Iraqis Displaced within Iraq and Seeking Refuge Abroad

Iraqi Refugees and Resettlement

Jeff Leys — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 10:20:25 -0500

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Cathy Breen writes regarding the challenges faced by Iraqi refugees in navigating the resettlement process.

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Damascus, Syria
June 26, 2009

Cathy Breen with Iraqi Child in SyriaDear Friends,

My time in Syria is coming to a close. Tomorrow I will head to Jordan for a couple of days and then back to the big apple on July 1st. A final session with UNHCR the other day brought a sense of closure in some ways, as I was able to discuss concerns and turn over concrete “cases” for their consideration. We spoke of the increasingly desperate situation of Iraqi refugees here, one hidden from the world by the lack of media coverage. But we also acknowledged the many small miracles and victories we continue to witness.

A young Iraqi woman (I will call her Zayneb), mother of four small children, wrote a little book about a horse with hidden wings. She wanted to honor the staff at the UNHCR here in Damascus by dedicating the book to them. “Everyone knows” she told her grandmother as a child “that horses can’t fly.” But her grandmother, still living in Baghdad, could not be persuaded otherwise. She insisted that the horse she saw could fly! But it is Zayneb’s deep sense of gratitude that leaps out from the pages.

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Damascus, Syria
June 26, 2009

Cathy Breen with Iraqi Child in SyriaDear Friends,

While at the UNHCR, a colleague gave me a copy of a report which the International Rescue Committee (IRC) issued this month, IRAQI REFUGEES IN THE UNITED STATES: IN DIRE STRAITS. In February of 2008 a Commission on Iraqi refugees formed by the IRC visited Jordan and Syria to assess the condition of Iraqi refugees and then issued a comprehensive report entitled Five Years Later, A Hidden Crisis. In February of 2009 the IRC conducted a follow-up trip to the Middle East, and in April their delegations traveled to Atlanta, Georgia and Phoenix, Arizona to see firsthand how resettled Iraqis are adjusting to their new life in America.

“…most Iraqi refugees who were interviewed painted a picture of despair and frustration. Refugees [in the states] are finding it difficult to find a job and without secure income some are facing eviction from their homes. Without jobs, refugees cannot support themselves and their families on limited public assistance. Many of the Iraqis are traumatized and need additional support in the face of financial assistance, English lessons, employment counseling and access to health care.”

The report continues “Despite these difficulties, resettlement in the United States remains the only option for thousands of Iraqi refugees who are still in exile in the Middle East, primarily in Jordan and Syria.” The report concludes that “the U.S. resettlement program, likely the only safe alternative for thousands of Iraqi refugees, faces major structural challenges in its organization and funding. These challenges are exacerbated by a simultaneous global economic downturn and resettlement of a highly educated refugee population with many special needs…”

Over the last three months you may have read some of my communications. I have tried to describe something of the reality that Iraqis here and in Jordan are facing as a result of the war. I am amazed at the number of Iraqis here in Syria whom I met some years back in Jordan. Many returned to Iraq to see a sick family member, to sell a house or car, to get the “G” passport, etc., but then had to flee to Syria as the Jordanian borders were closed to them after 2006. My stories must seem anecdotal at times, and it is an ongoing struggle to try and put them in a larger political context in order to affect some concrete changes. Changes that might better their situations somehow, at least give them hope that there will be an end to their exile.

It is imperative to get Iraqi families and individuals who have family and sponsors in the U.S. reunited. This challenge seems daunting in the case of families/individuals who have been rejected resettlement by DHS, mostly on “credibility” rulings. The arbitrariness of these decisions must be acknowledged, and we must find ways to reverse them.

Yesterday I was with two families both of whom have close family members in the states, and yet both have been rejected on “credibility” grounds. I spend several hours with one family and held their severely disabled granddaughter in my arms. I basked in the love I witnessed for this child. I wrote about the grandfather, only in his 50s, who was asked by a DHS officer “Did you or did you not cook?” His military document stated that he was a cook, but in fact his military supervisor assigned him administrative duties in a cafeteria on an Air Force base when he saw that he had a degree in Hotel Management.

Their simple desire to be reunited with family in the U.S. has been denied. Is it possible that such a decision cannot be overturned? I refuse, WE must refuse, to accept this.

The other challenge of course are the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis stuck in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, etc. who are not even in the resettlement pool, so to speak, let alone in the Jacuzzi. There are fewer and fewer “slots” in terms of countries willing to take them.

Most likely this will be the last letter I will write from the Middle East. Like Zayneb, I have no words to express my own gratitude to you for your support and concern over these last months. Thank you for making this trip possible.

Cathy Breen

VCNV Author

Cathy Breen

Photos from Iraqi Kurdistan

Gerald — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:26:44 -0500

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Images from Northern Iraq

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During the Month of May Gerald Paoli of Voices served for 28 days on the Christian Peacemaker Iraq Team (CPT). These are some images from that journey.

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By Gerald Paoli

View photos from Northern Iraq

During the Month of May Gerald Paoli of Voices served on the Christian Peacemaker Iraq Team (CPT). These are some images from that journey. They include photos of the city of Sulaimaniya, the city of Halabja and images of the beauty of Northern Iraq.

There are also images of the two refugee camps written about in the article, Life and Death in The Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, by Gerald.

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Gifts

Dan Pearson — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:32:04 -0500

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The challenges faced by one Iraqi family seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

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Damascus, Syria
June 16, 2009

Middle Eastern people are by nature gift givers. My room and the refrigerator outside on the patio attest to this. The homemade yogurt from Namir’s family and the jar of cherry jam from Sara, mother of four; are in the process of being consumed. However, the large oil painting from 16 year old Noor, a bar of soap carved into the shape of a foot by little Anfal and a large Arabic bible are just a few of the lasting items so lovingly given to me.

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Damascus, Syria
June 16, 2009

During my brief overnight trip to Aleppo I was walking with Iraqi friends through one of the world famous souqs. The rich smell of spices, the intricately fashioned inlaid tables and the beautiful woven scarves and colorful fabrics were just a few of the things that delighted my senses. I dared not admire anything openly. I was certain that if I did the family, refugees themselves, would have purchased the item for me. As it was they did indeed buy me something, a set of beautiful prayer beads.

As I write you on this Tuesday morning, I am thinking of an Iraqi friend who is standing at this moment under the hot sun with hundreds of others at the UNHCR hoping to speak with someone about his case. Another family of nine is being interviewed by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for resettlement to the U.S. They were so nervous. Yet another family is due to depart tonight from Damascus to the U.S. That is, the mother and four children are slated to travel. The father has been rejected by DHS on “credibility” grounds. He must remain behind. They were advised that should the wife and children refuse the offer to travel, they would lose any hope of resettlement. Once in the states, the wife was told she can file papers in the US. Maybe her husband can join them in a year or two. His mother, three sisters and brother live in the states.

I just got off the phone with a trusted translator friend who only days ago introduced me to this family. Shall we go to the airport to see them off? I’m not sure I can bear to witness the family’s grief. Their four year old daughter (pictured above) said “I’m going to wait behind with you. I don’t want to leave you.”

In the last days we have been trying desperately to get this decision overturned. I will go to internet in a little while to see if our urgent appeal has reached the ears of any congress people. But I feel like we are trying to move a mountain.

In the final chapter of his book “The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool: A Syrian Journey,” we find the author Marius Kochiejowski in a half-jesting dialogue with his Sufi alchemist friend, Sulayman, from Damascus. Marius tells him that there are no tents in London, nor camels for that matter, should Sulayman decide to travel there. Sulayman replies “All right then, when I arrive with the camel I will give [the neighbors] gifts and they will grow to like the camel. A human being is a creature of gifts, which is why for four thousand years you’ve loved Santa Claus because he gives gifts.”

You are probably asking yourself what does Sulayman or Santa Claus for that matter, have to do with people waiting in vain for hot hours in the scorching sun? Or with a family so desperate that they would agree to separate. I’m not really sure myself.

I believe however that despite the ongoing war(s), we are not by any means just takers of life, inflictors of suffering. We are also givers of life, givers of gifts. More important than the small gesture of money however is the message you send them that they are not forgotten. I take every opportunity to tell them that many many people in the U.S. are trying to better their situation. Each one of them has asked me to thank you.

