RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month!
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/28/2007 3:03:56 AM
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azinorum
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Just when the Kurds thought it was safe, they might face a refugee crisis of their own. Read below:
Massing Turkish Army Has Kurds Fleeing
Kurdish Families Abandoning Border Villages in Fear of Bombardments, Incursion
SULAIMANIYAH, 24 June 2007 (IRIN) - Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have been forced to flee their homes after up to 30,000 Turkish soldiers massed on the Iraqi-Turkish border and launched attacks against Kurdish fighters, Iraqi border police say.
Local aid agencies said Kurdish fighters had prevented them from entering the villages, which were being targeted.
“The bombardments have forced hundreds to abandon their homes and leave for safer areas. Some houses were looted by Kurdish fighters, according to witnesses in the area,” said Rastgo Muhammad Barsaz, spokesman for the non-governmental organisation Kurdistan Campaign to Help Victims of War.
“Dashati Takhe village, on the border near Zakho, is one of the most affected areas. We have been informed of civilian causalities but we don’t know how many, as we are being denied access to the area. But by telephone, civilians have told us they are short of food and water,” Barsaz said.
Fear of Turkish invasion
In response to recent attacks, including a bombing in Ankara in May that killed eight people, Turkey expanded its force along the border, deploying additional artillery and dozens of tanks. Iraqi border police say Turkey has 20,000-30,000 soldiers along its border with Iraq, and has set up a special security zone that restricts movement in the area.
Iraqi Kurdish villagers living near the Turkish border fear a Turkish invasion similar to that of 1997, when large numbers of Turkish forces crossed the border to fight the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which wants an independent Kurdistan carved out of northern Iraq as well as parts of Iran and Turkey.
Turkey says the PKK is using mountain hideouts and friendly villages in northern Iraq to train and re-supply its fighters who operate mainly in Turkey.
Taking refuge
“The last time hundreds of innocent people died and we hope that won’t happen again. This time, we had to flee our house and are taking refuge with some relatives near Zakho, but we cannot stay there long. We really don’t know what to do as we’ve left everything behind. We’re scared that our home will be destroyed, as has happened to some of our neighbours,” said Ezdin Destan, 47, a resident of Dashati village, near the Turkish border.
“In some neighbouring villages, Kurdish rebels have entered homes and forced families to leave so they can use their homes as bases from which to launch attacks and for training... One of my relatives was killed last week because he refused to leave his house,” Destan said.
Massoud Barzani
The Kurdish authorities see the Turkish attacks as an offensive against the Kurdish people.
"Turkey has a problem with the existence of Kurds,” Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq, told reporters on 13 June. “We have always advocated good neighbourliness on the basis of mutual interests and non-intervention. Nonetheless, we do not accept violations and threats.”
Local aid agencies have called on security forces on both sides to allow safe passage for the delivery of supplies to villagers, and have called for more assistance to be given to displaced families in Zakho, Arbil and Dohuk.
“We call on the authorities to prevent tension and more suffering for innocent civilians, and we hope urgent diplomatic negotiations can avoid further terror,” Barsaz said.
On 19 June the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said at a press conference in Washington, that the US and Iraqi governments were both opposed to Kurdish rebels using Iraqi territory for "terrorist" actions against neighbouring Turkey.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a press conference last week that his country should focus on the large number of militants operating in Turkey before seeking them out in Iraq, but that the problem should be tackled from both sides.
_____________________________
Religion + Politics = disaster
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/28/2007 4:51:21 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Dude, after all their bullshit I don't have sympathy for them. Talabani and Barazani are harboring terrorists (PKK) so what do you expect the Turks to do. Don't forget the Turks supported the US invasion so the Kurds should be kissing their feet. 
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/28/2007 6:29:29 PM
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zimzim
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I agree LOB. The Kurds dont want to be part of Iraq. But they use Iraq for their own Hadef (I forgot the word in english). Kurd are the only ppl who benefit from what happen to our country but they are sooooo arrogant against all arabs now. It is like they blame all of us for what Saddam did to them which was horible of course. When I went to the North before the war they treated us like 4th class citizens. I will never forget they way the Kurdish soldiers on the Turkish border treated us. They laugh and ridicule us and we are women who are trying to escape a mans war. Of course they refuse to let us go to Turkey even though we have all the correct papers. This was my personal experience with them. I will never ever forget how my mother beg them and how they laughed at her and insulted her in kurdish. I will never forgive them for this cruelty.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/29/2007 10:22:59 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Harry. I'm going to try to cut and paste with photo again just in case it works this time. Here is a report on refugees in Syria.
Iraqi Refugees Burden Syrian EconomyInflation on the Rise, Even Cost of Bread Has Increased 35% in DamascusPosted 1 hr. 1 min. ago
Salah Malkawi/GettyJARAMANA, SYRIA - APRIL 24: Iraqi refugees wait for a meal distributed by Ibrahim al-Khalil church April 24, 2007 in Jaramana, near Damascus, Syria.DAMASCUS, 28 June 2007 (IRIN) - A joke circulating here has two Iraqis wandering the streets of the Syrian capital, angrily protesting the large number of Syrians taking over their city.
With up to 2,000 Iraqi refugees arriving each day, adding to the 1.5 million - equivalent to around 8 percent of the Syrian population - who have flooded into Syria since the start of the US-led war on Iraq in 2003, economists and refugee experts warn of a looming social and economic crisis.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi families are now living in and around Damascus pushing up demand for already limited goods and services. Observers warn pressures will soon become unbearable as Iraqis use up their savings and become more reliant on the Syrian welfare system.
