremendous pressure on the economy of two poor countries, Jordan and Syria, in the Middle East as a result of Iraqi refugees. Western countries, particularly US, may soon come under pressure from UN to share the cost and admit more refugees. Today's despair, anguish, uncertainty in Iraq is squarely lies with Bush administration. There will be no solution in Iraq unless US troops are withdrawn.
Mohammad Amjad Hossain, a former diplomat, writes from Virginia.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 4/29/2007 10:12:09 AM
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azinorum
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A positive response from the EU.
EU promises to help Syria on Iraqi refugees
Source: Reuters - By Khaled Yacoub Oweis 29 Apr 2007
DAMASCUS, April 29 (Reuters) - The European Union pledged on Sunday to help Syria deal with Iraqi refugees flooding into the country since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. Officials say 1.2 million Iraqi refugees have crossed into Syria, and their numbers are rising daily, putting pressure on infrastructure and public services.
"I promised the support of the European Commission on the technical level," the EU's aid commissioner Louis Michel said after meeting President Bashar al-Assad.
Damascus has appealed for international help in providing basic services for the refugees. Michel said the problem was not so much money as mechanisms and staff to spend the funds on projects. The EU will lend diplomatic, logistical and humanitarian expertise to Damascus. Michel described Syrian treatment of the Iraqis as "very humane", pointing out they can use Syria's subsidised healthcare and education system without restrictions. Damascus, however, has denied entry to 1,100 Palestinians fleeing Iraq who have taken shelter in camps on the Iraqi-Syrian border. They have been stranded on the border since last year.
"I promised the president to help manage these people better and I proposed to see if we could better organise their life," Michel said.
Syria, which hosts 430,000 Palestinian refugees registered with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, says other countries in the region, including Israel, should take in a proportion of the Palestinian refugees from Iraq.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/5/2007 11:23:13 AM
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azinorum
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Jordanians are now feeling the pressure of having so many Iraqis investing in Amman. It's driven up property values 200% in 4 years putting home ownership out of reach for the locals. This of course deals with one side of the story. The Iraqis that are driving up property prices have money. The other half of the Iraqis in Amman don't. They're the ones that need help.
Iraqi refugees drive up real estate transactions in Jordan
The volume of real estate transactions in Jordan grew by 21 percent in the first four months in 2007 to 1. 88 billion Jordanian dinars (about 2.66 billion U.S. dollars) from 1.55 billion dinars in the same period of 2006, according to a report released by Jordanian Land and Survey Department on Thursday.
The report indicated that Iraqis, Kuwaitis and Saudis topped the list of purchasers of Jordanian land and houses.
"The rapidly growing demand for Jordanian real estate found backing from the large number of Iraqis seeking refuge in the country," said Zuhair al-Omari, chairman of the Real Estate Investments Association.
Al-Omari added that the volume of real estate investments in Jordan is expected to reach seven billion dinars in 2007.
Since the Iraq war ignited in the spring of 2003, Jordan has welcomed Iraqis to the kingdom and the housing prices have been soared. The UN estimates that there are over two million Iraqi refugees who have crossed the border and at least 750,000 of those settled in Jordan.
The numbers of Iraqis in Jordan are increasing pressure on the real estate market. Iraqis top the list of foreigners who buy real estate in Jordan, and their numbers have more than doubled, from 125 property owners in 2002 to more than 584 in 2004. An apartment that would have cost 30,000 dinars in 2003 now costs closer to 50, 000 dinars.
Musa Shetwi, a sociologist who directs the Jordanian Center for Social Studies, said that the average cost of housing far exceeds what the average Jordanian can afford. The increases have affected not only the real estate market, but also the services, utilities and natural resources as well, the sociologist added.
At a two-day summit in Geneva held by the UN refugee agency ( UNHCR) in April, Jordan said that the 750,000 Iraqi refugees inside its borders cost it 1.4 billion dinars a year, stretching the resources of the country with a population of just 5.6 million. Jordan has asked the international community to help it shoulder the burden of Iraqi refugees straining its resources and economy.
According to the UNHCR, inside Iraq itself there are about 1.5 million displaced Iraqis, and outside 2.5 million mainly in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. (1 U.S. dollar = 0.71 Jordanian dinars)
Source: Xinhua
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/5/2007 1:34:05 PM
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Mout Ahmar
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this is true azinoerum. there is only report about 1 side of iraqis in amman. we need 2 hear more abt the other side who have no hope in amman or baghdad. i am in amman 4 the next week & i have only litle work so i will b involve more in iraq4u & will search 4 info about the other iraqi in amman.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/9/2007 5:45:13 AM
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azinorum
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There was a very good report on Al Jazeera International which focus on the other side of Iraqis sheltering in Amman. I'll try to locate and post it in this thread.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/13/2007 1:06:23 PM
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Lion of Babylon
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I viewed this report and it showed what terrible conditions many Iraqis are living under in Jordan. No school, no proper homes, no access to health care and no chance of finding work. Jordanians are not capable or interested in dealing with this crisis so there is no support network for these people. If you have money then come to Jordan. If you dont have money then forget it because no one will help you here.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/14/2007 4:24:37 PM
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azinorum
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Iraqi refugees stories
BBC NEWS ONLINE - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/6552267.stm
SUAD MOHAMED, 59, AMMAN, JORDAN
I'm a gynaecologist, my husband's a surgeon. We left in July 2006, after my husband was threatened and forced to close his clinic. He is Sunni and had been working in a Shia town. He'd been serving that town for 25 years.
