Iraqi International Initiative on refugees
المبادرة العراقية الدولية للاجئين

Ahmed, an Iraqi from the Dora district of Baghdad, who now lives in 6 October City, 25 kilometres from the centre of Cairo on the desert road to Alexandria, says the events of 9 April 2003 are indelibly etched in his memory. Ahmed says, “I was prepared to defend Baghdad, I had a Klashnakov, and a tunnel was dug under my house in preparation.”

From his home bordering an agricultural area, he could clearly observe things happening a few miles away. “Six US armoured vehicles rumbled threateningly through al-Bayaa and al-Sayidiya approaching the city,” he recalls.

It did not take long for Ahmed to realize the futility of trying to stop tanks with a Klashnakov. He locked himself inside his house that day and did not go out for a long time. Like many Iraqis, he believes that some top-ranking Iraqi officers had been bought off before the decisive moment and that this was the main reason the promised battle of Baghdad never took place.

A graduate of Baghdad University’s Faculty of Science, Ahmed was near completing his Masters degree in geology when he was injured in a car bomb. “I had already lost a number of my friends, but like many others I chose to defy circumstances and continue my studies. I believed, and still believe, in what I was doing,” he says.

“I didn’t want to let the occupation stop me from fulfilling my dreams, especially because I know that my subject of specialisation can really help my people.” He explains that he chose to focus on remote-sensing because it can be used to clean up river pollution.

While this was not the first time Ahmed had been injured, cracks to his skull meant that he had to leave Iraq, albeit temporarily, for treatment because “the health care system in Iraq, which was once so strong, has been destroyed.”

With friends in Jordan, and the promise of free treatment at an Amman hospital, Ahmed tried to get there. However, he was forbidden entry and was deported — in violation of his rights as a de facto refugee — 24 hours after he arrived in Jordan. Worse still, he had paid the cost of his own flight and now found himself having to pay for the return trip as well.

He urgently needed to find a solution to his medical condition, and he chose to come to Egypt, partly because he knew resources in Syria had already been overwhelmed by the presence of 1.5 million Iraqi refugees following 2003. “I came to Egypt in November 2006. I knew some people here, and since then several more of my friends from Baghdad have arrived,” Ahmed comments.

“Some of them have found refuge here, but others have found life to be simply unsustainable and have decided to return to Iraq.”

Like 10,500 other Iraqis in Egypt registered as refugees or asylum-seekers, Ahmed has been registered as a refugee by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in Cairo and given a yellow card that he can use to secure temporary residence. Those Iraqis who have registered with the UNHCR are, however, in the minority. Though the exact number of Iraqis seeking refuge in Egypt is unknown, the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates that the actual number lies somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000.

Abeer Etefa, the spokesperson for UNHCR Cairo, believes that more Iraqis should approach the office for prima facie registration — at the very least in order to regularise their status.

“We are providing emergency cash assistance based on a needs assessment, as well as assistance to pay school fees,” she told the Weekly, explaining that UNHCR Cairo’s focus rests on those who have registered and not beyond. “Many may feel there is no point in registering, though we have issued calls for Iraqis to approach us. Our regional funding for the assistance of Iraqi refugees is so tight that broader levels of assistance are simply not possible at this stage.”

Given the large numbers of people involved, and the comparatively few that have applied for refugee status, all this means that between 60,000 and 140,000 Iraqi refugees in Egypt are living without legal recognition, which constitutes the most basic form of protection. Even for those who have registered with the UNHCR, the weight of life in exile when combined with the lack of opportunities to work renders life extremely difficult.

Compounding such difficulties is the fact that the Egyptian authorities have forbidden Iraqi refugees from setting up their own associations. “Those who receive assistance from UNHCR do so via a Sudanese NGO, because we Iraqis are forbidden to set up NGOs of our own,” Ahmed says.

Like all Iraqi refugees — registered or not — Ahmed is not allowed to work. He has also been unable to complete his degree in Egypt, because Cairo’s public universities have informed him that he will have to pay fees at the rate set for foreign students. “The US-led occupation of Iraq and the militias that started to operate after the invasion have done far more than kill Iraqis,” Ahmed says.

“They have also killed the culture of learning that Iraq fostered. I would never have imagined that I would be unable to complete my studies. I would never have imagined that I would be prevented from working in such a way as to put my education to good use. I am especially concerned, because if I don’t keep working, I will forget what I have learned. The occupation is not only killing Iraqi bodies, but it is also killing Iraqi minds.”

Iraqi refugee families are forced to live off whatever savings they have managed to take with them, and the conditions they often encounter in exile constitute a direct attack on their dignity. To Ahmed, the policy of denying him access to university education at local rates is barely intelligible: “if I graduate, I can become a teacher at a university here,” he says. “Surely that would be good for everybody.”

While he says that Egyptian people have been kind enough, the country’s policy of what appears to be the criminalisation of Iraqis has not. “Egypt is a poor country. If its own people are suffering and unable even to buy bread, then we Iraqis cannot expect to be better off,” he says. “But Iraq’s resources are being sold at exorbitant prices. I as an Iraqi have the right to a share of revenues from oil sales,” he adds.

Ahmed’s statements resonate with the goal of the Iraqi International Initiative which has demanded that the UN Security Council pass a resolution obliging the Iraqi government “to allocate proportionate revenue to displaced Iraqi citizens,” since this “is the only efficient way for the country of origin and the international community to fulfill their obligations towards both Iraqi refugees and hosting countries, while preserving the rights of refugees and their dignity as Iraqi citizens.”

According to Mohamed Sami, an official at the Egyptian foreign ministry, the government is doing what it can within the resources available. “We understand our obligations under international law, but we cannot do more for the Iraqis than we can for the citizens of Egypt,” he told the Weekly.

However, refugee lawyer Ashraf Milad suspects that discrimination is taking place in the enforcement of the prohibition on working. “Iraqis are effectively treated like any other foreigner here, without the additional protections offered under refugee law,” Milad said. “But a French man working illegally in Egypt will never be harassed, while an Iraqi found to be working illegally could well be.”

As things stand, many Iraqi families face a daily dilemma, being caught between remaining in Egypt and leading a life of invisibility, or returning to their country and facing the near- constant threat of death. The fact that exiting from Iraq has become well-nigh impossible since the start of 2007 because of the closure of land borders and the extreme difficulty for an Iraqi to secure a visa at any foreign embassy in Baghdad only heightens the dilemma. Those who choose to return to Iraq from Egypt know that they may become trapped in the country.

“I speak sometimes, whenever possible, to my friends at the university in Baghdad. They beg me not to return because the horror and danger of what they are living under is so great,” Ahmed says. “So I stay in Cairo, knowing my stay is temporary, though I don’t know when it will end. Even so, the pain of exile is so great. Think about it: what happens to a leaf when it has been cut from the tree?”

Ahmed’s friend Ali is in his mid-twenties and also arrived in Cairo near the end of 2006, along with his brother and his brother’s family. To him, exile has been just as unkind. He does not work, and spends much of his day paying visits to family and friends, trying hard to retain his resilience. “Even in the worst of circumstances, I believe in maintaining strength and keeping my heart from giving in,” he says.

Life for Ali’s family in Baghdad was under constant threat. His brother, a doctor in computer engineering, used to work for the army under the former Iraqi regime. “He received many death threats, and we feared that his children would be harmed. This is because militias loyal to the current government — or to the US or Iran — are targeting children in order to break the will of their families,” Ali says.

Ali’s sister-in-law, Aysar Hekmat, believed that Cairo would be a good place for her and her husband to raise their three children. A graduate in physics, to her and her family the opportunity to educate the children in safety was one of the main reasons behind the decision to leave Baghdad. “We really thought things would be better for the children here in Egypt, but we were wrong,” she told the Weekly. Five-year-old Omnia is too young to attend elementary school, but her elder brothers’ education is costing the family almost LE2,000 a year — money which she does not have.

Next September, Omnia is due to enter school. “With the level of education my husband and I have, we cannot imagine failing to put her through school,” Aysar says. “However, even if UNHCR provides part of this sum as educational assistance, the extra money we need to pay for our children’s education makes it impossible for us to think of staying in Egypt.”

It is because of the family’s fundamental belief in education, and their refusal to fail to put Omnia through school, that they will return to Baghdad at the end of this academic year.

“We just can’t afford to stay any longer in a country where we are unable to work. Even if we were able to work illegally, given the soaring prices in Egypt we simply wouldn’t be able to make enough to make it through the year,” Aysar adds.