“When the Iraqis first came, Syrians were happy to help them but now that is no longer the case,” said Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights (NOHR) which has monitored the effects of Iraqi refugees on Syria. “Now most people hate the refugees and are angry because food and houses are expensive and there is no work because Iraqis take the easy jobs.”
Inflation
According to government figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics, inflation will reach 8 percent in 2007, slightly down from 9.2 percent in 2006. However, with reliability of official figures on the economy a significant issue in Syria, some Damascus-based economists estimate the real figure for this year’s inflation could be as high as 30 percent.
The highest inflation has been felt in the real estate market, with the tens of thousands of extra Iraqi families buying and renting properties across Damascus and raising prices by up to 300 percent. A study by NOHR estimated that the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Damascus had risen from 8,000 Syrian pounds (US$160) in 2005 to 20,000 Syrian pounds (US$400) today.
In a country where an average state wage in the bloated public sector economy remains little more than $120, many Syrians are forced to do two jobs, and still struggle to pay rent.
“It’s a big, big problem for us,” said Rami, a middle class teacher from Damascus. “I want to buy a house but it’s become far too expensive for me. Since the Iraqis arrived house prices have gone crazy.”
The booming real estate market had raised cement prices to $200 a tonne by March, a 300 percent increase on three years ago, stunting the country’s building boom.
Increased demand for bread
Figures from the Syrian Consulting Bureau for Development and Investment (SCB), compiled from the state-run press, found that since the Iraqi influx began in early 2005 the demand for bread in Damascus - home to the majority of the refugees - has increased by 35 percent, electricity by 27 percent, water by 20 percent and kerosene by 17 percent.
The state’s social services are under intense strain. “They are increasing the claims on all of the subsidised services, particularly our education and health systems which Iraqis have free access to,” said economist Nabil Sukkar, head of the SCB.
There are an estimated 75,000 Iraqi children registered in Syrian schools, with many class sizes doubled to 60 students and schools working double shifts to cope.
Other than recent initiatives led by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to build three new schools and one hospital, there has been little infrastructure growth to meet the additional pressures.
“The added pressures the Iraqis are putting on the existing system are pushing it to its limits at the moment,” said Sybella Wilkes, UNHCR spokesperson in Damascus.
However, while many Syrians now blame Iraqis for their long-term economic difficulties and up to 20 percent unemployment, the economic burden of Iraqi refugees has not yet impacted dramatically on the basic economy.
“ essential goods, which are mainly foods, went up a bit late last year but has re-stabilised again,” said Damascus-based economist Jihad Yaziji. “So the inflation rate is not that indicative of how far the purchasing power of the average citizen has been reduced.”
Government subsidies
Many basic food goods, as well as electricity and transport, are subsidised by the government by up to 40 percent, meaning it is the state and not its population that is bearing the major burden of inflationary pressures.
Kerosene, for example, sells at a subsidised rate of seven Syrian pounds per litre ($0.14) but is bought by the government for around 30 Syrian pounds per litre ($0.60). With a 17 percent increase in consumption, “it is costing the government hundreds of millions of dollars per year,” said Yaziji.
Boost for growth
The effect of the refugees has not only been negative. The increase in demand for consumer goods and real estate spurred by the influx of Iraqis has boosted domestic consumption, contributing towards the increase in the government’s expected GDP growth to seven percent from 5.6 percent in 2006.
According to Sukkar, the Iraqis have “brought in money, invested in real estate, and opened shops, something that - on the positive side - has increased spending in the economy”.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/29/2007 10:24:24 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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You must have just got lucky Bro. 
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/30/2007 1:41:47 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Another proffesor murdered. Soon we'll have no one left! 
Baghdad University Professor Found Dead
Abducted in Capital, Found with Fatal Gunshot Wounds in Kut
Kut, June 29, (VOI) - Police forces found on Friday morning the body of a university professor in al-Ezza region, southwestern Kut, a police source said.
“Police forces found a body of a university professor in al-Ezza region with gunshot wounds to the head and the neck,” the source, who declined to be named, told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).
“The professor was working for the Faculty of Management and Economics in Baghdad University and his name is Samir,” he also said.
“The professor lives in al-Sidiya region in Baghdad and he came to visit his relatives in Kut, where an armed group stormed his house at 10:00 pm on Thursday and took him to an unknown place,” the source added.
“The body was sent to the forensic medicine department in the city,” he explained, noting that the police have started an investigation into the incident.
Meanwhile, eyewitness said on Friday that a roadside bomb went off near a U.S. military convoy at the northern outlet to the city of Kut. An eyewitness told VOI that the bomb was planted at the northern outlet of Kut near the al-Zahraa public hospital, and exploded while a U.S. military convoy was passing by, destroying a Hummer.
“The U.S. force started a random shootout after the blast,” he noted, adding no further details. Kut is the capital city of Wassit province and is located 180 km southeast of Baghdad.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 6/30/2007 1:00:13 PM
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azinorum
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Lion of Babylon
“The professor lives in al-Sidiya region in Baghdad and he came to visit his relatives in Kut, where an armed group stormed his house at 10:00 pm on Thursday and took him to an unknown place,” the source added.
This sounds like an inside job. Sadly its not uncommon for family members to sell info to the abductors for money. I've heard this from more than one source. This is how cheap human life is now in Iraq.
