Refugees: By-Product of War

Another reason the Iraqi war, started on the basis of bogus evidence of weapons of mass destruction, is a human rights travesty. As if it is not enough that there are internally displaced persons in Iraq because of the fighting, hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi civilians have fled to Syria.

From the Middle East and Africa section of The Economist, www.economist.com, September 22-28, 2007, page 55:

Iraq and Syria
THE PLIGHT OF THE REFUGEES

Damascus
Syria is finding it hard to cope with the flood of refugees from Iraq

"Do you have a job?" and "What are you doing at the moment?" are leading questions on the whiteboard in an English lesson at an Iraqi refugee community centre in Sayyida Zaynab, a suburb on the edge of Syria's capital, Damascus. The students can expect more such requests for personal data in the coming weeks as the Syrian government and the UN carry out a census to count those who have fled from neighbouring Iraq.

Syria has taken in the lion's share of Iraq's refugees, almost 1.5m of them, of whom well over half are probably Sunni some 15% Shia and maybe 10% Christian. Jordan is thought to account for another 600,000 or so, but no one knows exactly. The Syrian survey will assess the needs of the refugees - and their effect on the host country, which has 19m of its own citizens. Many refugees are running out of savings, slipping into poverty, sometimes into crime and prostitution.

The count will be difficult. If they were all in camps, it would be easier, says Kristele Younes of Refugees International. "It's the first time in the UN's history that there's been an urban crisis of such huge proportions," she says. "They are people who are very difficult to 'see'. They speak Arabic and look pretty similar [to Syrians]. It's almost a ghost population."

In Sayyida Zaynab, near a Shia shrine to Zaynah, the prophet Muhammad's granddaughter, the streets teem with Iraqis. Shops have been taken over by Iraqis, restaurants such as the Bakery Bagdady [sic] sell Iraqi specialities unknown to Syrians, and travel agents offer trips to the border for 500 Syrian pounds ($10). Some 350,000 Iraqis may have moved into this area alone, putting a strain on water and electricity supplies as well as on schools.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent, together with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), has opened a clinic to cope with the influx of sick Iraqis. Inside, the waiting area is packed. Dr. Akram al-Hasani, a Syrian orthopaedic surgeon, is examining a Basra man still suffering from an arm wound after being shot four years ago. "We have many trauma victims," he says. "And a large proportion of children with congenital problems, more than among Syrians."

In the mainly Christian district of Jaramana, clinic at the Deir Ibrahim Khalil convent has an equally wide range of problems. "Depression, depression, depression," says Sister Malekeh, a Greek Catholic nun. "It's very sad. Now we have a psychiatrist who started two months ago. Before they didn't accept it and wouldn't come to the clinic, but now they have started to come."

In a census in 1987, there were said to be 1.4m Christians in Iraq. In the 1990s, the figure shrank to 1m or so. After Saddam Hussein's demise, they began to be targeted, mainly by Sunni groups linked to al-Qaeda, so most have now fled. An Anglican churchman says that some 1.25m Iraqi Christians now live outside Iraq, with about 250,000 left behind.

International aid workers are queuing up to work in Syria, to relieve the burden on the UN agencies and on the Red Crescent. Eight charities, including Islamic Relief and the Norwegian and Danish Refugee Councils, have been negotiating for months to start projects. The foreign ministry has given its approval, but they must work under the umbrella of the local Red Crescent, which has been slow to reach agreement with the various groups. The Ministry for Social Affairs and Labour, which oversees local NGOs, says that Syrian ones should work mainly for Syrians.

Moreover, Syrian attitudes to Iraqis are hardening, as the numbers overwhelm local services. The government also worries about the cost of providing the extra population with heavily subsidised bread, fuel and other goods.