VCNV Author

Cathy Breen

Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Seeking Asylum and a better life, California’s Iraqi Refugees Find Themselves in Limbo

Jeff Leys — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:02:19 -0500

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The LA Weekly discusses living conditions encountered by Iraqi refugees living in California.

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Inside the epicenter of Iraqi relocation in the Western United States
By Hanna Ingber Win
Read Original article at LA Weekly
May 21, 2009

If you weren’t paying close attention, it would be easy to mistake Main Street, El Cajon, for any other Main Street across the USA that has been transformed by its immigrant population. Kebabs and falafel are on the menus of most of the restaurants, and the local supermarket sells green olives, hummus mix and a wide assortment of olive oils. The television in one café shows a woman in a head scarf delivering the news in Arabic. Outside another, 2-foot-high hookahs sit on a table, ready to be smoked. These are sights we’ve become accustomed to in many California neighborhoods. But there are other details that make this street a little different. The word Babylon, for instance, is all over the place. There’s Babylon Hair Style, Babylon Restaurant, Babylon Jewelry, Babylon Hookah Lounge. And inside a small deli, where a clerk’s computer screen saver shows a photograph of men in traditional turbans and robes gathered on the floor around a feast of Middle Eastern delicacies, Iraqi flags are for sale near the lamb shanks and the ground meat preferred for a certain type of kebab favored in Iraq.

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Inside the epicenter of Iraqi relocation in the Western United States
By Hanna Ingber Win
Read Original article at LA Weekly
May 21, 2009

Where most of Los Angeles’ Middle Eastern neighborhoods are dominated by Armenian and Lebanese shops and restaurants, El Cajon, just two hours south of L.A., is the epicenter of Iraqi relocation in the Western United States. With tens of thousands of Iraqis living in San Diego County, the area is home to the second-largest community in the U.S., after Detroit. The neighborhood Catholic church, St. Peter Chaldean Cathedral, with its distinctive domed roof and large cross, boasts some 37,000 Chaldean Iraqi members. A sign outside the church lists the times for mass in English and Aramaic. And one of its walls is dominated by a stone replica of Iraq’s famous winged Khorsabad bull sculpture.

Still, there’s definitely a California feeling in the air. Athar Luaebi, a cashier in one of the Main Street grocery stores, is a pretty young woman with strawberry-blond curls and blue eyeliner. She moved to the U.S. from Iraq five years ago and spends her shift ringing up Iraqi spices, sweets and other provisions for one Iraqi family after another. When a journalist asks about Iraqi refugees, she points out Sami Bhw, 37, who wears jeans, a T-shirt and flip-flops. On this day, Bhw has been in the United States for less than five months but appears to fit in perfectly. Bhw, with Luaebi translating, says he fled Iraq because extremists surrounded his house and tried to kidnap his 10-year-old son. Bhw’s neighbors managed to protect the child. Fearing another kidnapping attempt, the family left everything behind and fled to Turkey. After four years, struggling to make ends meet without a work permit, Bhw and his family came to the United States as refugees.

As Bhw tells his story, another Iraqi family walks into the grocery store. Luaebi starts to tell me that the younger son has burns on his arms — extremists set their house on fire — but pauses when she sees the look on my face. Luaebi nods her head with understanding and says, “You’ll get stressed if you stay here for two hours and hear all the stories.”

A few blocks from the Iraqi supermarket, on a quiet street in a concrete apartment complex, Kamil Silewa is trying to make a new life in America. To get here, he fled death threats in Iraq in 2005, crossed many borders, worked endless dirty jobs, walked for days through Mexico to Tijuana, and spent eight months in prisonlike conditions at detention centers in San Diego. Finally, Silewa found safety in El Cajon. But not much else.

Inside the apartment there is little furniture. Silewa, 45, shares the space with another Iraqi asylee, who sits in the living room watching the news in Arabic. A friend lent them the television, an old sofa and a coffee table. The two men have been living in El Cajon for months, but neither can find a job. Silewa walks me into the apartment’s single bedroom, which the men share. I start to take out my camera, but there isn’t much to photograph. The Iraqis cannot afford beds, so they sleep on the floor in the nearly empty room.

The three of us gather in the living room, and Silewa’s roommate, Salem Denho, tells me he left Iraq because of the violence. “Danger, bombings,” Silewa says, “everyday killings.” Denho explains that his parents, who are Christian, still live in Baghdad and receive threats because of their religion. “Now they can’t [step] outside,” he says. “They can’t buy anything.” A Muslim militia member killed a friend who lived near his parents. I ask Denho if he wants to bring his parents to the United States. “I wish,” he says, “but how?”

Silewa came to America in order to gain permanent residency and bring his wife and two sons, who ended up in Germany. But he hasn’t seen his family in three years. The family-reunification process can stretch on for many years, and even if all their papers were in order, Silewa says, he has no idea how he would pay for their airfare from Germany. With no car and no job, Silewa sits in his apartment and thinks about his family.

“I still can’t sleep,” he says through a translator from the local Chaldean Middle Eastern Social Services office. “I am still thinking a lot about my family. What really makes it worse is that I’m not finding a job to support myself and to help my family [come here].” He and Denho, Silewa says, “both sit all night and just cry. I really want to cry just to release it.” Almost every night is the same, their American dreams just out of reach.

About 4 million Iraqis, forced to flee their homes after death threats and bombings, have been displaced by the ongoing violence. About half are displaced inside Iraq and often languish in camps without proper security or enough food and aid. The other half have fled to neighboring countries like Syria and Jordan, living in constant fear of deportation or imprisonment in places that do not recognize them as refugees and might at any moment kick them out. Taken as a whole, the current Iraqi diaspora is considered one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our times. Silewa is but one local face of a monumental and mostly ignored global crisis, which also embodies perilous national-security concerns.

Of the millions displaced, the United States will resettle about 17,000 new Iraqis this coming fiscal year. While that is a relatively small number of arrivals compared to the number displaced, about a third of them will end up in El Cajon and Greater San Diego. More than 5,000 new Iraqis will arrive in San Diego County during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, according to Catholic Charities in the San Diego Diocese. Getting jobs, homes and visas to reunite the families of the new arrivals — many of whom put their lives and their families’ lives at risk by helping the U.S. military — is a monumental task.

As the Iraq War played out, the Bush administration seemed to do everything in its power to ignore the refugee crisis. Former President Bush, reluctant to admit to a failed war policy, never mentioned the plight of the refugees and for years refused to allow Iraqis fleeing the war zone to resettle in the U.S. Only after significant political pressure from members of Congress and advocacy groups did the administration’s policy begin to change, and refugees began gaining access to the United States.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama pledged to address the humanitarian crisis caused by the war. He vowed to increase the amount of aid given to countries like Syria and Jordan, which harbor most of the displaced people, as well as expedite the process of resettling refugees here.

“The Bush administration made every effort they could to try to minimize the issue [of Iraqi refugees] in the debate on the war,” Amelia Templeton, a refugee-policy analyst with Human Rights First, says not long after the presidential election. The Obama administration, on the other hand, she says, has made the issue an explicit policy priority. “Obama has said this is a major problem, that we are responsible for this problem and we will try to change this.”

But as Obama’s administration came to power, the country was experiencing the worst economic crisis in decades. The financial crisis threatens the goal of providing more assistance to displaced Iraqis in the Middle East, and it throws the refugees who have already arrived in the United States into an even more precarious situation. The economic crisis, says Jacob Kurtzer with Refugees International, makes it extremely difficult for the Obama administration to ask for a large-scale infusion of funding for resettlement.

Human-rights advocates say the Obama administration must address two main challenges: It must provide safe haven for more Iraqis fleeing ongoing violence and persecution, and it must provide the resources necessary to ensure that when the refugees arrive in the United States, they have enough assistance to find jobs and secure housing and basic needs.

“The previous administration was unwilling to deal with this issue — even with resources,” Kurtzer says. “Now we have an administration that is willing to deal with it, but the economic situation makes that difficult. There is a political will but, on some level, a lack of resources.” And with Obama’s recent reversals on torture issues, one wonders about the steadiness of the current administration’s political will.