_____________________________
Religion + Politics = disaster
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/3/2007 1:04:00 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Dudes....A follow on from the report about the murdered proffesor. It was posted on the Basra.net website so I am not sure of its validity because this site is basicaly for insurgents but pretending to be resistance.
Controversy Surrounds Professor's Murder
Militia Power Struggles as Backdrop to Baghdad University Killing
The murder of a high-ranking Baghdad University official by unknown gunmen last Tuesday June 26 has sparked controversy as some point to militia involvement in the assassination. As Slogger reported earlier, unknown gunmen assassinated Dr. Nihad Mohammed Al-Rawi, who was deputy chancellor of Baghdad University and adjunct professor at the Civil Engineering College, near his house in Baghdad’s Bayya’ district Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon.
Al-Rawi died immediately at the scene. His body was taken to Yarmouk Hospital and buried the following day.
While the killers are still unknown, IraqSlogger has learned of a backdrop of militia and political intrigue to the murder. Moreover, opposition organizations are pointing the finger at Shi'a militia groups as being responsible for the killing. A strange event occurred just a few days before the killing: IraqSlogger has learned that al-Rawi was involved in a dispute with powerful Shi'a-based political parties and militias prior to his murder. The Badr organization, the militia attached to the powerful SIIC, or Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, apparently supplied students on campus with meals, in what appears to be an attempt to extend the influence of the SIIC on campus, Slogger sources report.
Baghdad University is located in the capital’s al-Jadirya district, which is a stronghold of the SIIC and Badr. On one recent occasion, a commemoration of the death of Fatima al-Zuhra, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and the mother of the second and third Shi'a imams, the organization distributed meals to Baghdad University students, and, according to Slogger sources, 600 students became ill after eating the food. After this event, Nihad al-Rawi refused the food from SIIC and other political parties , and days before his assassination appeared on US-funded al-Hurra satellite television and accused the SIIC of distributing spoiled food to Baghdad University students, Slogger sources report.
The university, which is chartered as a public non-political institution, is in an “embarrassing position,” says a Slogger source, because of its earlier cooperation with the SIIC and acceptance of handouts from the party. There is a quasi-news blackout on the issue, the source told Slogger, saying that university officials are avoiding the press.
It is in this context that opposition Sunni organizations interpreting the murder of Nihad al-Rawi.
Al-Basra Net, known for its opposition to the US presence in Iraq and to the current Iraqi government, as well as for its alleged ties to the Iraqi insurgency, wrote that al-Rawi had been “specifically targeted,” noting that the assassins did not attack al-Rawi’s driver, nor his administrative assistant, both of whom were in the same car at the scene of the murder, but instead only shot al-Rawi, killing him on the spot.
Al-Basra Net also alleges that al-Rawi experienced “threats and harassment” from the director of the university and his brother, who is, according to al-Basra, responsible for the fuel station attached to the university. Both of these men, according to al-Basra Net, are involved with the SIIC and who have a relationship with the Badr corps.
A power struggle between the SIIC/Badr organizations and the Da'wa Party over the resources in the university also formed the backdrop to the murder, according to al-Basra Net, which escalated as university administration officials with connections to the political organizations distributed residential space in the dormitories of Baghdad University to their supporters.
SIIC and Da'wa are the two most powerful parties in the governing Shi'a-led United Iraqi Alliance. SIIC is generally acknowledged as the stronger of the two parties. The Haqq News Agency, whose coverage is also aligned with Sunni opposition and insurgent groups alleged that it had “confirmed” that the Mahdi Army was responsible for the murder, but did not provide further details. The "Iraqi News Agency," also critical of the political process and the governing Shi'a parties, published an article alleging that al-Rawi's name had appeared on militia hit lists, writing that the professor and administrator had never been accused of corruption, and suggesting that it was a refusal to bend to militia influences that cost him his life.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/3/2007 1:33:39 PM
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zimzim
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This is a new report. Even more have fled than we think. If we add these to all the Iraqis who left before the war what will be the number? maybe 10 milion. This is enough to start a new country. 
What Model Should Iraq Follow?
CFR Outlines South Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, and Lebanon
Even as they disagree on how long American forces will remain in Iraq, U.S. officials and foreign policy experts suggest a number of scenarios for what Iraq might resemble after coalition forces eventually pull out. President Bush has proposed the so-called South Korean model, a long-term residual troop presence to prevent civil war from breaking out. Many have also likened the conflict to Vietnam, where the fall of Saigon did not unleash the massive “domino” effect many predicted. Others have offered Lebanon, which suffered from a long civil war before an uneasy truce was inked, as a more accurate template. Then there are those who say Iraq should become a federalized state, akin to post-1995 Bosnia. Experts disagree over the degree to which the conflict in Iraq could spread to neighboring countries.
The South Korea Model
Over fifty years after the Korean War, some thirty thousand U.S. troops remain stationed along the DMZ, which divides the peninsula between North Korea and South Korea (the number is expected to diminish to 24,500 next year). The U.S. forces are there to keep an uneasy peace between the two Koreas and prevent war from erupting again. The analogy to Korea is meant to portray the Iraq conflict as a long-term one that requires a residual “over-the-horizon” military presence, mainly to support indigenous forces and keep the peace. “The idea is more a model of a mutually-agreed arrangement, whereby we have a long and enduring presence, but one that is by consent of both parties and under certain conditions,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told reporters in early June. He also said the Korean model stood in contrast to the aftermath of the Vietnam War, where “we just left lock, stock and barrel.”