The UNHCR has managed to register only 135,000 refugees, a fraction of those who have arrived. And they are still trickling in, despite new rules that have in effect closed the border. Only certain favoured categories of applicants, such as lorry drivers, businessmen, academics and engineers, are now being allowed in, with occasional exceptions for the sick.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Anti-Vietnam War Speech

Here is the web address for the full speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-Vietnam war speech, given forty years ago on April 4, 1967, to a meeting of the Clergy and Laity Concerned at the Riverside Church, New York City: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm.

He speaks about the difficulty of speaking out against his country. He also speaks about the fact that the time comes when "silence is a betrayal".

In these days when so many people have grave doubts about what is being done in Iraq, particularly with so many civilians and soldiers having been killed, and with millions of Iraqis having fled their homes or their country, as displaced people or refugees, you may find it helpful to see what thoughts Martin Luther King, Jr., had in opposing the Vietnam war.

The text and audio of the speech are from the American Rhetoric, Top 100 Speeches website.

Iraq: Humanitarian Crisis; This is One Reality Show You Won't See on TV

From the Thursday, November 1, 2007, Toronto Star, World section, page AA2, comes this deeply disturbing article on the full extent of the humanitarian crisis in Iraq:


IRAQ'S LITTLE-KNOWN HUMANITARIAN CRISIS

Haroon Siddiqui


Amman, Jordan - It is said that Iraq is the world's best-known conflict but the least well-known humanitarian crisis.

In the United States, where public attention span is low but the capacity for denial high, Iraq's daily carnage no longer commands headlines. American public discourse long ago shifted to the domestic political implications of Iraq for George W. Bush et al.

Those who do think of Iraq think mostly of the murderous sectarianism of the Sunnis and Shiites. If Muslims are killing each other, there's not much America can do. Iraq being another Yugoslavia - once the iron grip of Saddam Hussein or Josep Tito was gone, all the old animosities re-emerged.

But in Iraq, there was no such suppressed hatred. Shiites and Sunnis had always lived in harmony. Inter-marriage was common. The bombed-out Shiite shrine in Samara was in a Sunni neighbourhood.

The more apt parallel is with the 1947 partition of British India that precipitated a mass migration and a massacre among Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs who had lived in harmony for centuries.

When the state abrogates its most basic role of maintaining social order, anti-social forces and criminals can send scare people into a frenzy of primitive behaviour.

What's happening in Iraq is the direct result of American war-mongering and criminal incompetence.

Since the 2003 U.S. invasion, between 75,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis have been killed (depending on who's counting). This is in addition to the 1 million Iraqis, half of them children under 5, who died slow deaths during the U.S.-led United Nations economic sanctions (a UNESCO estimate).

More than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced. Half have fled to Syria, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere.

This is the largest forced migration of people in the Middle East since 1948, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.

Nearly 8 million Iraqis - one in three - are in need of humanitarian aid.Nearly half of the internally displaced people do not have access to the Public Distribution System of ration cards and permits.

Only a third of Iraqis can access safe drinking water. The drug distribution system has broken down. The sewage system has collapsed and only a fifth of Iraqis have access to a functional sanitary system.Three-fourths of the internally displaced are either women (28 per cent) or children (48 per cent).

"Ninety per cent of those who die violent deaths are men, leaving huge numbers of widows and orphans without support," according to a special Iraq edition of Forced Migration Review, a Publication of the Refugee Studies Centre of the University of Oxford (fmre-view.org/Iraq).
"In the short term, there appears to be no way to address the protection vacuum in much of Iraq. Multinational Force Iraq and the Iraqi Security Forces are incapable of protecting civilians."

Prostitution is on the rise. "Young girls are increasingly obliged to contribute to family incomes. Consequently, the incidence of sexual and gender-based violence is on the rise," says Jose Riera and Andrew Harper, of UNHCR (unhcr.org/irq). "Child labour and other means of exploitation are increasingly reported."

UNICEF estimates that 4.5 million children are under-nourished. One child in 10 is under-weight. One in five is short for their age. In some areas, up to 90 per cent of children are not in school.This is one reality show you won't see on your television.

Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca