And
These Refugees Are Lucky
By Dahr Jamail
10 April, 2007
Inter
Press Service
DAMASCUS, Apr 9 (IPS)
- Salim Hamad, 33, glances at the sprawling buildings of the Yarmouk
refugee camp in Damascus and sees business. He has set up a small tea
shop at the camp.
"I left everything behind,"
he told IPS. "I have no idea what became of my house."
Salim, a railways worker
in Baghdad, sold his car and furniture to raise money to bring his wife
and three children to Damascus five months ago. Syria it had to be,
because by then the Jordan government was no more letting in men his
age.
He found the money to get
to Syria, and he has all of a tea shop now, and that makes him one of
the luckier Iraqis who could flee.
Yarmouk refugee camp, on
the outskirts of Damascus, has for long been home to more than 100,000
Palestinian refugees. It is a set of tall apartment buildings separated
by small alleys stuffed with shops.
It is one of the better refugee
camps. Most refugees have running water, electricity and other basic
services.
Now tens of thousands of
Iraqis have flooded into Yarmouk. The exact number is unknown.
Iraqis also head for the
Jaramana and the Sayada Zainab camps, besides countless other areas
where they gather to live in smaller groups. The refugees are not allowed
to work by law, and most have to live off their savings, and are desperate
for assistance.
"I left Baghdad in order
to keep my family alive," Qasim Jubouri, who was a banker, told
IPS. "Of course we all fled with none of our belongings."
Now the money he brought
is running out, and he has no idea how he will feed his family beyond
survival at a camp.
"I ask all nations,
particularly the United States, to do all that they can to help us,"
he said. "Since the U.S. government caused all of this, shouldn't
they also be responsible for helping us now?"
Thus far the Bush administration
has issued visas to 466 Iraqis since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
A report released Mar. 22
by the group Refugees International calls the flight of Iraqis from
war-torn Iraq "the world's fastest growing displacement crisis."
Displacement is taking place within Iraq as well.
The United Nations estimates
there are now 1.9 million internally displaced Iraqis. The United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says about 12 percent of Iraq's
population of about 25 million will be displaced by the end of the year.
The UNHCR says also that
about two million Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to Syria, Jordan,
Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and Turkey. More than 1.5 million have fled
to Syria alone.
And almost all came with
nothing except what cash they could find to take.
"I was a financial manager
of seven companies in Baghdad, but I had to leave my house, my car,
and just about everything," said 32-year-old Ali Ahmed.
After militiamen fired at
his car in the once upmarket Mansoor district of Baghdad, Ali fled to
Jordan. He returned but his car was attacked again. Six men from his
company were killed in the attack. And that was not all.
"We had 11 engineers
from one company detained by the Mehdi Army (the militia of Shia cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr)," he said. "We never heard from them again.
I knew then that I had to drop everything and run for my life."
Ali does not see himself
returning soon. "I don't expect to go back for at least 15-20 years.
I have left everything behind, and now I have nothing but a small food
store I run here. But it is not enough. Not the UN, nor any government,
least of all the Iraqi government, is doing enough to help us."
Short of both funds and staff,
the UNHCR is unable to provide adequate assistance to Iraqi refugees.
The agency lacks the resources even to process refugees' documentation.
The UNHCR budget in Syria
for Iraqis in 2006 was 700,000 dollars, less than one dollar per refugee.
It is the only UN agency assisting Iraqis in Lebanon and Jordan.
The most desperate Iraqi
refugees receive food, but there is no cash available for distribution.
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