“I do think we have a moral obligation to these people, whether we’re talking about it in good economic times or bad,” says Bob Carey, the vice president for resettlement and migration policy at the International Rescue Committee, a global relief and humanitarian-assistance organization. “I don’t mean to minimize the economic downturn,” he says, “but is this a time to turn our backs on people we’ve placed in danger?”

Addressing the issues of Iraqi translators and others who helped the U.S. Army and are now targeted by extremists is also critical to improving our relationship with the Arab world. “This is going to be a major issue,” says Kirk Johnson, who worked for USAID in Iraq and subsequently founded the List Project, which aims to resettle in the states those Iraqis who aided the U.S. war effort. “There is no more immediate opportunity that exists to send a signal to the Arab world and to the rest of the world and to those of us in our country, that after eight years of President Bush and after the difficulties that we faced in Iraq, our moral compass hasn’t been shattered.”

President Obama has the choice to either leave the displaced Iraqis to continue fending for themselves, or to implement a number of policies that would assist them. He has the power to dramatically increase the number of Iraqi refugees allowed into the United States; to influence the amount of humanitarian aid given to countries hosting refugees; to pay for social services; to encourage nations in Europe and elsewhere to resettle more Iraqis; to pressure host countries to temporarily recognize United Nations refugee status for the Iraqis; to pressure Iraq to take responsibility for its internally displaced citizens and develop a plan to address their needs; and to prioritize this crisis and thereby send a strong signal to all government departments working on the issue to speed up the bureaucratic process of resettling Iraqis. Or not.

Extremists in Iraq targeted Silewa and his family because they are Chaldean Catholic. Since the United States toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, porous borders and ineffective security forces have created an environment in which Muslim insurgents have had free rein to persecute Iraqi Christians.

In 2005, Silewa was living in Iraq and received a letter that warned him he would be killed if he did not convert to Islam. Silewa fled to Turkey and then Greece. When he couldn’t get permanent residency in Greece, he decided to go to the United States to seek asylum and pave the way to bring his wife and children. Silewa left Greece in June 2007 and paid a smuggler 6,000 euros (about $9,500) to bring him to Spain and then Mexico. He walked with other Chaldeans from Tijuana to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“When we arrived,” Silewa says through a translator, “we went to the officer and told him: ‘We need you to save us; we need safety from you. Please let us in. We are Chaldeans, we are refugees, we are asking for asylum.’”

The smuggler had told Silewa that he would immediately be granted asylum and allowed to live in the United States freely. Instead, U.S. officials detained Silewa for eight months in overcrowded, prisonlike conditions until his asylum case was processed. He spent the first three months in a private detention facility near San Diego, operated by Corrections Corporation of America. The facility was so severely overcrowded that the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against CCA, arguing that the growing number of detainees in the limited space was creating inhumane conditions. The case was only recently settled.

“In CCA, I was really depressed, and I was not sleeping all night. I was thinking about my family, plus thinking about the war,” Silewa says. “I know how the war is now, how people there are killing each other, and there are a lot of bombings. All this news, it really affected me because my family was still living there.”

After CCA, Silewa spent the next five months in the government-run El Centro Detention Facility, where he was allowed to go outside for only two hours a day. Desperate, he borrowed $4,000 to hire an immigration attorney, and eventually won his asylum case.

The tenuous situation in host countries, mixed with the near impossibility of gaining resettlement in a third country, causes many Iraqis to illegally flee to nations like the United States. In 2007, 427 Iraqis applied for asylum in the U.S.; about two-thirds were granted it, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Like Silewa and Denho, these asylum seekers pay smugglers thousands of dollars — usually all of their savings — to take them on long, sometimes deadly journeys around the world, until they are abandoned in Mexico and must walk through the desert to surrender themselves to U.S. border authorities and seek asylum.

“If we have a refugee program that’s underutilized, or we create so many barriers that we are not resettling the numbers that really need to be resettled,” says Kathi Anderson, executive director of Survivors of Torture, International, a nonprofit based in San Diego, which has treated Iraqis who have fled to the United States, “then desperate people figure out other means to come.”

Iraq has seen a reduction in violence, but many Iraqis still face death threats, kidnappings and an overall state of terror. Competing estimates put the civilian death toll at 100,000 to 1.3 million. Millions have already fled their homes and now live in limbo.

“Statistics say one thing, and reality says another. Statistics say violence is down, but that’s because many have already been driven from their homes,” says Malou Innocent, a foreign-policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute. “If we don’t address the situation now, the next generation of Iraqis will remember this. They will remember that they weren’t helped.”

The Iraqi government has economic and political incentives to encourage refugees to return home, Kurtzer says. Most of the Iraqis who have fled are well-educated and highly skilled, and their nation needs them to rebuild the country. If they return, it would also look good for the Iraqi government, because it would signal that the nation is more stable and secure. Nonetheless, humanitarian and advocacy organizations working with Iraqi refugees say they have not seen significant numbers of Iraqis return home and do not expect to anytime soon.

“The reality is that despite the security gains that have been made in some parts of the country,” Kurtzer offers, “the center of the country is still very, very unsafe, and the vast majority of the people who have fled have fled from that part of the country.”

Iraqis living in Syria or Jordan may be barely able to feed their families and cannot afford decent living conditions, but they can buy a cheap cell phone on any street corner and get the latest information on the security situation back home, International Rescue’s Carey says. And their friends and family consistently tell them that it is not safe to return. A spike in violence in April magnified the perception that it is not yet safe to return.

Extremists in Iraq target anyone who they think disagrees with them, but Christian Iraqis have been particularly persecuted. Social-services officials and immigration attorneys working with Iraqi refugees in the United States say fanatics in Iraq have burned down Christian homes and churches; raped women and girls; kidnapped, tortured and killed family members; bombed schools and nunneries; poured acid on women who don’t wear the hijab; threatened Christians with death if they don’t convert; and killed the leader of the Chaldeans in Mosul, Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho.

“The religious minorities are fleeing an increased level of persecution from Islamic extremists or terrorist groups,” says Ginger Jacobs, an immigration lawyer who represents Iraqis in San Diego.

Small minority groups like the Chaldeans and Mandaeans were largely tolerated under Saddam Hussein’s regime, but they have faced violence since the United States started the war, according to Jacobs and other immigration attorneys and Middle East experts. Extremists have persecuted Christian Iraqis, in part on account of religion, and in part because of resources, Jacobs says. Some insurgents perceive Christians as either wealthy or having ties to relatives in the West, who could pay hefty ransoms. It is these Iraqis who are most vulnerable and unable to return home.

“What has been an even more recent trend, say, post-2006,” Jacobs continues, “is a lot more murders, not just kidnappings for ransom. There have been kidnappings, ransom paid, and then the person is not released. So the situation does seem to be getting more severe.”

The troubles of displaced Iraqis are further exacerbated because the current U.S. plan to resettle refugees leaves many of them vulnerable in America: no job or family to support them. Once they arrive here, they face difficulties finding employment, speaking the language and being able to afford the high cost of living and an expensive family-reunification process. And that is during normal economic times. Add to this a nationwide financial crisis, and many refugees are on the brink of homelessness. The resettlement program was chronically underfunded for decades, but the problems were masked by a strong economy, Human Rights First’s Templeton says. Now that the economy has tanked, all the problems are on full display.

“The U.S. resettlement program has for some years been underfunded and hasn’t changed significantly for the last 30 years,” Carey says. “What we knew to be problems or deficiencies in the past were brought into sharp focus by the downturn.”

The holes in the program used to be filled with the help of private donations, but the economic crisis has made it much harder for resettlement agencies to secure private funding, Templeton adds.

Father Michael Bazzi at St. Peter says the church collects money from its members every Sunday in order to donate goods to the community. In the past, they used the money to donate blankets and mattresses to needy families, most of whom recently came from Iraq. But over the past few weeks the church has not been able to donate anything because it does not have the needed resources.