She tells the story of two Iraqi friends who started mini-markets in 6 October City, where the highest number of Iraqi refugees in Egypt currently live. “They went bankrupt. The costs of maintenance were too high, and they were not experienced in business. They are academics,” she says.

“We have seen enough here, and know that it is better for us to go back to Baghdad, though we know how dangerous that will be. We have decided that it is better to die in our country than to live this way abroad in a country where we cannot survive in dignity.”

What may make her and her family’s return all the more dangerous is the sectarian nature of current conditions in Iraq. “My husband and I grew up in a city where it never mattered what one’s religious denomination was,” Aysar says. “I am Shia, and my husband is Sunni. We never made any distinction. Now Baghdad is being divided along sectarian lines. Our love for our family, and for Iraq, is strong, and I pray it is strong enough to overcome this darkness.”

Nevertheless, she fears the discrimination her husband might face in trying to secure work if they do return to Baghdad. If the current regime does not actively target her husband, it will most likely discriminate against any attempts he makes to secure work. And once Aysar and her family are in Iraq, they know there will be no way out — at least for some time to come.

For Ahmed, Iraq will not always be this way. “There are a great many people resisting militarily, many of them from the disbanded army of the former regime,” he told the Weekly. To him, the fact that almost 4.5 million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes either to other areas of Iraq or beyond the country’s borders since the 2003 invasion is not a coincidence.

On the contrary, the fact that so many educated Iraqis should find themselves unable to study or to work away from their homes is part and parcel of an attempt to destroy the core of Iraq.

“Being away from Iraq, it is hard to know what exactly is going on inside. But I have faith in our people, because we are rich in our minds. To get a permanent hold of the oil wealth, the occupiers know they will first have to erase our minds,” he says.

“They are trying hard, but we must resist.”

Iraq’s Tidal Wave of Misery
The First History of the Planet’s Worst Refugee Crisis
By Michael Schwartz

A tidal wave of misery is engulfing Iraq — and it isn’t the usual violence that Americans are accustomed to hearing about and tuning out. To be sure, it’s rooted in that violence, but this tsunami of misery is social and economic in nature. It dislodges people from their jobs, sweeps them from their homes, tears them from their material possessions, and carries them off from families and communities. It leaves them stranded in hostile towns or foreign countries, with no anchor to resist the moment when the next wave of displacement sweeps over them.

The victims of this human tsunami are called refugees if they wash ashore outside the country or IDPs (“internally displaced persons”) if their landing place is within Iraq’s borders. Either way, they are normally left with no permanent housing, no reliable livelihood, no community support, and no government aid. All the normal social props that support human lives are removed, replaced with…nothing.

Overlapping Waves of the Dispossessed

In its first four years, the Iraq war created three overlapping waves of refugees and IDPs.

It all began with the Coalition Provisional Authority, which the Bush administration set up inside Baghdad’s Green Zone and, in May 2003, placed under the control of L. Paul Bremer III. The CPA immediately began dismantling Iraq’s state apparatus. Thousands of Baathist Party bureaucrats were purged from the government; tens of thousands of workers were laid off from shuttered, state-owned industries; hundreds of thousands of Iraqi military personnel were dismissed from Saddam’s dismantled military. Their numbers soon multiplied as the ripple effect of their lost buying power rolled through the economy. Many of the displaced found other (less remunerative) jobs; some hunkered down to wait out bad times; still others left their homes and sought work elsewhere, with the most marketable going to nearby countries where their skills were still in demand. They were the leading edge of the first wave of Iraqi refugees.

As the post-war chaos continued, kidnapping became the country’s growth industry, targeting any prosperous family with the means to pay ransom. This only accelerated the rate of departure, particularly among those who had already had their careers disrupted. A flood of professional, technical, and managerial workers fled their homes and Iraq in search of personal and job security.

The spirit of this initial exodus was eloquently expressed by an Iraqi blogger with the online handle of AnaRki13:
“Not so much a migration as a forced exodus. Scientists, engineers, doctors, architects, writers, poets, you name it — everybody is getting out of town.

“Why? Simple:
1. There is no real job market in Iraq.
2. Even if you have a good job, chances are good you’ll get kidnapped or killed. It’s just not worth it staying here. Sunni, Shiite, or Christian — everybody, we’re all leaving, or have already left.
“One of my friends keeps berating me about how I should love this country, the land of my ancestors, where I was born and raised; how I should be grateful and return to the place that gave me everything. I always tell him the same thing: ‘Iraq, as you and me once knew it, is lost. What’s left of it, I don’t want…’
“The most famous doctors and university professors have already left the country because many of them, including ones I knew personally, were assassinated or killed, and the rest got the message — and got themselves jobs in the west, where they were received warmly and given high positions. Other millions of Iraqis, just ordinary Iraqis, left and are leaving — without plans and with much hope.”

In 2004, the Americans triggered a second wave of refugees when they began to attack and invade insurgent strongholds, as they did the Sunni city of Falluja in November 2004, using the full kinetic force of their military. Whether the Americans called for evacuation or not, large numbers of local residents were forced to flee battleground neighborhoods or cities.
The process was summarized in a thorough review of the history of the war compiled by the Global Policy Forum and 35 other international non-governmental organizations:
“Among those who flee, the most fortunate are able to seek refuge with out-of-town relatives, but many flee into the countryside where they face extremely difficult conditions, including shortages of food and water. Eventually the Red Crescent, the UN or relief organizations set up camps.
In Falluja, a city of about 300,000, over 216,000 displaced persons had to seek shelter in overcrowded camps during the winter months, inadequately supplied with food, water, and medical care. An estimated 100,000 fled al-Qaim, a city of 150,000, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS). In Ramadi, about 70 percent of the city’s 400,000 people left in advance of the U.S. onslaught.

“These moments mark the beginning of Iraq’s massive displacement crisis.”
While most of these refugees returned after the fighting, a significant minority did not, either because their homes (or livelihoods) had been destroyed, or because they were afraid of continuing violence. Like the economically displaced of the previous wave, these refugees sought out new areas that were less dangerous or more prosperous, including neighboring countries. And, as with that first wave, it was the professionals as well as the technical and managerial workers who were most likely to have the resources to leave Iraq.

In early 2005 the third wave began, developing by the next year into the veritable tsunami of ethnic cleansing and civil war that pushed vast numbers of Iraqis from their homes. The precipitating incidents, according to Ali Allawi — the Iraqi finance minister when this third wave began — were initially triggered by the second-wave-refugees pushed out of the Sunni city of Falluja in the winter of 2004:
“Refugees leaving Falluja had converged on the western Sunni suburbs of Baghdad, Amriya and Ghazaliya, which had come under the control of the insurgency. Insurgents, often backed by relatives of the Falluja refugees, turned on the Shi’a residents of these neighbourhoods. Hundreds of Shi’a families were driven from their homes, which were then seized by the refugees. Sunni Arab resentment against the Shi’a‘s ‘collaboration’ with the occupation’s forces had been building up, exacerbated by the apparent indifference of the Shi’a to the assault on Falluja.

“In turn, the Shi’a were becoming incensed by the daily attacks on policemen and soldiers, who were mostly poor Shi’a men. The targeting of Sunnis in majority Shi’a neighbourhoods began in early 2005. In the Shaab district of Baghdad, for instance, the assassination of a popular Sadrist cleric, Sheikh Haitham al-Ansari, led to the formation of one of the first Shi’a death squads… The cycle of killings, assassinations, bombings and expulsions fed into each other, quickly turning to a full-scale ethnic cleansing of city neighbourhoods and towns.”

The process only accelerated in early 2006, after the bombing of the Golden Dome in Samarra, a revered Shiite shrine, and crested in 2007 when the American military “surge” onto the streets of Baghdad loosened the hold of Sunni insurgents on many mixed as well as Sunni neighborhoods in the capital. During the year of the surge all but 25 or so of the approximately 200 mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad became ethnically homogenous. A similar process took place in the city’s southern suburbs.

As minority groups in mixed neighborhoods and cities were driven out, they too joined the army of displaced persons, often settling into vacated homes in newly purified neighborhoods dominated by their own sect. But many, like those in the previous waves of refugees, found they had to move to new locales far away from the violence, including a large number who, once again, simply left Iraq. As with previous waves, the more prosperous were the most likely to depart, taking with them professional, technical, and managerial skills.