We were given a year's residency here in Amman. After that, we'll see. We are not allowed to work here. We can practice medicine if we are covered by a Jordanian doctor, but whatever fee we get from the patients, the Jordanian doctor takes half. So, we are unemployed. We have our pensions from the state and we have our life savings. We have started to sell our belongings. In Iraq we used to have a big villa with a big garden; now we rent an apartment. But at least we feel safe.
We have been treated extremely well by the Jordanians, but you never know what's going to happen. We hear rumours now and then that they are going to deport us; that we are a burden. If you exceed your residency, you are charged a dinar and a half per person per day. They check your passport at the border when you leave and make you pay. If we find another place outside the Arab world, we would go. For the time being it is better to stay than try to leave.
We tried the American embassy, but they said go to the UN. I went to the UN; they are hopeless. They make lists of people and then do nothing with them.
< Message edited by azinorum -- 5/14/2007 6:30:32 PM >
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/16/2007 4:31:37 AM
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salim
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Hi. there is more iraqis in Syria then in Jordan but the syrians are very good to us. Also Damascus is getting expensive but the Syrian people treat us like brothers. I hear from many friends that Jorsan is very hard for Iraqis and sometime they stop us from entering Jordan for no reason. If Jordan is worried then why they dont make a visa for Iraqis so they dont have to travel 7 hours to the border for nothing?
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/18/2007 3:49:16 PM
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Lion of Babylon
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Yes why dont they start using visas? Iraqis should do the same. At least they can vet who is allowed into the country.
Iraqi refugees receive cold greeting in Britain
LONDON: Radi Hussein al-Asadi knew it was time to leave Baghdad when insurgents tossed a note into his house promising to kill his entire family. The message was wrapped around a bullet.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/17/news/exile.php
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/19/2007 4:31:33 AM
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salim
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First the passport then the visa. Till now not every onein Iraq has a passport. They decide to forget the old passports because so many are faked in the sook. I am waiting for my passport since 6 months and they dont have enough for every one. But the visa idea is good.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/20/2007 1:13:24 AM
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azinorum
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Another story of another raqi who is being forced to leavehis country.
"For the first time, I am really thinking we will have to leave."
The words of Ali, a friend of mine, recently. He told me how members of Moqtada Sadr's Mehdi militia had recently come knocking at his apartment building. They demanded one of his neighbours give up his flat. They needed it as a safe house, in case US forces came looking for them. The neighbour was cornered, my friend said. He made excuses. "So you don't like the Mehdi," the militia men responded. The man was terrified my, friend said. What could he do?
It is all getting too close, he said. The other day, he rushed home from work to move his family out, because a firefight had broken out nearby.
"We have gunbattles in the area every two or three days now."
Ali is like many Iraqis. He was happy to see Saddam Hussein overthrown. And in many respects life has got much better for him and his family - primarily because he earns far more than he used to as a doctor.
The extra cash has made it worth hanging on, despite the constant chaos and violence, the lack of basic services like electricity. He doesn't want me to say what he does now - or his real name - to protect his identity.
STORY CONTINUES: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6669773.stm
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/21/2007 5:58:54 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Azi. The below will make you sick. I hate leaving things to higher authorities but God help them. I'll post a copy on the utube thread too.
State of Despair (Iraqi Refugees) - Dateline 09/05/07 1/3 - PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3ulOdTo1NQ
Part 2 & 3 will follow.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/23/2007 3:00:05 AM
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azinorum
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lion of Babylon
State of Despair (Iraqi Refugees) 1/3
State of Despair (Iraqi Refugees)2/3
State of Despair (Iraqi Refugees)3/3
Too sad. How much more can they be expected to endure before the powers that be give this crisis the attention it deserves.
Unicef appeal for Iraqi children BBC NEWS ONLINE - 23 May, 2007 Iraqi children are getting caught up in a growing humanitarian tragedy as violence continues in the country, the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) has warned. Half of the four million Iraqis who have fled their homes since the conflict began are children. And the needs of children are outstripping the international aid that has been supplied, the agency said. More funds were needed, Unicef said, launching an appeal for almost $42m (£21m) over the next six months. "Violence is creating widows and orphans on a daily basis, many of whom are left to struggle for survival," it said.