The government provides refugees cash assistance and case management, including employment services for up to the first eight months after they arrive here, but the money is barely enough to survive on. In California, an unmarried refugee receives $359 a month, a couple receives $584, and a family of four receives $862, according to Catholic Charities, which administers the money for refugees.

The program works only if refugees get a job within the first few months of their arrival. The majority of Iraqi refugees resettling in the United States were skilled professionals back home: doctors, nurses, teachers or engineers. Their initial frustration is often that they have to secure a job immediately and do not have the time to become licensed in their field. In the past, when the economy was strong, they would reluctantly take low-paying jobs.

“It’s a pretty horrible shock if you are a well-educated, middle-class person,” Templeton says, “suddenly in a situation where you are scrubbing toilets in a motel.”

But now the competition for even those menial jobs is so fierce that the Iraqis face great difficulty finding any job. Fewer positions are available, and the Iraqis must compete with laid-off Americans, who speak the language and have experience working in this country. In the past, 80 percent of refugees found employment within six to eight months of their arrival, says Nathaniel Hurd, a government-relations and advocacy officer for the International Rescue Committee. That figure rose to between 90 and 95 for refugees within the IRC network. Now, Hurd says, only 50 percent of refugees secure work.

“It’s really a tragic situation. I believe we made a commitment to help people establish their lives here, and we’re not doing that.”

Silewa received food stamps and $359 a month from Catholic Charities for the first eight months he was here, but that did not cover his half of his $800 monthly rent. He worked in an oil field in Iraq; now he must borrow money to pay his rent, utilities, phone bill, bus fare and other life expenses.

“These people have gone through extreme hardships and are suffering, physically, mentally, emotionally,” says Zina Salem, president and CEO of Chaldean Middle Eastern Social Services in El Cajon. “No homes, no jobs, no food; they’re becoming homeless. They have been forced out of their homes, they have been threatened, and it’s just not fair. I mean, we are America!”

“And some of these families,” adds Salem’s colleague Besma Coda, “they’ve been wealthy all their life. And educated! We have doctors, engineers, lawyers. It’s not fair to lose everything and just leave with their own clothes. It is a humanitarian issue. We need [the Obama administration] to pay attention to all these issues.”

A Chaldean church group called Legion of Mary visits Iraqi refugees who have recently come to El Cajon. We load up in their van, and they take me to meet some of the new arrivals.

“Everyone we visit, they have financial problems,” says Mona Bazzi, the vice president of the group, as we drive to an apartment complex where many of the Iraqi refugees live.

We go to the home of Saad and Baan Shaya. It is a workday, but the Shayas have no jobs and are home watching Arabic television. We sit down in their living room, on furniture donated to the couple by another church group, and the Shayas tell us that they left Baghdad in 2003 because of the war. They moved to Mosul in northern Iraq, and Saad owned a liquor store. In 2006, Muslim extremists threatened him, telling him to leave his store. When he didn’t, the extremists shot Saad in the leg and then bombed the store. He walks to the couch, pulls up the leg of his jeans and reveals a scar from the gunshot. The store bombing killed Saad’s 43-year-old brother. Saad escaped Iraq and fled to Turkey.

Baan says she left Iraq because a militia came to her home with a flier, giving the family three options: Convert to Islam, pay the militia monthly taxes or leave the country. She says some of her friends never had the chance to escape because they were kidnapped.

Bazzi pauses from translating to say that a militia murdered her own cousin two years ago. “They took the money and killed him,” she says. “They skinned his face. They couldn’t recognize him if it wasn’t for his ring.”

The Shayas registered as refugees in Turkey, and the United States resettled them in El Cajon in February. They have both been looking for jobs since they arrived. They receive about $580 a month from the government, but that will only continue for eight months. They speak almost no English and don’t have transportation. Baan says she has been walking around, looking for a job every day. She says she would take anything — but she hasn’t had any offers.

“How will we live here if we don’t find a job?” Saad asks.

Wally Jamil, an Iraqi who is president of the church group, turns to me and says, “All of them ask, ‘After eight months, what are we going to do?’” He points out the window and says, “If he doesn’t find a job, they will be on the street.”

Los Angeles also has an Iraqi community, but it is smaller and has not seen a dramatic increase in the number of new arrivals. The community has been extremely worried about its relatives still living in Iraq or displaced throughout the region.

“Everybody has had somebody either killed or maimed or taken hostage,” says Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a public-service and advocacy organization based in Los Angeles. “So everybody is concerned about the security of their family.”

About 400 Iraqi and Iranian families belong to the St. Paul Assyrian Chaldean Catholic Church in North Hollywood, according to the church’s priest, Father Noel Gorgis. He says most of the members of his church have family displaced by the war. The church members have been trying to bring their relatives to the United States, but most have been unsuccessful. “They try, but it’s very hard to bring them here,” Father Gorgis says. “Very, very hard.”

Chaldean Peter Abdulahad left Iraq in 1994 and now lives in Pomona. The Iraqi diaspora can be viewed through the prism of Abdulahad’s family alone — his relatives are now displaced around the world: San Diego, Sweden, Jordan, Syria, Baghdad, northern Iraq and Los Angeles. Abdulahad’s brother and his family fled to Jordan about two years ago and resettled in the United States as refugees last summer. “They left everything behind, their house, their furniture, their car,” Abdulahad says, “and now they live with me.”

Immigration attorneys working with Iraqis also report the difficulties refugees face in bringing their family members to the United States and out of harm’s way. A lawyer who handles Chaldean refugee cases in the Chicago area, Robert DeKelaita, says that he has had family-reunification cases in which a mother is in one country, a father in another and the children left in a third place.

Social-services workers in San Diego say that Iraqi refugees who resettle in the United States face the challenge of dealing with trauma, loneliness and depression from the war. Chaldean Middle Eastern Social Services provides mental-health services to Iraqi refugees who come to San Diego.

“The majority of them have posttraumatic stress disorder and have experienced extreme hardship, have seen brutal murders and killings or kidnappings,” Salem says. “There is a death in every family that walks in through the door.”

About half of the displaced Iraqis have fled to neighboring countries like Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt. There they wait, jobless and insecure, often hoping to be resettled in a third country like the United States. But with millions displaced and only thousands admitted into the United States, the numbers are not on their side.

Zahra Rifaat, 13, fled to Syria with her family in 2007 after the violence became unbearable. When a bomb exploded close to their home in southern Baghdad, they decided to leave. They moved to Damascus, where Zahra now attends middle school. Her three brothers cannot go to school because they must work to support the family.

“I am worried about my [children’s] future here,” her father, Cheng, says through a translator. “Three of my young can’t continue to study here. They are working seven days a week.”

Zahra told her story to Firas Majeed, a teacher in Syria. Majeed translated it for his organization, Native Without a Nation, which sets up Web conferences between Iraqi children in Syria and students around the world. Zahra says she misses her friends in Iraq and wants to return, but the memories of violence still haunt her.

“Every time I remember that group of armed men who came into my school with big frightening guns, I get scared,” she says. Zahra describes how she loves reading and playing soccer, and she wishes to one day learn how to use a computer and speak English.

It is impossible to say exactly how many Iraqis have fled to Syria, but the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates 1.2 million Iraqi residents with current valid visas live there, according to the UNHCR Syria Update for November 2008. It does not know how many Iraqis live there without valid visas.

The Syrian government does not recognize United Nations refugee status. It therefore treats all Iraqis, even those registered as refugees, as “guests,” so they cannot work legally and could be kicked out at anytime.

“Without that legal protection that is recognized by the government, Iraqis live in a state of fear that they are going to be jailed and perhaps even forced to go back to Iraq. It hasn’t happened in large numbers, but people are still afraid,” International Rescue’s Hurd says. “Men, who are most at risk of being detained or expelled, often stay in the apartment where they live or immediate neighborhood. Many families don’t use services that are available to them, like public education or health care, because they think that coming out of the shadows will put them at greater risk.”

The poor living conditions and lack of work opportunities in host countries also pose a threat to regional stability because they create a fertile breeding ground for more violence and extremism. Children who cannot attend school and have nothing to do are more likely to spend time hanging out on the streets and getting involved in dangerous activities.