Among those who departed in this third wave was Riverbend, the pseudonymous “Girl Blogger from Baghdad,” who had achieved international fame for her beautifully crafted reports on life in Iraq under the U.S. occupation.
Her description of her journey into exile chronicled the emotional tragedy experienced by millions of Iraqis:
“The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk — the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away — but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over — the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away…

“The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves…

“How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe — even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions…”

The Human Toll

The number of Iraqis who flooded neighboring lands, not to speak of even approximate estimates of the number of internal refugees, remains notoriously difficult to determine, but the most circumspect of observers have reported constantly accelerating rates of displacement since the Bush administration’s March 2003 invasion. These numbers quickly outstripped the flood of expatriates who had fled the country during Saddam Hussein’s brutal era.

By early 2006, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was already estimating that 1.7 million Iraqis had left the country and that perhaps an equal number of internal refugees had been created in the same three-year period. The rate rose dramatically yet again as sectarian violence and ethnic expulsions took hold; the International Organization for Migration estimated the displacement rate during 2006 and 2007 at about 60,000 per month.
In mid 2007, Iraq was declared by Refugees International to be the “fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world,” while the United Nations called the crisis “the worst human displacement in Iraq’s modern history.”

Syria, the only country that initially placed no restrictions on Iraqi immigration, had (according to UN statistics) taken in about 1.25 million displaced Iraqis by early 2007. In addition, the UN estimated that more than 500,000 Iraqi refugees were in Jordan, as many as 70,000 in Egypt, approaching 60,000 in Iran, about 30,000 in Lebanon, approximately 200,000 spread across the Gulf States, and another 100,000 in Europe, with a final 50,000 spread around the globe.
The United States, which had accepted about 20,000 Iraqi refugees during Saddam Hussein’s years, admitted 463 additional ones between the start of the war and mid-2007.

President Bush’s “surge” strategy, begun in January 2007, amplified the flood, especially of the internally displaced, still further. According to James Glanz and Stephen Farrell of the New York Times, “American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of thousands of additional troops arrived.”
The combined effect of the American offensive and accelerated ethnic expulsions generated an estimated displacement rate of 100,000 per month in Baghdad alone during the first half of 2007, a figure that surprised even Said Hakki, the director of the Iraqi Red Crescent, who had been monitoring the refugee crisis since the beginning of the war.

During 2007, according to UN estimates, Syria admitted an additional 150,000 refugees. With Iraqis by then constituting almost 10% of the country’s population, the Syrian government, feeling the strain on resources, began putting limits on the unending flood and attempted to launch a mass repatriation policy. Such repatriation efforts have, so far, been largely fruitless. Even when violence in Baghdad began to decline in late 2007, refugees attempting to return found that their abandoned homes had often either been badly damaged in American offensives or, more likely, appropriated by strangers (often of a different sect), or were in “cleansed” neighborhoods that were now inhospitable to them.

In the same years, the weight of displaced persons inside Iraq grew ever more quickly. Estimated by the UN at 2.25 million in September 2007, this tidal flow of internally displaced, often homeless, families began to weigh on the resources of the provinces receiving them. Najaf, the first large city south of Baghdad, where the most sacred Shiite shrines in Iraq are located, found that its population of 700,000 had increased by an estimated 400,000 displaced Shia. In three other southern Shia provinces, IDPs came by mid-2007 to constitute over half the population.

The burden was crushing. By 2007, Karbala, one of the most burdened provinces, was attempting to enforce a draconian measure passed the previous year: New residents would be expelled unless officially sponsored by two members of the provincial council. Other governates also tried in various ways, and largely without success, to staunch the flow of refugees.

Whether inside or outside the country, even prosperous families before the war faced grim conditions. In Syria, where a careful survey of conditions was undertaken in October 2007, only 24% of all Iraqi families were supported by salaries or wages. Most families were left to live as best they could on dwindling savings or remittances from relatives, and a third of those with funds on hand expected to run out within three months. Under this kind of pressure, increasing numbers were reduced to sex work or other exploitative (or black market) sources of income.

Food was a major issue for many families; according to the United Nations, nearly half needed “urgent food assistance.” A substantial proportion of adults reported skipping at least one meal a day in order to feed their children. Many others endured foodless days “in order to keep up with rent and utilities.” One refugee mother told McClatchy reporter Hannah Allam, “We buy just enough meat to flavor the food — we buy it with pennies… I can’t even buy a kilo of sweets for Eid [a major annual celebration].”

According to a rigorous McClatchy Newspaper survey, most Iraqi refugees in Syria were housed in crowded conditions with more than one person per room (sometimes many more). Twenty-five percent of families lived in one-room apartments; about one in six refugees had been diagnosed with a (usually untreated) chronic disease; and one-fifth of the children had had diarrhea in the two weeks before being questioned. While Syrian officials had aided refugee parents in getting over two-thirds of school-aged children enrolled in schools, 46% had dropped out — due mainly to lack of appropriate immigration documents, insufficient funds to pay for school expenses, or a variety of emotional issues — and the drop-out rate was escalating. And keep in mind, the Iraqis who made it to Syria were generally the lucky ones, far more likely to have financial resources or employable skills.

Like the expatriate refugees, internally displaced Iraqis faced severe and constantly declining conditions. The almost powerless Iraqi central government, largely trapped inside Baghdad’s Green Zone, requires that people who move from one place to another register in person in Baghdad; if they fail to do so, they lose eligibility for the national program that subsidizes the purchase of small amounts of a few staple foods. Such registration was mostly impossible for families driven from their homes in the country’s vicious civil war. With no way to “register,” families displaced outside of Baghdad entered their new residences without even the increasingly meager safety net offered by guaranteed subsidies of basic food supplies.

To make matters worse, almost three-quarters of the displaced were women or children and very few of the intact families had working fathers. Unemployment rates in most cities to which they were forced to move were already at or above 50%, so prostitution and child labor increasingly became necessary options. UNICEF reported that a large proportion of children in such families were hungry, clinically underweight, and short for their age. “In some areas, up to 90 per cent of the [displaced] children are not in school,” the UN agency reported.

Losing Precious Resources

The job backgrounds of an extraordinary proportion of Iraqi refugees in Syria were professional, managerial, or administrative. In other words, they were collectively the repository of the precious human capital that would otherwise have been needed to sustain, repair, and eventually rebuild their country’s ravaged infrastructure.
In Iraq, approximately 10% of adults had attended college; more than one-third of the refugees in Syria were university educated. Whereas less than 1% of Iraqis had a postgraduate education, nearly 10% of refugees in Syria had advanced degrees, including 4.5% with doctorates. At the opposite end of the economic spectrum, fully 20% of all Iraqis had no schooling, but only a relative handful of the refugees arriving in Syria (3%) had no education. These proportions were probably even more striking in other more distant receiving lands, where entry was more difficult.

The reasons for this remarkable brain drain are not hard to find. Even the desperate process of fleeing your home turns out to require resources, and so refugees from most disasters who travel great distances tend to be disproportionately prosperous, as the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans so painfully illustrated.

In Iraq, this tendency was enhanced by American policy. The mass privatization and de-Baathification policies of the Bush administration ensured that large numbers of professional, technical, and managerial workers, in particular, would be cast out of their former lives. This tendency was only exacerbated by the development of the kidnapping industry, focusing its attentions as it did on families with sufficient resources to pay handsome ransoms. It was amplified when some insurgent groups began assassinating remaining government officials, university professors, and other professionals.

The exodus into the Iraqi Diaspora has severely depleted the country’s human capital. In early 2006, the United States Committee on Refugees and Immigrants estimated that a full 40% of Iraqi’s professional class had left the country, taking with them their irreplaceable expertise. Universities and medical facilities were particularly hard hit, with some reporting less than 20% of needed staff on hand. The oil industry suffered from what the Wall Street Journal called a “petroleum exodus” that included the departure of two-thirds of its top 100 managers, as well as significant numbers of managerial and professional workers.

Even before the huge 2007 exodus from Baghdad, the United Nations Commissioner of Refugees warned that “the skills required to provide basic services are becoming more and more scarce,” pointing particularly to doctors, teachers, computer technicians, and even skilled craftsmen like bakers.

By mid-2007, the loss of these resources was visible in the everyday functioning of Iraqi society. By then, medical facilities commonly required patients’ families to act as nurses and technicians and were still unable to perform many services. Schools were often closed, or opened only sporadically, because of an absence of qualified teachers. Universities postponed or canceled required courses or qualifying examinations because of inadequate staff. At the height of an incipient cholera epidemic in the summer of 2007, water purification plants were idled because needed technicians could not be found.

