Iraq has somewhere between 4.6 to 4.7 million displaced persons. Half of them are refugees who have fled to Syria and Jordan. Nearly one in every nine people in Jordan are Iraqi refugees. Kirk Johnson, speaking at a panel on Iraqi refugees last night at The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, compared it to our own national disaster. "This is something like the equivalent of 50 million Americans being displaced. Look at Katrina's collective impact on our national psyche. This is Katrina times a thousand."
Johnson, Mark Hatfield, the Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs at HIAS and Khalid Aboud, an Iraqi refugee and formerly a translator for the U.S. Marines and NATO, discussed the plight of Iraqi refugees in front of a small audience at HIAS' headquarters on Seventh Avenue and 28th Street.
Of all the presidential candidates, only Hillary Clinton mentioned helping Iraqi refugees who have helped Americans. President Bush has yet to even comment on the situation. Last year, the U.S. set a quota of 7,000 Iraqis who could be let in to the country, but resettled less than 500. Hatfield said the most vulnerable group were Iraqi Palestinians, who had lived there since 1948. There were roughly 13,000 living in Iraq. They fled after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, mostly to Jordan and Syria, but no one will help them. Hatfield said, "They are abducted and killed on a daily basis. They would benefit from resettlement, but no one is willing to take them." Also at high risk are religious minorities like Christians, women and individuals associated with the U.S. government.
While Iraqi refugees have started to return to Iraq, the reasons are not reassuring. Nearly 70 percent return because they are either out of money or their visas have expired. Families return because they don't want their daughters selling themselves on the street. "A lot of survival sex is going on, particularly in Syria," Hatfield said. Most of the returning refugees can not go back to their original homes because it's not safe, so they become displaced persons in their own country.
Khalid Aboud, a translator for U.S. Marine Captain Zachary Iscol, personally thanked the Iscol family for their efforts in his eventual resettlement in the United States. "Without them, I never would have made it," he said. Captain Iscol, who did two tours of duty in Iraq, is now making a documentary about Iraqi refugees.
Aboud spent seven months in Jordan before coming to the U.S. He explained that even though we was across the border he was not safe, "Saddam's guerrillas have escaped to other countries." Aboud said that most of the people in Iraq are desperate because they can't see any change in their country. "We know that America has no magic stick to change the world," he said.
Johnson, an Arabist who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Iraq, said the media hasn't pressed Bush about the refugee crisis. "Everyone of us has failed on not getting the President to comment on this. The White House dangles pathetic political appointments to absorb the blow," he said, referring to Ellen Sauerbrey, the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, who recently announced her resignation. Johnson said the media doesn't know enough about refugee policy to realize it is the President who makes the decisions about how many refugees are allowed to enter the U.S. Hatfield and Johnson compared the current refugee stance to 1996 when Clinton airlifted 17,000 Bosnians to Fort Dix for resettlement and 1996 when 13,000 Kosovars were flown to Guam for processing and resettlement.
"The State Department can do whatever it wants," Johnson said. "It just requires the will. They are treating this like a run of the mill refugee problem, but it really is a crisis." Johnson said that the State Department is pinning their hopes on the surge. "They like to hang everything on a hypothetical ideal state vision of Iraq. Their belief is if the surge works--which it has decreased violence in Iraq, but there is nothing to suggest that sectarian tensions have dissolved or have withered away--and the problem will be solved so we will let millions of people go with out assistance."
Johnson said that if the only place for highly educated, western oriented Iraqis who admire the U.S. enough to risk their lives is the U.S., that is a more damning indictment of the war than the Bush Administration is ever planning to make.--Sherry Mazzocchi
photo (l to r): Khalid Aboud, Kirk Johnson, Mark Hatfield
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