“What we have heard is that the children, they have nothing to do; they’re out on the streets; they’re remembering the violence that they witnessed in Iraq,” says Survivors of Torture’s Anderson. “As a result, some of them are increasingly becoming more violent themselves. Just having a lot of people in a small amount of space without alternatives is a problem.”

In addition to aggressive teenagers, unemployed adults with nothing to do can lead to violence and riots. Foreign-policy experts warn that the Obama administration should pay attention to this because further instability in the Middle East would of course hurt U.S. interests in the region.

“How can you possibly have a stable Iraq, how can it possibly be good for the Middle East, if you have massive numbers of displaced people inside of Iraq, massive numbers of Iraqis displaced outside of the country, lots of vulnerable people inside the country, who may not be displaced?” Hurd asks. “That’s not good for anybody.”

It’s been 10 months since I first met Silewa, and he has now been living in El Cajon for about a year. But he is no closer to having a steady job and cannot survive without help from others. He worked as role player for the U.S. Army for a few days in the beginning of 2009. That job, which paid him about $200 a day, helped him to pay his share of the rent. But the job ended, and he has found nothing to replace it. He has filled out applications with companies in person and online, but he has not heard back from anyone.

“I want to work,” he says. “I need to work. I need the job. But nobody calls me. What can I do?”

His family remains separated, and it does not look like his wife and children, still in Germany, will join him here any time soon. His mother, brothers and sister live in Iraq. Another sister has escaped to Syria. Silewa said he does not want to return to Iraq because the country is still too dangerous. Yet life here is so hard, he sometimes wishes he had never come.

Silewa says that more Chaldean Iraqis like him have settled in El Cajon because they have a relative or friend living there. But he is worried about how they too will manage. “So much people come every day, every day,” Silewa says. “No job, no work, nothing in El Cajon. What can we do? I don’t know.”

**********
Hanna Ingber Win is the World Editor at The Huffington Post. She can be reached at hingber@huffingtonpost.com.

Prospects are dismal for returning Iraqi refugees

Jeff Leys — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:10:14 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Conditions encountered by Iraqi refugees returning home to Iraq.

Excerpt

By Corinne Reilly, McClatchy Newspapers
May 22, 2009
Read original at McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — When Dhafir Hussein left Iraq last year for Sweden, he hoped it would be for good. Sectarian killings and armed gangs had turned his old Baghdad neighborhood, Sheik Omar, into a ghost town. Business had disappeared at the small engine-repair shop where he once made a decent living.

A year after Hussein got to Stockholm, his immigration lawyer called and said that Hussein would never be allowed to settle in Sweden permanently with his wife and two teenage sons, so he decided to go home. Besides, he figured, Iraq’s government had said things were better there.

Body

By Corinne Reilly, McClatchy Newspapers
May 22, 2009
Read original at McClatchy Newspapers

Hussein returned to Baghdad two months ago. His shop is still deserted. He said that customers were afraid to come to Sheik Omar. He’s looked for other jobs, but he hasn’t found one.

His family, now nearly broke, squats in a tiny third-floor apartment in an abandoned complex where Saddam Hussein, the late dictator, used to house his administrative staff. If the new government evicts them as it’s threatened to do, Hussein and his family will be homeless.

“We have nothing here,” he said. “At least in Sweden I could work.”

Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes to escape the violence, half of them abroad. Several months ago, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki began telling them to return, assuring them that Iraq is safe.

Not everyone agrees, however, and some families who’ve come back said they regretted it. They face soaring rents, limited job opportunities and shortages of electricity, clean water, education and health care, not to mention the continuing threat of violence and political instability.

Maliki argues that mass returns are needed to rebuild the country. Critics accuse him of politicizing the issue by encouraging refugees to return en masse to create the appearance that Iraq is safer than it is ahead of national elections, which are scheduled for the end of this year.

“Instead of finding ways to push people home, the government should be creating conditions that make people want to go back on their own,” said Kristele Younes of Refugees International, a U.S.-based advocacy organization. “Maliki has been very clear that he wants everyone home this year. One has to wonder why he’s in such a big hurry.”

The flight of Iraqis since the invasion has been called an invisible humanitarian crisis. While the absence of sprawling camps may have made Iraqi refugees less noticeable to much of the world, their numbers are significant: Roughly a sixth of Iraqis have fled their homes since 2003.

Only a small fraction have returned so far, but it’s not for want of government effort. On many occasions, Maliki has sent his official plane to retrieve willing families from abroad. After complaints that returnees were left without resources, officials recently announced that they’ll begin handing out at the airport the $900 in cash promised to returning families.

Safety looms as perhaps the biggest issue that’s blocking mass returns. Though violence remains lower than it was in 2007, large-scale bombings targeting civilians have been on the rise since March. By several measures, last month was the bloodiest that Iraq has seen in the past year.

The U.N. said this month that many parts of the country were still too dangerous for large numbers of refugees to return, and that no Iraqis living abroad should be stripped of their refugee status and pushed home.

“Iraqis deserve to come back in safety and in dignity,” said Andrew Harper, of the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. “In a lot of the country, that just isn’t possible yet.” The UNHCR has documented “a considerable” number of cases in which families have returned to their old neighborhoods only to leave again, Harper said.

“Maybe it’s a little safer, but what about services?” asked Muthhir Mohammad, a 35-year-old security guard who returned from Syria with his wife and baby in 2007. “We have maybe a few hours of electricity a day. How can the government say things are OK?”

Within weeks of moving back, Mohammad said, he began looking for another, permanent way to leave Iraq. He still hasn’t set foot in his old neighborhood because he thinks it’s too dangerous. As a Sunni Muslim, he said, he doesn’t trust Iraq’s government and security forces, which are mostly Shiite Muslim.

“They protect their own first,” he said. “We had no money (in Syria) so I thought it would be better to come back, but now I think coming home was worse. We still have nothing.”

Skyrocketing rents have made it difficult for returning families to afford temporary housing. Many have come back to find their old homes destroyed or occupied by squatters.

If not for the high rents, Muthana Hammoudi said, he never would have returned to the Dora-area house his family left in 2006.

“It was much safer where we were renting, but we couldn’t afford it anymore,” said Hammoudi, a 42-year-old journalist. “We didn’t want to come back to Dora. To be honest, we are still afraid there.”

Two weeks ago a family that recently had returned to Hammoudi’s neighborhood found a makeshift bomb on its doorstep. It exploded and wounded two of the children.

Younes, of Refugees International, recently spent three weeks in Iraq with a research team, and she said that almost all the Iraqi leaders whom her agency met with “expressed a very strong desire to close the file on displaced people by the end of this year, no matter what.”

“They’re burying their heads in the sand,” she said.

Refugees International issued a report after its visit that says Maliki’s administration has made the return of displaced Iraqis a component, rather than an outcome, of its security strategy. The agency also has accused the Iraqi government of violating international refugee law by asking Syria to close its borders to Iraqis as early as 2007, when sectarian killing was still rampant.

Especially troublesome, Younes said, is the absence of powerful voices within the government advocating a different approach.

Besides free transportation home and cash payments in exchange for returning, the government promises help finding work and evicting squatters. For educated professionals, a class that Iraq is especially eager to get back, the national Ministry of Displacement and Migration has made additional assurances, including free land and a choice of well-paid public service jobs.

However, several Iraqis who’ve returned said the government wasn’t following through once refugees and displaced people were home. “Many families are not actually receiving the aid they are told about,” said Azhar Abdul al Majeed, a member of the parliament’s committee on displacement and migration.

Iman Whayib, a widowed mother of three who returned to Baghdad last May from Salahuddin province, said she’d been trying for nearly a year to collect the payment promised to each family that moves back.

“I’ve come here so many times I can’t count anymore,” she said as she waited in line at a government center where returnees are told they can claim the money. “Each time I come, they say I need some new document that no one mentioned the last time.”

Mahmoud Othman, another member of the parliament’s displacement committee, said he and other lawmakers on the panel had asked the government to take a more “responsible” approach to the refugee issue but that their requests had done little.

“When (Maliki) travels abroad, he continues to make the calls for people to come back,” Othman said. “It has become a matter of politics.”