The most devastating impact of the Iraqi refugee crisis, however, has probably been on the very capacity of the national government (which de-Baathification and privatization had already left in a fragile state) to administer anything. In every area that such a government might touch, the missing managerial, technical, and professional talent and expertise has had a devastating effect, with post-war “reconstruction” particularly hard hit. Even the ability of the government to disperse its income (mostly from oil revenues) has been crippled by what cabinet ministers have termed “a shortage of employees trained to write contracts” and “the flight of scientific and engineering expertise from the country.”

The depths of the problem (as well as the massive levels of corruption that went with it) could be measured by the fact that the electrical ministry spent only 26% of its capital budget in 2006; the remaining three-quarters went unspent. Yet, at that level of disbursement, it still outperformed most government agencies and ministries in a major way. Under pressure from American occupation officials to improve its performance in 2007, the government made concerted efforts to increase both its budget and its disbursements for reconstruction. Despite initially optimistic reports, the news was grim by year’s end. Actual expenditures on electrical infrastructure might, for example, have slipped to as low as 1% of the budgeted amount.

Even more symptomatic were the few successes in infrastructural rebuilding found by New York Times reporter James Glanz in a survey of capital construction throughout the country. Most of the successful programs he reviewed were initiated and managed by officials connected to local and provincial governments. They discovered that success actually depended on avoiding any interaction with the ineffective and corrupt central government. The provincial governor of Babil Province, Sallem S. al-Mesamawe, described the key to his province’s success: “We jumped over the routine, the bureaucracy, and we depend on new blood — a new team.” They had learned this lesson after using provincial money and local contractors to build a school, only to have it remain closed because the national government was unable to provide the necessary furniture.

The government’s staggering institutional incapacity is, in fact, a complex phenomenon with many sources beyond the drain of human capital. The flood of managers, professionals, and technicians out of the country, however, has been a critical obstacle to any productive reconstruction. Worse yet, the departure of so many crucial figures is probably to a considerable extent irreversible, ensuring a grim near-future for the country. After all, this has been a “brain drain” on a scale seldom seen in our era.

Many exiles still intend to, even long to, return when (or if) the situation improves, but time is always the enemy of such intentions. The moment an individual arrives in a new country, he or she begins creating social ties that become ever more significant as a new life takes hold — and this is even truer for those who leave with their families, as so many Iraqis have done. Unless this network-building process is disrupted, for many the probability of return fades with each passing month.

Those with marketable skills, even in the dire circumstances facing most Iraqi refugees, have little choice but to keep seeking work that exploits their training. The most marketable are the most likely to succeed and so to begin building new careers. As time slips by, the best, the brightest, and the most important carriers of precious human capital are lost.

The Displacement Tsunami

The degradation of Iraq under the American occupation regime was what initially set in motion the forces that led to the exile of much of the country’s most precious human resources — absolutely crucial capital, even if of a kind not usually considered when talk turns to investing in “nation building.” How, after all, can you “reconstruct” the ravaged foundations of a bombed-out nation without the necessary professional, technical, and managerial personnel? Without them, Iraq must continue its downward spiral toward a nation of slum cities.

The orgy of failure and corruption in 2007 was an unmitigated disaster for Iraqi society, as well as an embarrassment for the American occupation. From the point of view of long-term American goals in Iraq, however, this storm cloud, like so many others, had a silver lining. The Iraqi government’s incapacity to perform at almost any level became but further justification for the claims first made by L. Paul Bremer at the very beginning of the occupation: that the country’s reconstruction would be best handled by private enterprise. Moreover, the mass flight of Iraqi professionals, managers, and technicians has meant that expertise for reconstruction has simply been unavailable inside the country. This has, in turn, validated a second set of claims made by Bremer: that reconstruction could only be managed by large outside contractors.
This neoliberal reality was brought into focus in late 2007, as the last of the money allocated by the U.S. Congress for Iraqi reconstruction was being spent.
A “petroleum exodus” (first identified by the Wall Street Journal) had long ago meant that most of the engineers needed for maintaining the decrepit oil business were already foreigners, mostly “imported from Texas and Oklahoma.” The foreign presence had, in fact, become so pervasive that the main headquarters for the maintenance and development of the Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq (the source of more than two-thirds of the country’s oil at present) runs on both Iraqi and Houston time.
The American firms in charge of the field’s maintenance and development, KBR and PIJV, have been utilizing a large number of subcontractors, most of them American or British, very few of them Iraqi.

These American-funded projects, though, have been merely “stopgaps.” When the money runs out, vast new moneys will be needed just to sustain Rumaila’s production at its present level.
According to Harpers Magazine Senior Editor Luke Mitchell, who visited the field in the summer of 2007, Iraqi engineers and technicians are “smart enough and ambitious enough” to sustain and “upgrade” the system once the American contracts expire, but such a project would take upwards of two decades because of the compromised condition of the government and the lack of skilled local engineers and technicians. The likely outcome, when the American money departs, therefore is either an inadequate effort in which work proceeds “only in fits and starts;” or, more likely, new contracts in which the foreign companies would “continue their work,” paid for by the Iraqi government.

With regard to the petroleum industry, therefore, what the refugee crisis guaranteed was long-term Iraqi dependence on outsiders. In every other key infrastructural area, a similar dependence was developing: electrical power, the water system, medicine, and food were, de facto, being “integrated” into the global system, leaving oil-rich Iraq dependent on outside investment and largesse for the foreseeable future. Now, that’s a twenty-year plan for you, one that at least 4.5 million Iraqis, out of their homes and, in many cases, out of the country as well, will be in no position to participate in.

Most horror stories come to an end, but the most horrible part of this horror story is its never-ending quality. Those refugees who have left Iraq now face a miserable limbo life, as Syria and other receiving countries exhaust their meager resources and seek to expel many of them. Those seeking shelter within Iraq face the depletion of already minimal support systems in degrading host communities whose residents may themselves be threatened with displacement.
From the vast out-migration and internal migrations of its desperate citizens comes damage to society as a whole that is almost impossible to estimate.
The displacement of people carries with it the destruction of human capital. The destruction of human capital deprives Iraq of its most precious resource for repairing the damage of war and occupation, condemning it to further infrastructural decline. This tide of infrastructural decline is the surest guarantee of another wave of displacement, of future floods of refugees.

As long as the United States keeps trying to pacify Iraq, it will create wave after wave of misery.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency. This report on the Iraqi refugee crisis is from his forthcoming Tomdispatch book, War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context (Haymarket Books, June 2007). His work on Iraq has appeared on numerous Internet sites, including Tomdispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and ZNET. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.

Some 4.7 million Iraqi citizens — one fifth of the population — have been forcibly displaced, within and outside their country, by the US occupation and the policies of the sectarian governments it installed since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is a human catastrophe, a national tragedy, and a destabilising factor for the region. This exodus has been labelled “the fastest growing humanitarian crisis on the planet”, unprecedented in size since the 1948 Nakba that uprooted at least one million Palestinians from their land.

While propaganda boasts about some 25,000 returnees, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the primary international agency responsible for refugees, warned last month that conditions for the safe return of Iraqis were not met on the ground and that the few who returned in November 2007 did not do so — contrary to what the so-called government in Iraq pretends — because of security improvements in Iraq, but rather because their means of survival are deteriorating gravely elsewhere. Among the main reasons leading some to return are harsh new restrictions on residency permits in hosting countries, denials of access to schooling and higher education for their children, and the depletion of emergency savings. Many returnees found that others were occupying their homes in Iraq, forcing them to look yet again for shelter. The government in Iraq finally acknowledged that it could not sustain massive return were it to take place.

The 4.7 million Iraqi refugees who fled for their lives, uprooted from their homes by the disproportionate force used by the occupation and campaigns of ethnic cleansing carried out by militias affiliated to its sectarian governments, are living testimony to the inhuman — and anti- human rights — American invasion and occupation of Iraq. At least 1.5 million Iraqis have been brutally murdered, thousands disappeared or detained, hundreds of thousands widowed. The modern Iraqi educated middle class, vital now and in the future to run the state, the economy, and build Iraqi culture, has been decimated. Following systematic assassinations, imprisonment, military raids and sieges, threats and discrimination, most of what remained of that class left the country. The absence of this middle class has resulted in the breakdown of all public services for the entirety of Iraqi society. No propaganda can call the occupation a success while so many people are suffering its consequences.