Still, some opponents of the war, including several presidential aspirants, have seized on this comparison as a justification for keeping U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely. This CFR.org issue tracker examines the positions of current 2008 candidates. Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson, for instance, has called for “zero troops,” including residual forces, as well as for a withdrawal of embassy staff if the security situation worsens.
Others say Korea is a faulty model, and a residual force will only embolden Islamic radicals and arouse suspicions that U.S. interests are related more to oil than democracy promotion. “Any U.S. bases remaining in Iraq, either to keep a finger on the oil, or to act as a jumping off point for attacking Iran, will similarly quickly come under withering attack from Iraqi insurgents and al-Qaeda,” writes Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute, a public-policy research organization.
The Lebanon Model
Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war illustrates that long and violent factional fighting can draw regional countries into a wider war. But some experts say Iraq is different and argue the sectarian violence would stay relatively contained and not spread to neighboring countries. “Such meddlers tend to seek advantage in their neighbors’ civil wars, not to spread them, which is why they rely on proxies to do their fighting,” write CFR's Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh in the Washington Post. “You can already see that pattern at work in Iraq today.”
The Lebanon model was promoted by some White House officials back in 2004 as a blueprint for dealing with Iraq. Before last summer’s war, Lebanon was seen as an example of how a failed state could transition into a relatively stable democracy in the Arab world, held together by a power-sharing arrangement, however tenuous. “It works in a flawed-but-muddling-through sort of way,” Michael J. Totten, a Beirut-based journalist, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in January 2006. “ what makes this place unique is that the Lebanese political system is nearly incapable of producing dictatorship.” Although eighteen months later, Lebanon teeters on the brink of sectarian war, some experts say its power-sharing agreement between sectarian camps with competing agendas and claims to land may provide a model, however flawed, for Iraq to follow.
But other analysts fear Iraq may result in something worse than Lebanon at its nadir in the 1980s. “Lebanon’s simmering civil war eventually burned itself out and left a coherent, albeit weak, state in its ashes,” writes Christopher J. Fettweis of the U.S. Naval War College in the Los Angeles Times. “Iraq could soon more closely resemble Somalia in the 1990s, an utterly collapsed, uncontrolled, lawless, failed state that destabilizes the most vital region in the world.” Democratic presidential candidates, similarly, regularly refer to the prospect of “genocide” in postwar Iraq.
The Vietnam Model
The Vietnam War ended in a four-year-long withdrawal of U.S. forces followed by the fall of Saigon and the rest of South Vietnam to the North Vietnamese. In Vietnam, the U.S. military slowly handed over combat duties to local forces as part of its “Vietnamization” campaign. Some analysts say employing a similar strategy in Iraq would be complicated because the conflict is more of a communal civil war, not an ideological struggle for national liberation. “Such a policy,” writes CFR’s Stephen Biddle in Foreign Affairs, “might have made sense in Vietnam, but in Iraq it threatens to exacerbate the communal tensions that underlie the conflict and undermine the power-sharing negotiations needed to end it.” Some say the lesson of the “Vietnam model,” as it applies to Iraq, is to maintain a U.S. presence and economic aid to sustain a political solution. “The shame of Vietnam is not that we were there in the first place, but that we betrayed our ally in the end,” wrote former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird in Foreign Affairs. Adds Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state, in a recent op-ed: “The essential prerequisite for such a political solution is staying power in the near term.”
Fettweis says Vietnam is an apt comparison to Iraq because both represented major strategic mistakes in U.S. foreign policy, turning public opinion against the White House and against interventionism in general—what became know as “Vietnam Syndrome.” But he says the significance of pulling en masse out of Iraq, like Vietnam before it, may prove to be overplayed by the war’s architects. “ust as the war’s critics predicted in the 1960s, Vietnam turned out to be strategically irrelevant,” he writes. “Saigon fell, but no dominoes followed; the balance of Cold War power did not change.”
The Bosnia Model
The “nation building” parallels between Iraq and Bosnia are manifold. The Iraq Study Group, among other sources, has advocated a Dayton-like peace process to bring in Iraq’s neighbors to cooperate on border control and security operations. Moreover, Iraq’s Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites have made fitful attempts to reach a power-sharing agreement, much as the various ethnic factions did in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the mid-1990s. Troop deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have been compared to foreign troop proportions deployed to keep peace in the former Yugoslavia (to meet the troop-to-civilian ratios applied in Bosnia, the coalition would have to deploy 258,000 thousand forces to Iraq). And Bosnia may give development specialists a blueprint on rebuilding Iraq’s economy, particularly regarding how much foreign aid to give per capita.
But the main use of the “Bosnia model” has come from advocates who favor a looser federation rather than a centralized state, not unlike Bosnia post-1995. “The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group—Kurd, Sunni Arab, and Shiite Arab—room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests,” wrote Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-DE) and the Council on Foreign Relations’ President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb in the New York Times. “In effect, Iraq is already becoming Bosnia,” adds Michael E. Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, writing in the Washington Times. Decentralization in Iraq, like Bosnia, would require land swaps, the separation of ethnic groups, and a political agreement that disperses powers to the regions, while keeping a unitary state. “Ethnic relocation is distasteful and not free from risk but if carried out with care as government policy, it can occur with less trauma than in the Balkans,” adds O’Hanlon.
Yet others disagree. More than a decade after the Dayton Peace accords, some say that Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats, and Muslims still do not share a unified vision for the country as a whole. “Of all the ironies of the American adventure in Iraq, perhaps none is larger than using the ‘success’ of Bosnia as a model to solve the sectarian violence now raging in Baghdad,” write Don Hays of the U.S. Institute of Peace, R. Bruce Hitchner of the Dayton Project, and Edward P. Joseph in the International Herald Tribune. “The Dayton legacy of balancing power at the central, cantonal, and local levels is hopelessly dysfunctional.” They say Bosnian Serbs, emboldened by Kosovo’s push for independence, may be poised to pull out of the Dayton arrangement. Moreover, Bosnia, given its porous borders, remains a lawless haven for drug and arms traffickers, terrorists, and other organized crime elements.
From CFR.org. Reprinted with permission. For more analysis on foreign policy and international relations, go to www.cfr.org.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/3/2007 1:36:56 PM
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zimzim
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I posted the wrong report!! This is the right one. Sorry! 
This is a new report. Even more have fled than we think. If we add these to all the Iraqis who left before the war what will be the number? maybe 10 milion. This is enough to start a new country.
Red Crescent: External Displaced Count Spikes
Reassessment of Displaced Increases Estimates of Iraqis in Syria, Iran, Egypt
The Iraqi Red Crescent just released a new report on externally displaced Iraqis, and the latest statistics indicate a sharp spike in the official count of Iraqi refugees abroad since the UNHCR released its last numbers in April.
The UNHCR's April count figured 1.2 million Iraqis had sought refuge in Syria, but the Iraqi Red Crescent now estimates the number at 1.5 to 2 million. Iran went from 54,000 in April to 100,000 now, and Egypt increased from 100,000 to 150,000.
According to the Red Crescent, the new statistics were obtained "through coordination with the Iraqi Embassy in Amman/Jordan, International Non-governmental Organizations and particularly with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)."
While the population of displaced Iraqis is always on the rise, such a sharp spike over the past few months most likely indicates a more careful accounting of Iraqi refugees, rather than a new flood fleeing the violence.
Following April's donor conference in Geneva, for example, the UNHCR increased the yearly budget for their operations in Syria from $700,000 to $16 million, adding a new refufee center in Douma and quadrupling the staff available to register the influx of homeless Iraqis.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/4/2007 2:17:06 AM
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azinorum
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Hi zim. Probably more than 10 million. Most of the good people who can afford it have now left. Others have to suffer all the indignities of this Mehzela that has gripped the country. God help them.
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Religion + Politics = disaster
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/5/2007 4:09:46 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Heres a question for you all. Why dont the Palastinian authorities deal with this problem?
Brazil to Resettle Palestinian Refugees from Iraq Stranded in Jordanian Desert:
An estimated 100 Palestinians who fled Iraq four years ago and lived in a desert refugee camp inside Jordan will be resettled in Brazil, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told a press briefing in Geneva on Tuesday. Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Palestinians have been living in a refugee camp at Ruwayshid in Jordan, 60 km from the Iraqi border. “There, they have faced extremely harsh conditions in a dusty and scorpion-infested desert camp with nowhere to go,” said UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis.
Apart from Canada and New Zealand – which took 54 and 22 Palestinians respectively in recent years – Brazil is the first country to come forward and offer a sanctuary for Palestinian refugees, who have been barred entry to Jordan and other Arab states. The transfer of the Palestinians to Brazil has been scheduled for mid-September 2007 and they will arrive in three batches of 30 people each, Pagonis said. In the mean time, the group will be briefed and given Portuguese language lessons by Brazilian UNHCR staff in Jordan.
Larger refugee camps for Palestinians in miserable conditions remain on both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border.“More than 1,450 Palestinians from Iraq remain stranded along the Iraq-Syria border in deplorable conditions,” said Pagonis. “Another estimated 13,000 Palestinians continue to be targeted, harassed, threatened and killed in Baghdad.”
The Palestinian community in Iraq – mostly descendants of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 Israeli-Arab wars – was once estimated at 30 thousand. They have faced persecution and attacks from Shi’ite militias because of perceived preferential treatment from Saddam Hussein’s regime and suspected links or sympathy to the Sunni insurgency. Death squads have targeted hundreds of Palestinians in recent months.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/5/2007 4:14:14 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Dudes, read below. Looks like the Real Estate agents in Baghdad have found a way to sould this problem and make money at the same time. House swap with a difference! 
Sunni, Shia Families Swapping Houses
Real Estate Agents Facilitate Trades for Those Threatened in Own Neighborhood
BAGHDAD, 4 July 2007 (IRIN) - Six months ago Sunni militants forced the Shia family of Baqir Zaidan Najim out of their house in Baghdad's southern Sunni-dominated suburb of Dora. Two months earlier, Shia militiamen had broken into the house of the Sunni family of Abdul-Khaliq Mohammed Khayon, and told them they had 24 hours to leave Baghdad's northern Shia district of Kadhimiyah or "face death".
Since then, the two families had been moving from place to place seeking shelter with relatives or friends until late last month when the heads of the two families shook hands on a deal to swap houses. Iraq's unprecedented turning point in relations between Sunni and Shia Muslims can be traced directly to 22 February 2006, when a revered Shia shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, was bombed. Sunni extremists were blamed for the act.
The attack, which was repeated last month, spawned days of reprisals that damaged or destroyed dozens of mosques, killed hundreds and made thousands of families homeless, compounding the displacement problem created after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
New role for estate agents
As a result, a new phenomenon has emerged: Sunni and Shia families are swapping houses. Estate agents are providing lists of available properties, facilitating swap arrangements.
"It is hard to leave the house you built and in which you spent your life raising your children, and which contains memories in every corner, but death is dreadful," said bearded Najim, a 52-year-old Shia pensioner and father of six boys.
"When I heard about house exchanges, I immediately started looking for a displaced Sunni family from Baghdad to take my house in Dora. After weeks of inquiries, I found an estate agent with a list of uprooted Sunni families looking to swap properties," he said.
"After a search of nearly a month, I was introduced to Najim at an estate agent's office and we each agreed to take the other's house for six months, but we left our furniture in our houses because many people have been attacked by militants while moving household belongings," said Khayon, a 49-year-old father of three girls. According to their renewable deal, which was drafted at the estate agent's office, the two families agreed to exchange their houses until the security situation improves.
"Booming" house swaps
"House swaps are booming," said an estate agent in Dora who arranged the Najim-Khayon deal but who did not want to be named for security reasons. "Since houses prices are declining due to the deteriorated security situation, families can't sell their houses and prefer to swap," he added. He went on to say that since the beginning of the year he had housed 211 uprooted Sunni families in Dora and its suburbs "without any problems and all sides are satisfied".
According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since February 2006 about 822,810 Iraqis have been prompted to leave their homes and move to new areas in search of basic security. The figure is higher than the estimated figure of 600,000 issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displacement. Of these, about 40,000 families - or about 200,000 people - have fled their homes in Baghdad, a senior official at the ministry told IRIN - on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to disclose numbers.
Houses seized
Other families, doubtful of such swap-deals or suspicious of the estate agents, try to find people with whom they can exchange their houses by putting out the word to relatives and family friends. Some do not swap their homes but find families to stay in them before they flee. But there have also been problems.
Nadhim Mahmoud Ali, a 59-year-old Shia doctor, fled his house in Baghdad's western Sunni suburb of Amiriyah in January and moved to the country's northern autonomous region of Kurdistan after finding a Sunni family to stay in his house.
"But a month later, he started calling us asking permission to open all the rooms in the house, claiming that they don't have enough rooms. And then he started asking permission to sell our furniture to feed his family," Ali said.
"The latest shock was last month when he gave me a call to say that the Iraqi Islamic Party had given him the house as it belonged to a Shia family and he was an uprooted Sunni," he added.
Similarly, houses of uprooted Sunni families have been turned over to displaced Shia families by the Mahdi army, a Shia militia loyal to radical religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr that has been blamed for sectarian killings.
Government crackdown
On 24 February the Iraqi government, which says it is seeking to end sectarian violence and the illegal seizure of homes in the capital, launched a new security crackdown called "Operation Imposing Law", in conjunction with US forces, to try to achieve its aims. In a bid to stop the sectarian bloodletting, the government said those who had occupied the homes of displaced families would be given 15 days to return the properties to their original owners or prove they had permission to be there.
However, as the security operation enters its seventh month, there is little evidence so far of many people returning to their rightful homes.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/6/2007 2:48:50 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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Iraqis choose Sweden as new home
Halim Ibrahim and his family are among the half of all Iraqis who choose Sweden as their destination when they flee to Europe from their war-torn homeland.
"We wanted to get as far away from Iraq as possible," said 50-year-old Halim, standing outside his ground floor flat in southern Sweden.
"Everyone wants to go to Sweden, it has always been good to Iraqis. They respect human rights here. I wanted my children to grow up in a safe country, that's why we chose Sweden," said Halim.
The Ibrahims are not alone in coming to Sweden to make a new home.
Financial strain
Last year Sweden received 8,950 asylum applications from Iraqis, nearly half of the 22,200 who came to Europe. The United Kingdom received only 1,305, according to UN statistics.
With only nine million inhabitants, Sweden is feeling the financial strain of receiving such a high proportion of refugees.
During an EU meeting of justice and interior ministers in April, Swedish Migration Minister Tobias Billstroem urged other European countries to share the responsibility of providing protection to Iraqi refugees.
"There are many reasons why so many Iraqis choose Sweden," says Mr Billstroem. "There are more than 80,000 Iraqis in Sweden, so many have relatives here. They also know that we generally grant asylum to those from central and southern Iraq."
A long-term opponent of Saddam Hussein and a Shia Muslim from southern Iraq, Halim would get taken away by the police to be interrogated on a regular basis.
For days he would be gone without his family knowing if he was still alive.
"The police harassed anyone who was related to me because they knew I had been politically active. I had to leave to save myself and my family," he said.
Reunited
Halim had to flee Iraq in 2001 without his wife, Wafa, or his four children. The family was reunited a year later in Sweden, where Halim had been granted asylum.
"We had to sell everything we owned and borrow a lot of money to be able to get out of Iraq. We had to bribe many officials on our way. We're still in a lot of debt," said Wafa.
The family now live in a small Swedish town called Amal. The family likes it here. "It is quiet and safe, good for the children," said Halim.
In Iraq both Halim and Wafa worked, in Amal it has not been so easy, and both are unemployed.
"Most Iraqis in Sweden can only get a job as a taxi driver, it's quite sad," says their 21-year-old son Karrar who has just finished his school-leaving exams and is going to university in the autumn.
Amal Council has just been asked by the government if they can double their intake of Iraqi refugees this year to 60 people.
But council leader Kurt Svensson wishes it was that easy: "Like the rest of Sweden we're finding it difficult to find jobs for Iraqis."