Maliki’s office didn’t return phone calls seeking comment.

Kareem al Saadi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, dismissed the suggestion that the recent upswing in violence should preclude some Iraqis from returning to certain areas. He disagreed that the government may not be ready to provide services to those who come home. He also said that Iraq was on track to put the refugee issue rightly in its past by the end of this year.

“In the previous years, darkness was covering Iraq, but now there is no night anywhere,” Saadi said. “This is the new Iraq. The people should come home.”

He said his department expected huge returns from abroad as soon as schools let out for summer.

“We know most of the families are just waiting. They want to come home,” Saadi said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

(Reilly reports for the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star. McClatchy special correspondents Jenan Hussein and Sahar Issa contributed to this story.)

Life and Death in the Qandil Mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan

Jeff Leys — Fri, 22 May 2009 12:48:36 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Gerald Paoli writes from the Kurdish region of northern Iraq

Excerpt

By Gerald Paoli
May 20, 2009
Sulimanaya, Iraq

The Events Leading Up to Mohamed’s Death
UNHCR Camp in Northern Iraq: Gerald Paoli (left) with the Camp Nurse and child at the UNHCR refugee camp in northern Iraq. Sulimanaya, Iraq - The first Zarawa internally displaced persons (IDP) camp was in a valley in the Qandil Mountains. It wasn’t home, but it was situated next to a cool stream and was close to the eight villages of the 132 families, who had fled violence rained down on them by Turkey and Iran. Now, they live in the new Zarawa IDP camp built by the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Body

UNHCR Camp in Northern Iraq: Gerald Paoli (left) with the Camp Nurse and child at the UNHCR camp in northern Iraq.By Gerald Paoli
May 20, 2009
Sulimanaya, Iraq

The Events Leading Up to Mohamed’s Death

The first Zarawa internally displaced persons (IDP) camp was in a valley in the Qandil Mountains. It wasn’t home, but it was situated next to a cool stream and was close to the eight villages of the 132 families, who had fled violence rained down on them by Turkey and Iran. Now, they live in the new Zarawa IDP camp built by the United Nation’s High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

Quandil Mountains: The Quandil Mountains in northern Iraq.The villagers have chosen to leave the mountains because they are exhausted from being under attack. Turkey and Iran have been bombing the border with Kurdistan for decades in an effort to eliminate the mountain bases of two Kurdish rebel groups, the Turkish Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Iranian Kurdish group known as the Party for Free Life (PJAK).

Historically, seasonal bombings have been the norm in the northernmost region of Kurdistan. Bombings became a predictable part of an annual rhythm of life. But villagers adjusted to the anticipated attacks and continued to live in the manner dictated by their traditions and customs.

In December 2007, George Bush and Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan met to discuss strategies for “dealing” with the PKK.

Since then, the bombing have been more intense and regular.

Most members of the international community officially label the PKK and PJAK as terrorist organizations. Yet, as recently as 2006, the United States was supplying PJAK with intelligence and weapons to use against Tehran.

Turkey has attempted to purchase both armed and surveillance drones from Israel for use in border operations. However, Turkey’s government stated on May 19, 2009, that it might cancel a 2005 contract to purchase ten drones from Israel because of delayed delivery. It’s also worth noting that Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan sternly criticized Israel’s 22-day Operation Cast Lead assaults against Gaza, begun on December 22, 2008.

On March 10, 2009, Iran broke a one-month-old cease-fire. As a result, an 18-month-old boy named Mohamed was killed while sleeping nestled between his parents. Mohamed’s parents, injured and stricken with grief, are angry that they were lulled into a false sense of security by the cease-fire. They decided to join in the exodus down from the mountain to the new Zarawa camp.

UNHCR CampLife in the New Zarawa IDP Camp

The camp nurse and several small children greeted us as we entered the new camp. She invited us into her UNHCR-supplied tent. A furrowed brow replaced her broad smile as she began to describe her fears for the villagers living here.

“I am afraid for the old people and the young ones,” said the nurse, who is concerned that they won’t survive the summer heat. “When people live so close to each other many diseases will come and spread quickly.” Looking at the children, she wrung her hands. “Dysentery and dehydration are sure to follow.”

There are 45 tents for 132 families. That comes to roughly three families per every two tents. Each tent measures 4 meters by 4 meters wide by 2.2 meters high, pitched over a slab of cement that is 9 square meters, framed by a border of cinder blocks two rows high. They are lined with gold-colored canvas on the inside and topped with gray canvas on the outside.

The residents of Zarawa camp have devised a system of sharing tents by rotating with each other, spending some time living with their families in the municipality and some time in the camp. While in school, children live with relatives in the Zarawa municipality, separated from their nuclear families.

Because of the great strain on the local economy and on what few public services are available, the municipality of Zarawa was reluctant to allow construction of the new camp and created several obstacles. The UNHCR recognizes that the site is not a sustainable resettlement solution for the camp’s residents.

The location is barren and desolate. There is not one tree for shade. The villagers cannot have animals of any kind in the camp. This is just as well because they had to sell what animals they could to buy the plot of land on which the camp is built. There is no electricity. The UNHCR has promised them a well, but the villagers have a wait-and-see attitude about whether or not this will ever happen. And since nearly every inch of land they occupy is covered with either a tent or a toilet, they cannot grow any food inside the camp.

The empty adjacent field mocks the villagers with the possibility of food it could provide. But they can’t grow food there either because it is private property. So, they rely on what relief they get from the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) rations and the meager supplies the Iraq national food card can buy them.

This is the situation of Kurdish villagers, who have been forced to leave their homes and have chosen not to go back until the political situation is resolved. Their very existence is rarely glimpsed by internationals, as the villagers live beyond the “radar” of mainstream news. Yet, their simple survival depends on being beyond the cross hairs of sophisticated weapons peddled by international traders.

Did You or Did You Not Cook?

Jeff Leys — Tue, 19 May 2009 16:28:47 -0500

Short Information Teaser

The challenges faced by one Iraqi family seeking to immigrate to the U.S.

Excerpt

Damascus, Syria
May 19, 2009

Did you or did you not cook?

It seems like such a harmless question, but the simple yes or no answer to that question can determine the fate of an Iraqi family longing to join their relatives in the United States.

Body

Damascus, Syria
May 19, 2009

Did you or did you not cook?

It seems like such a harmless question, but the simple yes or no answer to that question can determine the fate of an Iraqi family longing to join their relatives in the United States.

I would ask you to take a moment and try and put yourself in the shoes of an Iraqi family. They could be your family or mine. The parents are about 50 years of age, and they have seven children. They have three married daughters in Iraq. Their oldest son is married and together with his wife and two little girls share the parents’ modest apartment here in the city. Their oldest daughter, three years old, is severely handicapped. The parents have two more daughters and their youngest son, a 13 year old, who complete this household of nine in Damascus.

The father has an aunt in Detroit, Michigan and one of his sister’s was resettled to California over a year ago. She uses crutches as she had polio as a small child. She is lonely and very anxious for her brother and his family to join her.

This family fled to Syria in the summer of 2007 after receiving threats from the Mujahedeen and a kidnapping attempt on the wife and one of the daughters. As a Christian family they were and continue to be, particularly targeted. They left everything behind to save their lives. They feel they have nothing to return to except certain death.

Now I will ask you to shift gears to the present time. Before an Iraqi individual or family can be accepted to the US for resettlement, they must undergo an interview with a representative from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Iraqis know that this meeting is decisive, a one-shot deal which will determine whether they can reach a place of safety, where they can work, educate their children and pick up the pieces of their lives once again.

More and more attention is being placed in these interviews on the issue of military service, the length of time served, location and duties. In the military document of the above mentioned father, the word “cook” was clearly written. He explained however that when his military supervisor noted that he had a university degree in Hotel Management, he assigned him to an Air Force base to work in a cafeteria. His work was strictly clerical, doing tally sheets and paperwork. It was not uncommon, my Iraqi Muslim translator told me, for Christians to be assigned as cooks. They have a long tradition of not taking up arms.