Of the 4.7 million displaced, four fifths are women and children. All have inadequate or non- existent access to security, food, shelter, education, sanitation, health, and basic necessities such as water and electricity. In addition to the brain drain that Iraq suffered since the start of the occupation, whether through systematic killings or displacement, refugee children are currently losing their universal right to education in being unable to attend schools. It is an individual tragedy for refugees and a disaster for the future of Iraq. UNHCR is dramatically under-financed to meet the needs of these millions displaced. It has made repeated pleas for enhanced international donations to support its basic functioning and the fulfilment of its humanitarian mission.

While Iraqi refugees cannot safely return home, they cannot wait until violence ends in Iraq for their needs to be met. The key hosting countries bearing the millions of displaced Iraqis are home already to large refugee populations and are developing economies. With their own citizens suffering unemployment, Iraqi refugees are denied work permits and permanent residency. In addition, these key hosting states are not signatories to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and therefore not bound by its principles — even in instances denying the customary international legal obligation of non-refoulement (prohibition on the expulsion of refugees to an area where they may face persecution). As a consequence, Iraqis are denied status, considered tourists with no recognised passport or residence, and left economically and socially vulnerable. All indicators of social desperation are present while reports of increasing resort to degrading means of survival keep arising.

According to international humanitarian and human rights law, the international community, the occupying powers, and the government in Iraq are legally bound to support and protect Iraqi refugees. Neither the occupation with the governments it has installed nor individual states and the international community have met their legal and moral obligations towards displaced Iraqis or the countries hosting them. Iraqi refugees are temporarily displaced Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, the right to benefit from national resources, and the right to return to their homes. They are protected persons under The Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, as well as several instruments of international law that relate to refugees.

IRAQI INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE ON REFUGEES: On 25 November 2007, the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees ( www.3iii.org ) issued a proposal to support, protect and defend refugees and their rights as Iraqi citizens by changing the financing system of responsible agencies and hosting countries. The proposal asks the UN Security Council to pass a resolution requiring that the Iraqi state allocate part of the revenue from Iraqi oil — in proportion with the number of Iraqi citizens temporarily displaced — for Iraqi refugees in hosting countries.

Such a resolution is urgently needed, legally justified and politically appropriate. It is the only efficient way for the country of origin and the international community to fulfil their legal and moral obligations towards both Iraqi refugees and hosting countries while preserving the rights of refugees and their dignity as Iraqi citizens. Further, such a resolution is not only justified but respecting of existing jurisprudence on state responsibility and refugee protection, while in accordance with the primary mission of the UN to preserve international peace and security, protect civilian populations and enhance human civilisation. No legal objection can be raised against this proposal. Moreover, an example of redistributing national resources equitably by means of a UN Security Council resolution exists in the case of Iraq.

In 1991, Turkey shut its borders to the flow of refugees coming mainly from northern Iraq, refusing to apply the principle of non- refoulement. As a consequence, the UN Security Council, realising this principle wasn’t sufficient to protect the refugee population, instituted new practices in refugee protection. Article 8b of UN Security Council Resolution 986 of 1995 obliged the Iraqi state to allocate part of Iraqi national resources to the population not under the authority of the Iraqi government (the three northern governorates). This resolution was passed on humanitarian grounds, in order “to ensure equitable distribution of humanitarian relief to all segments of Iraqi society”, including to Iraqi citizens who were residing in the three northern governorates that were not administratively supervised by the central government. Current Iraqi refugees are in the same situation of being outside the supervision of the central government governing Iraq.

UN Security Council resolutions 1314 and 1325 further emphasised the tendency in international jurisprudence on the protection of refugee populations to insist on the responsibility of states to assist civilians, including refugees and the displaced. This tendency is further reflected in UNHCR appeals and the final declaration of the World Summit in 2005. Resolutions 986, 1314 and 1325 created a legal precedent that obliges and allows the UNSC to draft and pass a resolution now requiring the allocation of a proportionate part of Iraqi oil revenues to current Iraqi refugees, so as to protect their human rights and in the knowledge that Iraqi oil is the property of all Iraqis, inside or outside Iraq, as established by UNSC Resolution 986.

UNDERCUTTING THE LOGIC OF VIOLENCE: As well as establishing the duty to protect, international jurisprudence on refugees often places emphasis on helping the country of origin to eradicate the causes of violence that displaces the population. The proposal of the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees adheres to this logic too. US policy towards Iraq, since 1991, has been to destroy its political, military and economic capacities in an attempt to divide it into three or more entities in order to seize its natural resources. The ethnic cleansing currently taking place under the orchestration of the US occupation is intrinsically linked to the latter’s attempt to control Iraq’s resources by promoting and manipulating sectarian identities.

From the first day of the occupation the US supported sectarian forces, themselves sufficiently weak, illegitimate and conflicted that they are unable to create a functioning state, therefore requiring the never-ending help, presence, protection and direction of the US itself. The so- called political process in which these forces participate is only tolerated so long as it oversees and ensures the dismantlement of the unified and sovereign Iraqi state, its institutions and infrastructure; dismembers Iraqi society and its social fabric along sectarian and confessional lines; and helps the occupation in repressing the national popular resistance of the Iraqi people. This strategy was pursued throughout the occupation as a means to destroy Iraq both as a state and as a nation, to subjugate its people into surrendering their national resources to US corporations and interests.

Yet despite 15 years of continuous attempts to subjugate Iraq and its people, whether through economic sanctions, war of aggression or occupation, US policy failed. By 2006, the occupation opted to delegate to the various sectarian forces and militias it had promoted the task of forcibly uprooting the local resilient population, thereafter seizing their resources. The political process and the ethnic cleansing it perpetrates is but an instrumentalised power struggle among various sectarian factions competing for the political and/or economic rewards granted by the occupation for depriving the Iraqi people of their sovereignty by displacing them and achieving local control over areas and attendant resources.

Whole areas have been purged of resident minorities by one militia or another, effectively changing the demographic make-up of entire regions and neighbourhoods, especially in Baghdad, while keeping one of the collaborating militia in control in any given locale, over the people and its resources. Though sectarianism starts with attacking minorities and the weak, it soon spreads to all components of society, as each can be, somewhere, a majority or a minority. The occupation itself changes its affiliations as it doesn’t need to consider itself permanently bound to the respective agendas of each faction and defends only its own interest. This criminal strategy ensures a never-ending cycle of violence that can only be stopped by the end of its root cause: the US occupation. By now, all Iraqis have been affected — all sections of Iraqi society have been forced to flee.

While the occupation uses forcible displacement as a means of blackmail to, alternately, terrorise the population, destabilise hosting countries and plunder Iraq’s wealth, a UNSC resolution requiring the Iraqi state allocate the proportionate and legitimate share of Iraqi national wealth to Iraqi refugees would effectively deny the occupation its goals and deprive its sectarian forces of the benefits of displacing the population for economic or political gains. It would render the entire tactic of forcible displacement obsolete, as its victims would be guaranteed their share of national revenue by law as well as right.

THE OBLIGATION TO ACT: The UN Security Council, as the highest UN body, has the political, legal and moral duty and authority to act to protect the millions of displaced Iraqis. Following 13 years of disastrous UN-imposed sanctions that according to two former UN assistant secretary-generals satisfied the definition of genocide under international law, the UN Security Council failed to act to protect the state and people of Iraq, or condemn and censure those responsible for launching an illegal war of aggression against a member state of the United Nations. Its silence on the horrendous human and material cost paid by Iraqis since the illegal 2003 US invasion is not only shameful but also criminal.

A UNSC resolution on Iraqi refugees would end the complicity of the UN in this crime, expose the occupation’s illegality and hypocrisy, as well as the barbaric and inhuman nature of the policies the US has been pursuing in Iraq since its illegal invasion in 2003. If we are to re- establish a peaceful international order, US imperialism must be constrained. It promotes sectarianism everywhere. It then uses the plight of those made refugees by sectarian violence as a political tool to blackmail and destabilise both countries of origin and hosting countries. Finally, it uses refugees as a justification for “humanitarian” intervention, regardless of state sovereignty, while obscuring the massive humanitarian crises it generates by its own sectarian policies.