"The government has no system in place to convert their qualifications, and many can't or don't want to retrain. Some don't get hired because they are foreign."
"On the whole it's costing society a lot of money, and it's a waste of talent. When they're unemployed it makes it harder to fully integrate them into Swedish society," Svensson says with a sigh.
This year the Swedish government estimates they will receive 20,000 asylum applications from Iraqis, more than 50 a day.
"It's therefore vital that the EU will get a harmonised asylum policy by 2010 as promised," says Tobias Billstroem. "We don't want any quotas for how many refugees Europe should accept, on the contrary we want the common EU rules to be more similar to the Swedish, because it is vital to ensure the right to asylum is not infringed."
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/6/2007 3:05:13 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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The first trickle is admitted to the USA. They promised to allow 7000 so only 6937 to go! 
US Admitted 63 Iraqi Refugees in June
An Increase over May, but Still "Too Early to Cheer"
Iraqi Refugees Admitted to the US during the fiscal year ending September 2007.
The US admitted 63 Iraqi refugees in June 2007, according to State Department figures, bringing the total admitted in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2007 to 133 Iraqis. While the figure represents an improvement over May's figure of one Iraqi refugee admitted to the US, it's still "too early to cheer," writes Refugees International President Ken Bacon in a recent blog post, given both the magnitude of the Iraqi refugee crisis, and earlier US commitments.
"This is still a very small number compared to the State Department’s various announcements that it was prepared to resettle from 7,000 to 20,000 Iraqis this year," Bacon writes, adding that, "The hold up has been the Department of Homeland Security, which has moved slowly to issue its security protocols for processing Iraqis and getting interview teams into the field."
The latest figures from the Iraqi Red Crescent on the Iraqi refugee crisis estimate over one million internally displaced Iraqis (The UN estimates over two million), and well over two million externally displaced.
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/7/2007 1:02:51 AM
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zimzim
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This is a report for you all to see. Look how good Syria is to Iraqis. Free education, free health care for us all. I know many ppl dont like Syria because it is baath but at least they are doing their best for us. They need help from everyone so they can offer iraqis a chance of good life.
UNHCR Says World Fails Iraqi Refugees
Syria and Jordan Assuming Overwhelming Bulk of Burden Caring for Displaced
Aside from the handful of countries, the international community is failing to support the plight of Iraqi refugees, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond told the media on Friday in an urgent appeal for assistance. Despite financial pledges for UN programs and strongly-worded rhetoric expressing deep concern for displaced Iraqis at the April conference in Geneva, "the two countries caring for the biggest proportion of Iraqi refugees – Syria and Jordan – have still received next to nothing in bilateral help from the world community."
Speaking with surprisingly strong language for a UN official, Redmond condemned the inaction, saying it's "unconscionable that generous host countries (have been) left on their own to deal with such a huge crisis."
Redmond said host countries, particularly Syria and Jordan where more than 2 million displaced Iraqis now reside, struggle to provide for the homeless refugees. "The growing refugee population and the communities that host them are facing enormous hardships that will only get worse if the international community doesn't put its money where its mouth is," Redmond said. The most welcoming neighbor continues to be Syria, which, according to Redmond, takes in about 30,000 new refugees every month. By comparison, the State Department announced this week that the US accepted 63 Iraqi refugees in June, roughly double the number that had been allowed in the first five months of 2007.
Speaking at a press conference at UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, Redmond emphasized the long-term damage that would result from a failure to provide for the millions of displaced Iraqis.
"In Syria, for example, only 32,000 of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugee children in the country are actually in school. Syria, with 1.4 million Iraqis, is the only country in the region that allows free public school access for all Iraqi children. But there simply isn't enough space to take them all in. To try to cope, Syrian education officials have been forced to convert scores of public schools back to the double-shift system that the country had expected under a long-term national development plan to end by 2010. A whole generation of Iraqi children is in danger of missing out on an education....The health infrastructure is also under severe strain and thousands of Iraqis are suffering because they can't get proper help. Every week, we're seeing sick and maimed Iraqis – including many burn and trauma victims – arriving in Syria in search of medical help."
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RE: 100,000 fleeing Iraq every month! - 7/9/2007 8:35:50 AM
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Lion of Babylon
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I hope we have put aside our dream of Arabs helping us to find a solution. Theyre all bullshitters and shisters who dont give a dam about us. Even as Iraq burns many Arabs are trying to rob Iraqis of the opportunity of finding a better life abroad. Check this report out of you still think there is such a thing as AL UMAH AL ARABIA.
In Norway, Iraq Faces a Population Influx
Arab Nationals Claim Iraqi Citizenship in Bid for Refugee Status in Europe
NORWAY – “I am Iraqi,” says Yusri, with an Egyptian accent.
In several other Arab dialects, others make the same claim.
While Arabs from around the region cross into Iraq to become foreign fighters and suicide bombers, outside of its borders, Iraq is facing a new popular influx, as Arab nationals seek asylum in Europe on the pretext that they are Iraqis. These claimants exploit the measures offered by the signatory countries to the UN Convention on Refugees to offer a secure livelihood to those displaced from countries where security has broken down, or to those who are threatened for other reasons.
Yusri is a man of 33 years. He and his brother Muhammad are both fishermen by trade. They insist that they are Iraqi of an Egyptian father and Iraqi mother, claiming that their father had obtained Iraqi citizenship during the rule of Saddam Hussein.
Abu Ahmad, an Iraqi refugee in Norway living near Yusri and his brother, says, “The two men often ask me about Basra and its most important landmarks, its markets, and its sports clubs.”