The DHS interviewer kept putting the question to him “Did you or did you not cook?” Shrugging his shoulders in resignation, the father looked at me sadly and asked “What could I tell her?” He didn’t cook. The family was denied resettlement on the basis of “credibility.”

I cannot describe my feelings to you at hearing one such story after another. As I visit with families in their apartments, holding their rejection (form) letters in my hand, I am always served coffee or tea with a graciousness that is hard to describe. Often it is one of the older children who bring the refreshments, a young person who has now missed a couple of years of school. Too often the mothers can not hold back their tears. Their last hope to move on has been crushed. They look to me for some word of reassurance, and I long to tell them there is yet hope, that everything will be alright.

VCNV Author

Cathy Breen

Mustafa and Josh

Jeff Leys — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:40:21 -0500

Short Information Teaser

A child from Iraq and an adult from the U.S. build a friendship.

Excerpt

Damascus, Syria
May 17, 2009

I said laughingly to Josh “You have a shadow.” When he wasn’t chasing after the frisbee, 5 year old Mustafa kept taking his hand. It was such a sweet gesture.Mustafa and Josh

I met Josh a few days ago over tea. He had contacted me by email, asking if we could get together. Not only do we know many of the same people in the peace movement, but I felt an instant kinship with this gentle yet intense young man from Oregon. Josh has spent a good deal of time in Palestine over the last years, and is currently continuing his Arabic study in Damascus. We spoke of many things, and by chance I mentioned a dear Iraqi family I had been just been with.

Body

Damascus, Syria
May 17, 2009

I said laughingly to Josh “You have a shadow.” When he wasn’t chasing after the frisbee, 5 year old Mustafa kept taking his hand. It was such a sweet gesture.Mustafa and Josh

Last October an Iraqi man took me to meet the refugee family, a mother from Baghdad with four young children. Mustafa, the second to youngest has “Failure to Thrive” syndrome. He was four years old then, but smaller than his three year old sister. His mother’s relentless efforts to find the cause for her son’s failure to grow, his hair loss and weakness paid off. Getting the necessary daily growth hormone injections for Mustafa has been a constant struggle, as each injection is costly. The change in Mustafa in the seven months since I’d seen him was astounding. He has almost caught up to his sister in height. His mother told me “I am better because my son is better.” You can imagine my surprise when Josh told me that he, like Mustafa, has the same rare condition. He has taken daily injections since he was two years old.

Yesterday Josh and I arranged to meet the family in a park. The mother and I sat on the green grass talking and watching Josh and the children romping around and tossing the frisbee to and fro. In the words of one of my own brothers who has lived with MS for years, I thought to myself “It doesn’t get much better than this.” My brother Chris has said this more than once while watching his own children playing in a beautiful natural setting.Josh & Mustafa

Mustafa’s mother has been blessed with a spirit of gratitude and a creative mind that is striking. She has recently written a little children’s book, a story inspired by her grandmother still living in Baghdad. Her eyes fill with tears as she speaks of her grandmother. The story is about a horse with hidden wings. Josh has agreed to try his hand at translating it into English. The mother wants to dedicate it to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in thanks for all they have done for so many around the world. She wants to use her gifts, to give back. “We are not just a taking people” she said to me with heartfelt conviction, “We’re also a giving people.”

The mother and children have not yet been accepted for resettlement by the UNHCR. Should they be accepted, there are 60,000 “cases” of Iraqis in line ahead of them. Although the obstacles for this family to resettle seem insurmountable, who knows where this newly formed friendship between Josh and Mustafa will lead? We must keep trying to make connections, drawing courage and inspiration from families like these.

VCNV Author

Cathy Breen

We, Too, Are Underdogs

Dan Pearson — Mon, 11 May 2009 14:00:58 -0500

Short Information Teaser

David Smith-Ferri reports from Amman, Jordan

Excerpt

May 11, 2009

AMMAN, Jordan - On the first Saturday in May, at Churchill Downs, the underdog, come-from-behind, runaway victory of Mine That Bird in the 135th running of the Kentucky Derby thrilled people across the world. Racehorse victories are attributed to team efforts: credit the jockey and the trainer for winning. And the trainer in this case - Bennie Woolley - was as much an underdog as Mine That Bird was a long shot, having never previously run a horse in a stakes race before Saturday.

Body

May 11, 2009

If this appeals to something in you, if you are cheered and comforted and strengthened by examples of people overcoming adversity and succeeding against the odds, not on the basis of privilege, but on talent and determination, then come with me to the Middle East, where an Iraqi horse trainer named Balasem is fashioning a kind of comeback that is far more remarkable and instructive than the one Mine That Bird and his team produced last week.

The first thing I learned when I spoke with Balasem is that he loves and respects horses. Practically as a greeting, he said to me, “Never hit a horse. Treat him kindly, and he will remember you as a friend.” There isn’t anything he’d rather talk about.

But there are some things he doesn’t want to talk about. When Najlaa al-Nashi, co-coordinator of Direct Aid Iraq and a friend of hers first visited Balasem, they found him living in a typical basement apartment - more hole than home - in a typically rundown neighborhood in Amman, Jordan. His wife, Umm Mohammad, and their adult daughter, Karina, greeted them at the door, sat them down, served tea, and began to describe the conditions in Iraq that led their family to flee the country.

“We were very well-off in Iraq,” Umm Mohammad explained. But after the US invasion, “militias, backed by Iran, began to threaten us. They forced us to leave, and now they occupy our homes.” Balasem, in bed in a back room, began yelling, “No! Don’t talk about Baghdad. Don’t say the name of that place!” And a little later, “My sons! O, they took my sons!” And then: “I blame the Americans. They own the world. They are responsible for my sons’ deaths!”

Their son, Jamil, was killed in an explosion in Baghdad nearly two years ago, after Balasem, Umm Mohammad, and Karina had fled the country. “The news of Jamil’s death,” Umm Mohammad said, “was such a shock” that Balasem had a stroke. He has spent much of the last two years in bed, without medical care. “The doctors at the Red Crescent said that he is ‘hopeless’. They said there are other people that they should help. And they walked away.” And in fact, without physical therapy, without stimulation and exercise, as Balasem’s muscles atrophy, he has become less and less able. The man who spent his life training horses to run, has lost the ability to stand and all hope of ever walking again.

On that first visit to Balasem’s home, Najlaa found the family with almost no furniture and Balasem on his back on a mat on the floor. “He was angry,” Najlaa said. “He had bedsores from being on his back all the time, and he was so stiff. But he let me massage his back, and this changed everything. He felt like someone cared, and he started praying for me. This man who is twice my age, that I should help, was praying for me. Then he asked me to massage a specific part of his back. And he took my hand, and told me his story. He told me everything. He cried, he poured his heart out.”

In 2006 and 2007, as the numbers of Iraqis fleeing their country reached the tens of thousands per month, and a humanitarian crisis mounted in neighboring countries, Iraqis who had fled to Jordan sought to assist the most vulnerable in their midst. In the two or three years since then, in what seems to me to be one of the most significant untold stories of this war, formal and informal (Iraqi) networks of support have developed, strengthened, and grown.

Among the key people in this network are Iraqis who are collecting and storing household items - furniture, appliances, kitchenware, clothing, etc. - and then distributing them on an as-needed basis to Iraqis. Because of this, Najlaa was able to arrange for a delivery of furniture (donated by an Iraqi family that recently resettled) to Balasem’s family’s apartment. She also arranged a hospital bed, a wheelchair, and an air pump sheet to prevent bedsores and to improve blood circulation.

As we have gotten to know the family, we learned that Karina hasn’t been receiving the small monthly cash stipend ($75 - $100) she is entitled to through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The kind of vulnerabilities that Iraqis face every day in Jordan - where it is illegal for them to work, where many of them live close to the edge of subsistence with no reserve to manage crises - make this cash assistance, small as it is, vitally important.

But it is very difficult for Iraqis to advocate for themselves with UNHCR, in part because of how vulnerable they are. UNHCR’s bureaucracy, as Iraqis in Jordan experience it, tends to be impersonal, inscrutable, and impenetrable. We hear over and over again from Iraqis we meet: “The families who came when I did have been resettled. I’ve been here five years now. When will it be my turn?” And “I’ve called more than twenty times and sent more letters than I can count, and they don’t respond.” And “They said they would call. It’s been a year and I haven’t heard from them.”