As shown by UNHCR figures, most displaced Iraqis refuse to be treated as refugees. They consider being granted status and resettled a de facto victory for the occupation and its policies of pushing the population out of Iraq and depriving it of its national rights. All Iraqis know the occupation’s plans have failed completely and cannot be recovered. As Iraqi citizens, they know they are sovereign over the resources of Iraq, now and in the future. Further, they are conscious collectively of the dramatic situation of their Palestinian sisters and brothers who, despite having been guaranteed the unalienable right of return by UN Resolution 194, have been denied return for nearly 60 years. While their right is being bargained by some and used as political blackmail by others, they are forced to live in camps and from international charity. Iraqis refuse to lose their rights in Iraq, or accept the humiliation of having to beg while they are sovereign over one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. They hope Iraq will be liberated soon, allowing them to return home safely.

Finally, a UNSC resolution as described would protect and defend the Iraqi people’s rights while defending universal human values. It would enhance the permanent sovereignty of the Iraqi people over their national resources, thereby derailing the primary goals of aggressive imperialist states of forcing smaller states’ economies, their population and resources, into submission by military means. This would be a victory for humanity worldwide while upholding the endangered superiority of law and the duty to protect human life above private or exclusive state, corporate and individual interests.

While protecting the sovereign rights of Iraq and its people, now and in the future, a UNSC resolution as described would condemn the feudal plague of sectarianism, binding the future and destiny of Iraqi citizens together as members of the same state and nation, benefiting equally from the distribution of its national resources. Unfortunately for the occupation, while there are religious and cultural differences among Iraqi refugees, all are Iraqi citizens with protected rights, and all are bound to each other by the past, present and future of their nation as well as their common situation and destiny. By considering and treating all as equal citizens of a unified state free from all forms of discrimination, whether ethnic, confessional or of gender, a UNSC resolution as described would pave the way for a sane basis for healing Iraq’s wounds as a nation, also upholding the concept of citizenship — the basis of any modern state — against the occupation’s current tribal, sectarian and feudal concept of identity. It would be a preventive action against the politics of divide and rule and the use of ethnic cleansing as a political instrument to control the common riches of a people.

The UNSC should draft and pass a resolution as described if it wants to rehabilitate itself from its consistent failure to uphold its own legal charter, protect the people of Iraq and state of Iraq, as well as international peace and stability. Such a resolution defends the principle of equality before law, the permanent sovereignty of people over their national resources, and the unalienable right of refugees to return to their homes, thereby giving the UNSC opportunity to break away from its perpetual double standards in the implementation of international justice.

Iraqis have paid a price that leaves one wordless in defending human life and values. Humanity should feel responsible for protecting these people in their heroic struggle for national liberation and take immediate steps to defend their rights and their sovereignty.

• The writer is coordinator of the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees (www.3iii.org).

BAGHDAD — Dr. Ahmed Farid heard it from his family and saw it with his own eyes: his old neighborhood in Baghdad is safer, maybe secure enough to move back from the city of Basra.

Since his family left the capital city in fall 2006, one of the most brutal periods since the war began, he’s worked two medical jobs to cover rent and food. His children study in crumbling school buildings with 55 students to one teacher. Basra is close to his wife’s family, but violence is boiling and Shiite Muslim power struggles continue.

Still, he won’t return to Jihad, his Baghdad neighborhood, just yet. It’s the place where he was a target for kidnappers, his daughter woke daily from panicked nightmares and he’s not sure he can find a job.

“I think of going back,” he said after visiting his old neighborhood during Eid ald Adha celebrations last month. “But I can’t guarantee I will find the comfort, security and accommodations I have here.”

Farid, like millions of other Iraqis who fled the bombs and ambushes in 2006 and 2007, is choosing between the rising costs of displacement and the painful memories of home. For 2008, those choices will become even more difficult as Iraqi officials work to woo them back to their neighborhoods, whether services and security are ready or not.

An estimated 2 million Iraqis are living in neighboring countries; another 2.4 million have fled their homes but remain scattered around Iraq. Former residents of Baghdad make up nearly 60 percent, according to estimates.

As violence dropped in the final months of 2007, thousands of people who’d fled their homes returned, especially in Baghdad. Statistics about how many have come home vary, but Iraq’s Ministry of Displacement and Migration estimated in early December that 30,000 had returned from other countries, along with 10,000 who’d gone home from other parts of Iraq.

That success also will be 2008’s challenge, as uneasy peace and overtaxed services and utilities leave the country unprepared for mass returns.

Abdul Samad Rahman Sultan, Iraq’s migration minister, said the government would need help from other countries and aid organizations to make it possible for people to return. He said the government hoped to resettle people in the neighborhoods they’d left.

“The focus will be on returning them to their original living places, or perhaps to other residences inside their old neighborhoods,” he said.

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that goal would be difficult to meet, and he predicted violence as homeowners and squatters battle over property. Petraeus warned that some people will have to resign themselves to never being able to reclaim their homes.

“That is not ideal, not right, not legal, not a lot of things, but it is reality,” he said last week. “This is just going to remain a very, very tough issue for some time.”

Coalition forces will offer some aid, but Petraeus said he didn’t have ground forces capable of organizing returns, settling property debates and maintaining safety. Those solutions will have to come from Iraqis, he said.

Dana Graber Ladek, a displacement specialist in Iraq for the International Organization for Migration, said fewer people had left their homes in 2007 compared with 2006 as security improved and neighborhoods that used to have both Sunni and Shiite Muslim residents became more homogenous.

Iraqis also had fewer options to leave because of restrictions from nearby countries that couldn’t handle droves of jobless refugees.

Ladek said that for those who didn’t come home this year conditions would worsen as costs rose and savings dwindled.

Middle-class Iraqis — “teachers, doctors, nurses and shopkeepers” — who ran out of money are the biggest group of returnees, Staffan de Mistura, a United Nations envoy in Iraq, said in December, when he warned against a mass return.

The moves already have started in some neighborhoods, such as Khadhraa, a wealthy Sunni-majority district in western Baghdad. Iraqi national police Lt. Col. Raad Ismaeel said his unit had guided the return of about 150 families, including many Shiites. The only return-related violence so far involved a displaced Shiite family that wasn’t originally from the neighborhood.

“Those who are returning are opening their arms to their neighbors. They were living in misery when they were displaced,” Ismaeel said. “Imagine someone who owns a house in a high-class neighborhood paying rent and being displaced again and again. They were desperate to come back.”

For all the improvements in Khadhraa — a 225-member citizen militia, a dozen checkpoints, newly paved roads, functioning telephone service — not everybody is convinced, Ismaeel said. So many people lost family members, property and jobs that they won’t come back unless the government helps them start over and offers consistent water, electricity, food and — most importantly — security.

“I hope refugees will talk to people living here, be convinced to come back, even if there’s no room and people have to stand on the bus,” Ismaeel said. “No matter what, they will not want to leave again.”

(Gumbrecht reports for the Lexington Herald-Leader. McClatchy special correspondents Mohammed al Dulaimy and Hussein Khadim contributed to this report.)

Demanding of our attention and action today is the terrible plight of Iraqi refugees, both those outside the country and internally displaced persons (IDPs) within. They number to date a fifth of the Iraqi population.

This tragic human dislocation has been created by the active violation of the UN Charter and other aspects of international law. This violation was demonstrated during the American terrorism of “Shock and Awe”, and the invasion of sovereignty, disruption of culture, destruction of civilian infrastructure that it entailed and epitomised. Irreparable damage to society and fundamental human rights has ensued. This outrageous unprovoked act of aggression brought to Iraq yet again the horrors of war. Bush and Blair’s pre-emptive strike has led to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Current credible estimations put the figure at over one million since 2003.

During the occupation, the atrocities of the US-UK have become only too well known — cluster bombing, white phosphorus, and the use of depleted uranium. Some 250,000 US “heroes”, added to over 100,000 private sector hired guns, have maimed and killed civilians. “Collateral damage” is the obscene term used in Washington. This illegal war has brought on the terrible violence of legitimate resistance. US propaganda and Washington’s intentions have set in motion the horrors of sectarian strife. The American and British intention to crush Iraq, its people and any “threat” they supposedly posed, has been tragically accomplished.

The consequences are many, and as always in the modern history of Iraq the people have paid the price with their lives, and their wellbeing. Imperialism, power, greed in respect of oil, and ambition for a strategic military location central to the wider region, have destroyed the Iraq many of us knew. But, of course, the spirit of the Iraqi people is indestructible. They cannot be broken. They will resist, drive out all intruders, and they will recover. The people of Iraq will overcome the catastrophes of recent years.