"Iraq's children, already casualties of a quarter of a century of conflict and deprivation, are being caught up in a rapidly worsening humanitarian tragedy."
'
Tremendous impact'
A Unicef official based in the region, Claire Hajaj, told the BBC a crisis point for Iraq's children had already been reached. "We're not waiting for the situation to get worse, or warning that it might get worse. It's already worse.
"They do need basic humanitarian relief, and also people in the community supporting these displaced families, particularly inside Iraq, need help too," she said.
Unicef wants to use the funds to help provide vaccines, food, clean water and schools for children in Iraq, it said.
It also wants to help governments in Syria and Jordan to provide better healthcare for Iraqi children there.
Aid that reached Iraqi children made a big difference, the agency said. "Our experience operating daily inside Iraq confirms to us that aid does indeed reach children and makes a tremendous impact, even in extremely insecure areas," said Daniel Toole, Unicef's chief of emergency operations. One such example was a recent immunisation programme under which 3.6 million children were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella, Unicef said. But it warned that cholera could be a problem over the summer, citing five early cases among children under 12 in the city of Najaf.
A lack of clean drinking water and healthcare could increase the danger of an outbreak, the agency said.
It plans to supply hundreds of thousands of rehydration packs which can stop the disease becoming fatal.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6682489.stm
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/23/2007 5:06:50 AM
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salim
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Nobody care for iraqi refugee people. Syria border have camps with sooooo many iraqi people. I think jordan to. I love syria and syria love iraqis. is this same in jordan? the answer is no. the UN only say they care but they do nothing for iraq only speaking. hachi farigh
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/23/2007 5:48:05 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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 No one gives a rats ass about Iraq. Not even Iraqis. If we loved our country we would never have let her deteriorate into this state. We can blame outsiders till we go blue in the face but ultimately it is our responsibility.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/23/2007 5:50:10 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lion of Babylon
No one gives a rats ass about Iraq.
I wasn't censored this time? Can the moderators send me a list of banned words..............so I can use um all! 
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/24/2007 5:38:01 AM
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azinorum
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lion of Babylon
I wasn't censored this time? Can the moderators send me a list of banned words..............so I can use um all!
You could try trial and error. 
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 5/25/2007 3:28:09 PM
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Lion of Babylon
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More refugee stories.
Iraqis find safety, strange world in Sweden
By JEFFREY FLEISHMAN, Los Angeles Times
UPPSALA, Sweden – The words are strange here, the air is cold, and the girls give their hearts so easily away. The fruit is less sweet, too, the winter ice thick, and the thrum of bicycles makes an odd music across the cobblestones.
Mariam Lutfi attends to these unaccustomed rhythms. There are many like her.
They’re easily spotted around town, nodding to one another, stopping to talk in their native tongue while carrying notebooks scribbled with a foreign alphabet that has too many sounds for the letter G. The call to prayer doesn’t warble across the chimneys, the meat isn’t slaughtered according to Islamic tradition, and finding a glass of strong tea is difficult amid the clatter of lattes and espressos.
“Life is so upside down. I am at zero,” said Lutfi, one of hundreds of Iraqi refugees attempting to build a new life in Uppsala.
“I am learning the ABCs of a new language. I can’t show anything to anybody here. I keep it inside. And when I go for a walk and there’s no one around, I cry and show my nervousness and regret only to myself.”
Leaving families and unrelenting sectarian violence behind, they are photographed and fingerprinted, their lives slipped into folders too slim to hold all that’s been endured. They wonder about reinvention. They wrestle with the mundane and the epic, sharing tips on where to get a cheap dress and how to find the Turkish vendor at the edge of town whose vegetables are nearly fresh and not too expensive.
“We have safety and freedom here, but our tradition differs so much from the Swedes’,” said Amer Mazin, a Palestinian born in Baghdad, who paid a smuggler $13,500 and arrived here in December.
“From my balcony, I can see into other balconies. I see a man in an apartment living by himself, and on the balcony next to his a woman is living by herself. They don’t believe in marriage like we do, they don’t believe in family. My language teacher tells me he has a dog and doesn’t need a child. It seems strange.”
This is life adrift.
More than 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Most are living in Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern nations. Now, a growing number are heading toward Europe, especially Sweden, which for decades has offered refugees and asylum seekers government aid and generous family-reunification plans. Nearly 9,000 Iraqis, more than half of all those who arrived in Europe from the war-torn country in 2006, made their way to Sweden.
European officials estimate that as many as 40,000 more Iraqis may reach the continent this year.
Since the overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the United States has taken in 466 Iraqi refugees.
Washington has been reluctant to accept them for fear that doing so would run counter to U.S. policy to one day return them to a secure Iraq. There also have been concerns about mistakenly granting asylum to militants.
