Refugees
Speak Of Escape From Hell
By Dahr Jamail
12 April, 2007
Inter
Press Service
DAMASCUS, Apr 11
(IPS) - Refugees from Iraq scattered around Damascus describe
hellish conditions in the country they managed to leave behind.
"I used to work with
the Americans near Kut (in the south)," Sa'ad Hussein, a 34-year-old
electrical engineer told IPS. "I worked for Kellogg, Brown &
Root in construction of an Iraqi base there, until I returned to Baghdad
and found a death threat written on a paper which was slipped under
my door. I had to flee."
Hussein, who left three months
back, described Baghdad as a "city of ghosts" where black
banners of death announcements can be seen hanging on most streets.
The city, he said, lives on an hour of electricity a day, and there
are no jobs to be had.
"I was an ex-captain
in the Iraqi Army, and I think that's why I was threatened," he
said. Asked how many of his former army colleagues had also received
death threats, he replied, "All of them." He said it was not
safe for him to go back to the Iraqi Army because it was likely he would
be killed.
"Most of the deaths
are due to the Iraqi politicians and their militias," he added.
Security, electricity and
potable water supply, healthcare and unemployment are all much worse
than during the reign of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, refugees
say.
"The Americans are detaining
so many people," Ali Hassan, a 41-year-old man from the Hay Jihad
area of Baghdad told IPS. "My brother was killed by Shia militiamen
after he refused to give them the keys to empty Sunni houses we were
looking after."
Hassan, a Shia who fled Baghdad
just three months ago told IPS, "Now I can't go back. I am a refugee
here, and I still don't feel secure because I still fear the Mehdi Army."
The Mehdi Army is the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
"So many Iraqis never
leave their homes now because they are too afraid to go out due to the
militias," Abdul Abdulla, a 68-year-old man who fled Baghdad with
his family three months ago told IPS.
Abdulla said Shia militia
members waited on the outskirts of his neighbourhood to detain anyone
trying to leave.
"We stay in our homes,
but even then some people have been pulled out of their own houses,"
he added. "These death squads arrived after (former U.S. ambassador
John) Negroponte arrived. And the Iraqi Government is definitely involved
because they depend on them (militias)."
"I was injured because
I was near a car bomb which killed my daughter," Eman Abdul Rahid,
a 46-year-old mother from Baghdad who fled her home late last year told
IPS. "There is killing, and the threat of killing, and explosions
daily in Baghdad."
Rahid said the Bush administration
was responsible for creating the situation.
"America is the reason
why Iraq was invaded, so we would like the American administration to
give aid to us refugees," she added. "I would like people
to read this and tell Bush to help us."
"Things are getting
so much worse in Iraq," Salim Hamad, a refugee in the Yarmouk refugee
camp in Damascus told IPS.
"There is a big difference
between those who left four years ago and those who left four days ago,"
Hamad said. "Everything in Iraq is based on sectarianism now and
there is no protection -- neither from the Americans nor the Iraqi government."
The U.S. military claimed
last week that there had been a 26 percent drop in sectarian bloodshed
in the capital in March after the Baghdad Security plan was launched
in February.
But, U.S. military spokesperson
Maj. Gen. William Caldwell told reporters at a press conference in Baghdad
that violence throughout the rest of the country has not reduced.
"When you look overall
at the country at large," he said, "you have seen...not a
great reduction that we had wanted to see thus far."
More than 600 people were
reported killed in sectarian violence across Iraq last week, and car
bombings continue to hit the capital.
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