“I was expecting that they loved Basra as a city, and it never crossed my mind that they were Iraqi refugees to Norway,” he says.
Abu Ahmed, 30, explains that he discovered the truth after he saw their official papers, issued by the Norwegian authorities, with the words “From Iraq” written on them.
Abu Ahmed notes that one night Muhammad invited him to his room, and offered him tea, telling him that he “needed some information on Basra,” to prepare for the interrogation that he would face before the Norwegian Immigration Directorate, known by its Norwegian acronym UDI. The UDI is the agency responsible for looking into requests advanced by refugees from other countries to Norway.
The UDI’s investigation is similar to those conducted by the authorities of any other country to ascertain the needs of the person advancing the request for asylum, and to confirm, for security purposes, if the person qualifies for refugee status.
Despite Abu Ahmad’s intentions, Muhammad provided incorrect responses about Basra to the UDI, because he had obtained some false information in his research on the Internet. “He also used Google Earth,” Abu Ahmad says, referring to the program that often provides precise details on the map of the requested area including detailed geographical and statistical information.
It appears that Muhammad trained for hours to memorize specific information about the southern Iraqi city, “especially since the investigative committee would ask Muhammad to describe at length” the area that he lived in and his memories of it, according to Abu Ahmad.
In 2007 the UN High Commission for Refugees announced that World Refugee Day, observed each year on June 20, would call attention to the suffering of Iraqi refugees, as the overall global number of refugees is increasing for the first time in five years, especially because of the escalating violence in Iraq.
Iraq’s condition is exploited by some citizens of other Arab countries who seek to emigrate to the West, where they adopt Iraqi identities, at times presenting forged papers to the immigration authorities to facilitate their asylum request.
In Norway, as in other Western countries, claimants will not obtain asylum unless they come from a country where security has broken down -- and Iraq remains the most dangerous place in the world, as part of it is under al-Qa'ida control, armed militias control other parts.
Measures taken by the Norwegian authorities “are still insufficient,” says Abu Aydan, an Iraqi refugee, since this phenomenon is increasing in a dramatic way, and even the UDI’s spoken examinations in Iraqi dialect “fail,” because many of the Arab would-be Iraqis have lived in Iraq for many years, during which time they obtained fluency in the Iraqi dialect, learning even the most difficult words in the colloquial Iraqi vocabulary, he adds.
Abu Adyan explains that the interrogation methods by the UDI, are not at the level required, and are often limited to very clear questions about some of the best-known areas and places in Baghdad, such as “Where is the Rashid Hotel?” -- or the Meridian or Sheraton, or the Green Zone’s Convention Center housing the Iraqi Parliament -- all well-known places, not least because they are frequently targeted by militant groups.
Abu Adyan adds, “It is unbelievable that I proved my Iraqi identity by responding to the question ‘Where is the al-Hajj Zabbala Juice Stand?’”
Al-Hajj Zabbala is a famous juice stand on al-Rashid Street in Baghdad city center, known for selling pure currant juice. It has been open since the mid-20th century, and even most presidents and kings of Iraq have been among its frequent visitors.
Abu Mario, in his forties, took refuge in Norway with his son Mario, 11. Abu Mario insists that he’s an Iraqi from Baghdad, and that he left Iraq more than 25 years ago and fled with his father to Syria in 1982 when he was 16 years old. He claims they left Iraq without taking any evidence to prove their Iraqi nationality. “We lived in Syria without official papers and we are now in Norway without documents that prove our identities,” Abu Mario says.
The Norwegian authorities still ask Abu Mario for proof of his Iraqi nationality, even with papers from the church in which he was baptized. But Abu Mario says, “I don’t remember if my baptism or my first communion was in Mosul or in Baghdad, adding, “but I remember that the church had a big cross on top.”
Some statistics indicate that Norway hosts nearly 20,000 Iraqi refugees who came over the last several years, and Iraqis continue to arrive in the country.
Abu Rishwan, 37, is a Kurdish Iraqi who works as an employee in the refugee housing facility. He says that a Palestinian family living in Iraq came to Norway and asked for asylum, saying that they were an Iraqi family who were born and lived in Iraq. They spoke the Iraqi dialect “perfectly,” he says.
A little over a year ago, the family obtained refugee status in Norway on the pretext that they were Iraqis. Abu Rishwan explains that the while the Palestinian family achieved asylum in Norway, “other Iraqis that were with them at the same time did not obtain” refugee status.
The Norwegian authorities, through the UDI, have stopped dealing with Iraqi passports of “Class S,” which are deemed easier to forge, and only accept Iraqi passports of “Class G,” which have been determined more difficult to forge by international organizations -- except that those seeking refuge in the European countries often destroy or damage all their identification before they travel to the West and submit themselves to the authorities, which increases the difficulty of determining the national origin of the claimant, in order to ensure that they are not deported.
One of the interrogators in the UDI said that the Norwegian police were now taking special measures regarding Arabs who claim that they are Iraqis.
Ahmad Salama, 38, is a Norwegian citizen of Iraqi origin. He says that a friend of his, of Syrian descent, obtained refugee status in Norway about seven years ago, after establishing his “Iraqi” identity with forged papers.
The Norwegian authorities agreed to his request for asylum, and later he obtained Norwegian citizenship, “although he is under investigation now,” Salama says.
“His citizenship will probably be stripped from him, and he will face legal proceedings,” | | | |
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