Over and above massive loss of civilian life, is the tragic consequence of refugees. It is estimated some 4.7 million children, women and men have been forced from their homes and have fled — some displaced within and some outside Iraq. More that 20 per cent of the entire population have been brutally uprooted by the violence of this war of aggression — a war crime for which the US-UK, along with others, must be held responsible.

And I am advised that some two thirds of those driven out, displaced and impoverished thereby, are women; just as under sanctions, it is the women and their children that pay the highest price. We are hearing of “survival prostitution”. We know of the suffering, deprivation and indignities that women face under the terrible circumstances of being homeless — being refugees whilst struggling to keep families alive and intact.

And we cannot forget those Iraqi refugees and IDPs created by 13 years of genocidal UN sanctions — sanctions targeting the children of Iraq, set in motion and maintained by the US/UK-driven Security Council, with deadly consequences.

Despite the loud silence in Washington and London, some UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) work for assisting the refugees of Iraq is ongoing. It is too little. It lacks publicity. It lacks resources. It lacks adequate recognition and support by those responsible in the US and UK for this human calamity.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is appealing for increased bilateral aid and “humanitarian visas”, the latter for neighbouring countries such as Syria and further afield. In the case of Syria, some 1.5 million refugees are creating great pressure — thus the reluctance to issue additional visas. Financing is desperately needed for housing and other refugee needs.

Regarding the internally displaced, UNHCR reports over 800,000 in Iraqi Kurdistan close to the Turkish border. The current instability on that border is creating new problems for such people, leading to further displacement. UNHCR reports that some 2.3 million Iraqis are displaced throughout the country. Of these, more than one million were displaced prior to 2003, during the UN sanctions period. Another 190,000 were displaced between 2003-05 and more than one million since the first American bombing of Samarra in February 2006.

UNHCR estimates that in addition to more than 1.5 million in Syria, some 500-700,000 Iraqis have fled to Jordan. Some families are receiving small allowances of $100-200 per month, but many are suffering badly as private funds run out. Housing is too expensive, school is unaffordable if available at all, unemployment prevails, and medical and even food requirements cannot be met adequately.

As recently as 23 November, UNHCR Geneva, noting reports of limited returns home by a few refugees, said it is ready to assist but does not believe it is timely to organise and promote returns until secure conditions are in place. Meantime, as one would expect of Iraqi parents, many want to get home so their children can go back to school before the end of the first term.

In respect of IDPs, UNHCR notes an increase in the past few months, making for a total estimate by the Red Cross/Red Crescent of some 2.4 million. This may be due to desperation, unending violence and closed borders, and tragically the continuation of “ethnic cleansing” — a sadly familiar form of violence which the occupying forces together with the government have failed to halt.

It is a picture of human tragedy. Perhaps the more so on account of the wealth of Iraq, the innocence of its people swept up in a war not of their making, and the great potential for human wellbeing that resides in its soil.

The chaos, the killing, the atrocities set in motion, the irreparable damage was brought about when the UN Security Council froze into legislative inertia, and thereby facilitated corruption of the word and spirit of the UN Charter. That failure enabled US terrorism, invasion and military occupation in violation of sovereignty and many international legal safeguards. Yet another example of UN double standards — the permanent five of the Security Council consider themselves above the law.

Some readers will be aware that an important initiative has recently been launched from a new group known as “The Iraqi International Initiative for Iraqi Refugees”, working out of the region. The goals, terms of reference and the plan of action of this initiative can be found on a new website: www.3iii.org.

In brief, the initiative recognises that the refugees and internally displaced of Iraq, as citizens of Iraq. have a right to access national financial resources from oil revenue. And I believe that all of us who care about justice and peace need to provide active support. As a group, or as individuals, there is a role for each one of us.

The website www.3iii.org reminds us that the international community and the present government in Baghdad have legal obligations to support and protect refugees and the internally displaced adequately. (See the terms of reference of the UNHCR). Iraqi refugees are no different to others, and have equal rights under international provisions, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to dignity, the right of return, safety for their families, employment, security, and the right to life.

The Iraqi International Initiative argues that the Security Council has an obligation to demand of the international community and the Baghdad government that Iraqi oil revenue funding be provided now through appropriate agencies and hosting governments. It demands that such assistance also be provided for return and resettlement as conditions of security and infrastructure allow. The website www.3iii.org provides more information and contains a petition you may wish to sign — and that might be a good starting point.

Just as Iraq has and continues to pay billions of dollars in reparations through the UN for damage in Kuwait, it is clear that similar, although much greater, reparations are due to the people of Iraq. Thus in addition to Iraq’s own revenues for refugees, I propose for consideration by public opinion that the Security Council be urged by the governments of member states of the General Assembly to endorse a resolution requiring the payment of an immediate advance on such reparations. I speak of the reparations that the US, UK and others involved in the war of aggression on Iraq must be forced to pay.

It is difficult to determine the size, but reparations from the US and others would seem to require some 2-3 trillion Euros. We of the EU, UK, US, Australia, Canada and other wealthy collaborators — aggressive nations all — cannot be excused. Reparations are a must. The same UN that failed to stop Bush and Blair now has an obligation to determine the amount of reparations, and how and when payments begin. We cannot bring back the Iraqi lives we have taken, but we can support reconstruction and the return of refugees and IDPs, and the rebuilding of millions of shattered lives.

The website www.3iii.org on the Iraqi refugee crisis can speak for itself. However, I suspect like me that many readers are deeply concerned about the many crises of the region. We can not forget the occupation of Palestine, or the threats to Iran, or the violence continuing in Afghanistan, and real uncertainties elsewhere, but we need to respond to the human catastrophe of some 4.7 million Iraqi refugees and IDPs urgently.

In this article I have focused on Iraqi refugees. Other related issues also need to be addressed. I refer to the abolition, or at least reform of the UN Security Council, to have the South properly represented in rotating but permanent seats; suspension of the US and UK from the Council pending prosecution of the leadership that undertook invasion and occupation; and the mandatory payment of reparations to Iraq by the US, UK and other collaborators, which I have mentioned.

I call for an international investigation of US atrocities, torture, murder of civilians, CIA renditions, use of gun slingers acting outside of any law, arbitrary imprisonment of thousands, use of depleted uranium, cluster bombing, and the genocidal destruction of cities and towns such as Fallujah.

And believe we must demand the immediate withdrawal of all “enemy combatants” — be they American, British or from any other source; the creation of conditions for the election of a representative government free of outside interference; abolition of the constitution illegally drafted by the US under military occupation; and encouraging free and proper Iraqi decision making on such issues as privatisation, oil revenues, and the presence of US military bases.

It is urgent that we assist our Iraqi friends find the shortest possible route to the restoration of their national sovereignty. We need to demand an end to all forms of foreign interference. And we need to recognise that the people of Iraq alone can best determine what is to be the future for their country, and in what manner that future is to be pursued, and obtained.

The writer is former UN assistant secretary-general and among the first endorsers of the Iraqi International Initiative on Iraqi Refugees (www.3iii.org).

The statistics are official, confirmed by UN humanitarian and other organizations, there is a “Surge “ of more than 4.5 million refugees, citizens of Iraq, who have fled from the invasion and even more brutal occupation. Among the displaced are Shias, Sunnis, Turkmen, Kurds, Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, Sabians and others. The accident of birth in a particular religion or denomination, has not spared any of them from being compelled to leave regions and cities where their ancestors lived from time immemorial. Iraq has seen collective killings of more than a million people, systematic destruction of its economy and peoples’ livelihood, though every member State of the United Nations is legally entitled to protection against aggression and occupation by the UN Charter, the primary raison d’etre for the United Nations, apart from humanitarian and other agencies to coordinate policies.

Even as the Security Council and diverse agencies of the UN convene in the comfort of their conference rooms, a whole society continues to be devoured and people displaced are abandoned, while the government of Iraq installed by the Occupation, enters into private agreements with the Occupying powers which are illegal and unconstitutional, not approved by the people of Iraq .

Whereas the Occupying powers misuse soldiers of their Republics and so called’ Democracies’, constitutionally mandated only to defend their societies; it is no longer concealed, that the second largest force entrusted with the collective killings and destruction of Iraqi society and the theft of oil resources, acquiesced to by the proxy Iraqi government, is of mercenaries, supplied by Security Companies and agencies of the US-UK among others, outsourcing killings and destruction, which has led to the displacement of millions .