It may require $6.00 or more for roundtrip taxi fare to the out-of-the-way UNHCR offices, and the strength to wait in line for hours, only to be told “You need to make an appointment,” or “We’ll call you.” Understandably, in the face of this, many Iraqis have lost hope in this system of support. We’ve met many families who aren’t receiving the level of support they clearly deserve: some, like Karina, haven’t been receiving it for years.

But it is also true that a single person within a bureaucracy, someone in the right position with the right attitude, can make things happen. We have found that with research and persistence, individual UNHCR employees respond positively to information and requests. Thanks to this, Karina should begin receiving her cash assistance in June.

When Najlaa met with Balasem on that first home visit, she was accompanied and introduced to the family by a friend of hers who is also a member of this network of support. Together, they were able to help Balasem up off the floor and bring him outside, where he seemed transformed. Afterward, when they had left the house, Najlaa’s friend commented, “This one visit changed this family,” underscoring the obvious: that war sentences some people to a long, slow death by stripping them of their dignity and their social support.

Now that he has a wheelchair, Balasem only needs help out of his bed and into the chair, but this remains beyond the ability of his wife and daughter. When Najlaa and I visited the family two weeks ago, we went right in to see Balasem, and after exchanging greetings, we helped him out of bed, into his wheelchair, and out into the yard, where we sat together with the family for a couple of hours.

I don’t speak more than five words of Arabic. Knowing this, Balasem didn’t press me with long statements or stories. For much of the time, he seemed content to be there with me. I found this remarkable. “Come close to me and turn my chair,” Balasem said at one point, “so I can see you better.” Balasem talked in a very direct and intimate way about horses. I swear his eyes shone as he sat there. And in fact, an Iraqi friend who came as my translator later said, “His face was shining.”

I learned that Balasem was an internationally famous horse trainer, with “the best stable” in Iraq. “The first person,” his daughter claimed, “that the Television journalists called.” He worked in Dubai and the UAE, and he trained racehorses for Saudi princes and sheiks, and for wealthy European owners. The family showed me pictures of him smiling alongside princes and aristocrats, and alongside horses in the winner’s circle.

“When he walked into a stable,” Umm Mohammad said, “the horses would whinny and sing.”

“Let the horse smell you,” Balasem said to me several times. “Then he will know you … People will forget you, but a horse will remember… even if you are separated for a long time, he will remember.”

We learned that Balasem’s wife and daughter are not comfortable changing his urinary catheter. And since it costs $22.00 to bring a nurse to the house to change the catheter, the family only does this once or twice a month. In fact, it should be changed twice a week. Najlaa contacted an Iraqi doctor in Amman who is concerned about the plight of refugees, and now he comes to the house twice a week to change the catheter. He does this for free. “For refugees, there is no charge. My time is for them. They are poor and need medical care.” And one of DAI’s team members is visiting Balasem twice a week to massage his legs to help his muscles recover, with the hope that he can regain his ability to stand and use his legs. Next week, insha’allah (God willing), we will take him to a racetrack to visit the stables and the horses there.

Balasem’s is only one of thousands of Iraqi families across the globe who have literally run for their lives and who are trying, against the odds, to stage a comeback. Some of these families have been resettled. Many have fled to a neighboring country and live there in hopes of resettlement or return. Many more remain in Iraq. Their chances of success, of course, will depend on many factors, but the odds can be improved if existing networks of support can be maintained and strengthened.

As Iraq becomes “old news,” what will the citizens of the wealthiest countries on the planet do? Will we ourselves beat the odds and find ways to get involved, ways to advocate for and to support Iraqis in need, or will we be merely spectators, or worse, will we be absent, unaware even that the race is unfolding? I’m afraid the odds are heavily in favor of these latter outcomes.

We stand at a juncture in our relationship with Iraq and its people, a question confronting us, suggesting that we, too, are underdogs.

David Smith-Ferri is a member of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) and Direct Aid Iraq (www.directaidiraq.org), and the author of Battlefield without Borders (www.battlefieldwithoutborders.org). Kali Rubaii and Debra Ellis contributed to this report.

VCNV Author

David Smith-Ferri

Cathy Breen Writes From Amman - May 10th

Dan Pearson — Mon, 11 May 2009 12:38:37 -0500

Short Information Teaser

Update on the Iraqi Refugee Crisis from Damascus, Syria

Excerpt

in Damascus, Syria

May 10, 2009 Mountain of the Sheik

Body

in Damascus, Syria

May 10, 2009

Dear Friends,

It has been a week since I traveled the road from Amman to Damascus. As I gazed upon mile after mile of wide open horizon, my spirit seemed to lighten. Maybe it has to do with the pent-up confined feeling that cities always give me, of leaving the city behind. I could not help but remember the drive from Baghdad to Amman six years ago. It was also in early May, after the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign. It was 2003, and the city of Baghdad was smoldering as we drove away. Some distance outside of Baghdad, I was suddenly overcome by the stark expansiveness of the desert landscape, and a heaviness I had not even been aware of was suddenly lifted from me. It was a feeling I will never forget.

Mountain of the Sheik

My first days here in Damascus were spent in a poor crowded area of the city, a neighborhood which is home to many Iraqi refugees. In the bed so generously offered to me by a friend, my head was only inches away from the noisy street. It was as if the cars, venders, passers by and playing children were right in the room with us. Except for the night hours when the city sleeps, there was no thought of personal space. No matter, I told myself. This is exactly where I want to be. Things will work out.

I believe that God opens doors for us. When one door closes, another opens. I am trying not to force the doors, they will open by themselves when least expected. Through a string of circumstances I found myself having to move. I am now in a boarding house just a stone’s throw from the old city of Damascus. It is not what I had imagined, but I sense that for now it is right to be here. How easy it is for me to believe that doors will open. I have a passport, a community, country and family to return to.

The old city is a labyrinth. It could not be more different from the neighborhood I left. Yesterday I wandered through the endless maze of tiny streets and alleyways, only to find myself again and again at a dead end and having to retrace my steps. The old doors are particularly striking. I would wager that even someone walking down the street with an I-pod (something I’ve not yet seen here).would be drawn in by them. It is all still very new to me, but there is something almost magical about turning a corner only to be awestruck at the ancient doors, the intricate wooden overhangs and masonry. Last night I was hurrying to meet an “old” friend from pre-invasion days in Baghdad. He is a refugee in Syria. It was already dark, and the narrow lanes were dimly lit, casting shadows all around. A young mother was in a doorway with her little children playing around her. As I went by her, she indicated smiling that the street had no exit. She knew that I was lost, and we laughed together as she explained the way to me.

I had my second meeting with UNHCR the other day, this time with the Resettlement Unit. It was clarifying and depressing at the same time. Since my arrival I have been able to visit with several Iraqi families and individuals, and I went to the meeting with many questions.

I asked about families who have been rejected for U.S. resettlement despite having family there, family desperate to receive them. They’ve been advised by UNHCR-Syria not to wait around. They have been told there is next to no possibility for them to be resettled to another country. The few countries taking Iraqis are tightening their restrictions, pushing them to return to Iraq. What are they to do? I asked about a family who recently returned to Iraq after two years in Syria. Their money had run out, and they’d been told by UNHCR that they did not meet the criteria for resettlement. The family happens to be Sabean (aka Mandaean) and are at extremely high risk for assassination. Just last month three Sabean jewelers were killed in a busy market area of Baghdad in a new assault against them. Out of a community of 60,000 to 70,000 in Iraq before 2003 in Iraq only 5,000 remain. What should this family with four small children do? They have already lost many members of their family. What are the prospects for them now?

There used to be a macabre joke among Iraqis. You have to have someone killed, or be maimed yourself, before being accepted for resettlement. Sadly this is no longer true.

Now all roads lead to a dead end. All doors are closed to them. After experiencing betrayal after betrayal, how can they continue to believe that doors will open for them?

I send you warmest greetings from Damascus.

Cathy Breen

VCNV Author

Cathy Breen