Increased violence in Iraq and criticism by human-rights groups, however, appeared to have prompted the White House to announce in February that the United States would accept as many as 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of this year.
The Bush administration has pledged $18 million – a sum the U.S. military spends in Iraq in less than two hours – to United Nations relief efforts for Iraqi refugees this year.
In comments on the crisis, Bill Frelick, refugee-policy director at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said, “Washington is spending about $2 billion per week on the war in Iraq, but has barely begun to address the human fallout from the war.”
Paying smugglers as much as $15,000 per person, Iraqi refugees bound for Europe travel with doctored papers and forged passports from different countries. They spend weeks or months waiting in Jordan or Turkey before being hidden in cars and trucks and driven by circuitous routes across the continent. The lucky among them board planes in Amman, the Jordanian capital, or Istanbul, Turkey’s main city, and land in Stockholm, where they turn themselves in to immigration officials and apply for asylum.
They have escaped war’s devastation, but now must navigate the confusing idiosyncrasies of new countries.
In Uppsala, a university city threaded by a river, Iraqis attend language classes below a downtown church steeple and then ride buses to neighborhoods such as Gottsunda, where they wear secondhand clothes and live in boxy brick apartment buildings like the refugees who arrived after the 1991 Persian Gulf War and other conflicts in Africa and the Balkans.
Mazin feels like just another name on a list. His wife and four children remain in a Syrian refugee camp. War has killed or scattered everyone close to him: His mother and a sister are in Baghdad, a brother is in a holding center on the Iraq-Syria border, two sisters are stuck in Syria, another brother and a sister are in Jordan and one sister made it to Canada. All this happened after June 20, 2005, when a third brother was shot and killed in the family’s electrical contracting shop in Baghdad.
Wearing an ironed shirt and a beige jacket, Mazin totes a nylon bag full of papers. He seems like a man going to work, but there is no work for him, not until he learns Swedish. He is awaiting his residency permit and permission to bring his family to Uppsala, which has a population of 180,000 and is about 45 miles northwest of Stockholm. Like other refugees from Iraq, Mazin receives a monthly bus pass and just under $10 a day from the Swedish government.
“I’d like to start a heating and cooling business,” said Mazin, who prays in his bedroom because there is no mosque in his neighborhood. “But mainly I just want to get my family and live in peace. It’s hard to concentrate on learning a new language when I worry about them. I know Iraq is going from bad to worse. It will split along sectarian lines. There’s no solution. But my passion and my heart are there.”
Emad Abbass has the busy hands of a man who doesn’t sleep. His wife, 4-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter are still in Baghdad. A chemical engineer, Abbass was at a training seminar in Austria in January when a friend of his was killed by militants. The man was one of two engineers and six electricians slain within two months at the power plant where Abbass worked for the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity.
“My wife and mother insisted that I not come back to Iraq,” said Abbass, a Shiite Muslim. “I think about my friend who died. He had two daughters. What will happen to them now? What would happen if I died? My uncle was also killed by al-Qaida while working at the Dora power station in Baghdad. I collected his body from the morgue.
“No one should have to see the things in that morgue. Have you been? I saw they made one man like a shish kebab, running a pole through him. “
Abbass and his wife can’t afford phone calls from Uppsala to Baghdad. They keep in touch through e-mail, but there is so much left unsaid, and Abbass doesn’t like what he imagines when he fills in the gaps. He has talked to a psychologist, but he wonders how anyone from a country like this can understand a country like his.
“No country has suffered like Iraq. I lost many relatives in all my country’s wars, “ he said. “It’s really not for us anymore. It’s for our children. I miss the oranges in Iraq. They are always sweet. “
He paused, catching himself, not wanting to appear ungrateful.
“I’m thankful to the Swedish people, “ he said. “They are compassionate. . . . They let a man be human. “
Haitham Hiti and his family fled Iraq in December, traveling to Istanbul, where they paid a smuggler $50,000.
“He put us in buses and trucks with no windows, and we didn’t know where we were, what countries we were crossing into from day to night, “ said Hiti, a mechanical engineer and a Sunni Muslim. “It took 12 days of traveling and hiding, and then a guy told us, ‘Now you’re in Sweden.’ He gave me a telephone, and I called my brother who left Iraq eight years ago and works in a lab in Uppsala. “
Shortly after he and his family arrived here, Hiti’s wife slipped on ice and suffered a broken leg; a new danger in a new country, but a tolerable one compared with the carjackings, school bombings and extortion and death threats the family encountered in Iraq. Hiti owned a construction company in Iraq; he and his wife and three children once lived in a house in Baghdad with bodyguards and cooks and other servants.
“Sometimes I say to myself, ‘Why did you leave Iraq?’ “ he | | | |
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