The message sent out by the global corporate monopoly media, with blood curdling narratives of the killings and destruction, the engineered killings through car bombs by the Occupying forces — on the pattern of the bombings in Ireland by special forces (one of the first colonies) — on the pounding of heroic cities and towns led by Falluja, defying the mercenaries of the ‘Private’ killing agencies, is, that the abyss of daily violence and anarchy, is the fate of people who resist the ‘diktat’ of Corporate governments for seizure of national budgets and natural resources. The media however miscalculated, despite training for ‘Psychological Operations’, not anticipating that the horrors of occupation would establish the connection, between Corporate entities and societies with a blood soaked history of seizing surpluses, and that more than one government would be seen as an instrument of this ‘Mafia’. The use of the Blackwater Company mercenaries, during Hurricane Katrina and the displacement of African American and other citizens of poorer communities, rounded up as refugees, not permitted to return to their homes in New Orleans, was a small experiment within the United States, of the victimization of working people on the agenda, in a manner similar to those subject to occupation.

Even as we place the policies of heads of states of the US-UK among other corporate controlled governments under the scanner, it is time to test and analyse the nature of decision making of the Security Council hitherto veiled, as these International organizations are maintained and function not by the contributions of oligarchies or corporate bodies, but are dependent on payments from national exchequers, contributed to, by hard working citizens of countries which are member states of the United Nations.

The Security Council from 1990, the period hailed as the end of the ‘Cold War’, after which a new colonial offensive was launched with impunity by the ‘Unipolar New World Order ‘ for the restructuring of several States, exacerbating the flood of refugees, is increasingly seen as an instrument of occupation of corporate controlled governments, hungering after the resources of more than one country and has not yet responded to refugees fleeing several occupied countries.

In this context it is relevant to assess the ingenious Oil For Food Program of the Security Council instituted at the instance of the US, UK governments, curiously supported by permanent members of the Security Council among others, which was in fact a program to deny food and nutrition, to soften Iraqi society for invasion and occupation. In December 1995 in the fifth year of imposition of sanctions on the people of Iraq, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization ( FAO ) reported that “more than a million Iraqis have died, 576 ,000 of them children, as a direct consequence of economic sanctions. As many as 12% children surveyed in Baghdad are wasted, 28% stunted and 29% underweight .” The UNICEF confirmed these figures.

Following a visit to Iraq Hiroshi Nakajima Sama, the WHO Director General during the period of sanctions imposed by the Security Council reported – “ Government drug warehouses and pharmacies have few stocks of medicines and medical supplies. The consequences of the situation are causing a near breakdown of the health care system which is reeling under the pressure of being deprived of medicines “.

Two International Civil servants of repute resigned from their UN assignments in Iraq, in quick succession. Both the UN Humanitarian Coordinators for Iraq, denounced the Oil for Food Program instituted by the Security Council, on the grounds that the amount of 4 to 5 billion dollars of allocation to the government of Iraq, from the sales of the restricted quota of permitted Oil production under the regime of sanctions out of the Food For Oil Program, was wholly inadequate to meet the requirements of 25 million of the people of Iraq and was akin to genocide.

Even 17 years after the first Gulf War what is the situation in respect of allocation from the Oil revenues of Iraq? Private Companies of the US, UK, Israel, Kuwait among others have been paid out of Iraqi Oil revenues, on directions of the Security Council, on a priority basis for the alleged loss of profits caused by the first Gulf War, even for the loss of tourism to Israel, though it is universally accepted that the people of Iraq are destitute, fleeing the Occupation, refugees in several countries. The Security Council has taken no steps to stop these payments to these companies and governments, despite the fact that the governments of the US, UK, Israel, Kuwait and other countries have in violation of International Law and the UN Charter, committed aggression or permitted the Occupation forces, overtly or covertly, to establish military bases and platforms for the invasion and continuing occupation and for logistic support for what is a crime of aggression in accordance with the Nuremberg principles. The invasion was not approved by the Security Council, a position publicly affirmed by the then Secretary General Mr.Kofi Anan. The Security Council in view of this position is required to support payment of war reparations to the people of Iraq .

Moreover, there has been no monitoring by the Security Council of the Development Fund for Iraq, or the balance in the Oil For Food Program on occupation, or the expenditure after occupation from Iraqi Oil revenues. It was reported by Christian Aid, a Charity organization in the UK, that the Occupying powers have failed to account for 20 billion dollars and more of Iraqi Oil revenues, required to be spent, on relief and reconstruction of Iraq on a priority basis, and for Iraqi citizens displaced by the war and refugees in neighbouring countries. These were revenues from Iraqi Oil and gas exports permitted to be disposed off, by the Security Counci,l and required to be monitored, by the Security Council, which created the Oil For Food Program and account as a part of the Development Fund for Iraq. The monitoring of expenditure from Oil revenues is mandatory, as no occupying power is permitted to pillage resources, more so since the Occupying powers repeatedly deny that the Occupation is fascistic, for seizure of resources by Companies (Alan Greenspan notwithstanding) and is only with the objective of introducing “democracy” and “freedom “ to the people of Iraq, more than one million of whom have been killed for this purpose, with a fifth of the entire population of Iraq displaced or in exile .

What is the truth? The documentation of the truth leads to an extraordinary Presidential Executive Order No. 13303, signed by the President of the United States of America on 22nd May 2003, titled “ Protecting the Development Fund For Iraq and Certain Other Property in which Iraq has an Interest “. It begins with the declaration that the possibility of future legal claims on Iraq’s oil wealth constitutes “an extraordinary threat to national security and foreign policy of the United States “ ………….and that “ any …..judicial process is prohibited , and shall be deemed to be null and void “ with regard to the Development Fund for Iraq, as well as any commercial operation conducted by US Corporations involved in the Iraqi Oil industry. Section 1 ( b) of this Executive Order eliminates all judicial process for “ Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products , and interests therein and proceeds……”

Tom Levine , Legal Director for the Government Accountability Project ( GAP ) in the United States, a non-profit legal firm opines that: “ In terms of legal liability …….the Executive Order cancels the concept of Corporate Accountability and abandons the rule of law.” The Executive Order of President George Bush and his government exempts Oil companies operating in Iraq illegally not only from International Law, but from American civil law and criminal liability.

The situation on the ground exposes that whereas more than 4.5 million citizens of Iraq are refugees, without access to livelihood or any financial assistance from the Iraqi national budget and Oil revenues and their displacement has been premeditated and a deliberate act of war, the production of Iraqi Oil by US and other Companies in Iraq is not even being metered since the invasion.

The Security Council which initiated the Oil For Food program and strictly monitored the allocation from this program, preventing the people of Iraq from accessing the basic needs of their society and thereafter directed the conduct of an alleged inquiry at the instance of the United States government, regarding deviations by officials of the UN among other officials/ministers of other countries from the Oil For Food Program prior to the invasion, to camouflage the US-UK Companies pillage of the Development Fund of Iraq and the amount credited to the Oil For Food Program and from Iraqi Oil revenues; must now act and direct the US government and Occupying forces and the Iraqi government installed by the Occupation, to allocate out of the Oil revenues of Iraq, the necessary funds required for refugees and those internally displaced by the aggression and the brutal occupation, which has hired criminal elements of “Salvador death squads “, of more than one militia, alternatively attacking Sunnis and Shias, Turkmen and Kurds, Christians and Muslims to dismember Iraq, with millions turned out of their homes and country.

For the heads of State and peoples of the Arab countries, of Iran, of the entire affected region, it is necessary to recall the statement of the Judges of Egypt, released by their President Zakaria Ahmed Abdel -Aziz in March 2003, denouncing the occupation of Iraq by the US, UK and other powers, as a colonial occupation declaring that: – “ First , the most fundamental reason behind this ongoing calamity is the debility of the ( Arab ) nation. There can be no dignity and freedom for a nation that fails to protect the dignity of its citizens ……..it is the duty of the Arab and Muslim peoples that have a commitment to humanity, to do everything within their power to repel the aggression; to declare their hostility to all who wage it; to denounce those who decline to act or stop it……………The Judges of Egypt salute the stand taken by the world’s people “.

As the Iraqi people with heads not yet bowed, live and struggle, many in exile, yet an integral part of the heroic nation of Iraq which lives on, which will live on, there are lessons for the citizens of Occupying powers soon to be impacted by homelessness and financial collapse. The aggression in Iraq has not been able to save the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency or the US UK economies among others impacted. The rot is much deeper. The working people of these societies and the soldiers of the Occupying forces are the victims of the same system , which has devastated the lives of millions in countries attacked or occupied or devastated by economic policies .

Nilofer Bhagwat