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TechnoratiDAMASCUS - More Iraqis continue to flee their country than the numbers returning, despite official claims to the contrary.Thousands fleeing say security is as bad as ever, and that to return would be to accept death.
"Return to Iraq?" asks 35-year-old Ahmed Alwan, an Iraqi engineer now working at a restaurant in Damascus. "There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories."
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported September last year that there are between 1.2 and 1.4 million Iraqi refugees in Syria alone.
Most, like Alwan, do not intend to return.
"I shall never return to Iraq until the last American soldier and Iranian mullah leaves," Alwan says. "It is their country now, not ours. The only thing that might take me back is when I decide to fight for Iraq's real liberty."
Iraqi refugees in Syria speak of lack of security back home, lack of services, fear of the future, mistrust of Iraqi politicians, and loss of homes. Most are simply too afraid to return.
A UNHCR report issued last month contradicts reports by mainstream media in the U.S., and claims by the Bush administration, that more Iraqis are returning to their homes than the number leaving.
The report says that from February 2006-October 2007 Syria received between 30,000-60,000 refugees each month. Immigration officials at al-Tanf on the border say the daily average for those entering Syria from Iraq in late January was over 1,200, while the daily average crossing back was less than 700.
"Many assassinations take place all over Iraq, including Baghdad, and military operations are still being carried out the same way as 2004 and 2005," Nayil Mufeed, a security advisor with a mobile phone company in Baghdad told IPS. "We have advised our employers that moving out of Baghdad to Amman is a definite necessity in such a fragile security situation."
"Even if we believed that security is better in some areas, we know it is worse in other areas, and that it changes suddenly from one place to another," Farooq Munim, a retired school headmaster from Mosul, now a refugee in Syria told IPS.
"My city, Mosul, was safe for those who have no connection with Americans or government intelligence, but now it is not safe for anyone after the explosion at the Zinjilly neighbourhood that was carried out by Peshmerga (Kurdish militias) and Americans to justify the new surge against the city."
Mosul city, 300 km north of Baghdad, is under a major siege by the U.S. military supported by the Kurdish militia and Iraqi troops from southern Iraq. The city, a Sunni stronghold, has been a target for Kurdish militias attempting to cleanse it of its Arab majority in order to support claims that it is a Kurdish city.
Many Iraqis in Syria say they will not return for fear of detention.
"They (U.S. military) say Fallujah is safe now while over 800 men are detained there under the worst conditions," 25-year-old Omar, whose name is on a list of wanted persons by the local police, told IPS. "I am wanted by Fallujah police just because I helped some foreign journalists who visited the city to cover the American crime in 2004, and I showed them eyewitnesses who testified that there were Iraqis who helped the Americans destroy our city. At least 750 out of the 800 detainees are not resistance fighters, but people who refused to collaborate with occupation forces and their tails."
Iraqis commonly refer to Iraqis who collaborate with occupation forces as "tails of the Americans."
For Iraqis who do return home, the reasons usually have little to do with any perception that things are improving.
"If you do not mention my name and my company, I will tell you all about Iraqis returning home," a passenger transport company manager in Damascus told IPS. "People just move back and forth to check their property, cash their pensions and salaries and for other necessities, but the media make it look like people returning home."
"Some people did go back when they had nothing to spend any more, especially after the Iraqi government promised to pay them money on return," said the manager. "Many of them came back to Syria when they found that all those promises were just lies. On the other hand, Iraqis from the north and south are still fleeing because of the military operations everywhere in Iraq."
Another UN survey of Iraqis returning to their country found that "46 percent were leaving Syria because they could not afford to stay, 25 percent said they fell victim to a stricter Syrian visa policy; and only 14 percent said they were returning because they had heard about improved security."
Others do not return for financial reasons.
"It is cheaper here than in Iraq," Hanan Jabbar, a 38-year-old housewife who fled to Syria five months ago told IPS. "A litre of kerosene costs a dollar back home, while it's 10 cents here. That is just one example for how impossible life now is in Iraq. My kids go to school safely and play like other children now without me worrying to death about them. God bless Syria and Jordan for having us, and God damn America and all its allies for doing all this to us."
On many streets of Damascus today one finds more Iraqis than Syrians, partly because Syrians are at work while most Iraqis are unemployed. They hang around Internet cafés, tea houses and on the streets, looking out for any kind of work.
"I took my family back home in January," Rasool Mussa, a shopkeeper from Baghdad now a refugee in Damascus told IPS. "The first night we arrived, Americans raided our house and kept us all in one room while their snipers used our rooftop to shoot at people. I decided to come back here the next morning after a horrifying night that we will never forget."
Maki, our correspondent in Damascus, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East
© 2008 Inter Press Service
34 Comments so far
Show AllGentleman - the term for those who don't understand reality
(as we do) is 'cognitive dissonance'.
Vaudree - there are some very select Iraqi students studying at US universities by a front company named 'LINK'.
They get their education as long as they are studying petrogeology and promise to return to Iraq and work for US oil companies.
> People do rotten things because after careful consideration they decided to be rotten.
No. They'll do them after careless consideration tells them what they do is good.
It's very sad Iraqis die but after all, it is a battleground so the US soldiers we send to die there, we do so out of caring for Iraqis. Or so Bush supporters tell me since they can't tell me it was for WMD. The intent is good therefore the war must be good, to be against war is to be against good - against the safety of their children, the freedom of our country. And I know, the war doesn't really help any of that but that's not the point. The point is that many believe it does regardless of what you or I say. The alternative is inconceivable because, by their own logic, they'd have to be bad people.
"careful" and "consideration" are not words I associate with "Bush".
it is high time for the American People to reject the occupation and demand a redeployment of our troops. ITS ABOUT THE OIL! just hurry up with setting up another puppet dictatorship so america can happily return to the lalaland of 'freedom and the pursuit of happiness' meanwhile turning a blind eye to any dictator that will follow Washingtons line. As always the people in power will get filthy bloody rich, from the sacrifice of the blood of the american soldier. The power brokers retire to luxury, while the people go starving. Lets hope that the meek will truely inherit the earth.
Zephyrdenburg: Thank you for the term.
RE: - I feel betrayed because I believed the myth of America as the land of the free. Because of the internet I have been exposed to many ideas and I have researched some. What I learned shattered my view of the United States and its people.
Seems like there is no in between - the house of glass glistening in the sunlight and the pile of glass shards covered in the dust of corpses. There is good and bad in everything - even American history.
When the Jews were trying to escape Germany just prior to the start of WWII, Canada turned them away - America didn't. Canadian Jews tend to be the Russian Jews, which came earlier, rather than the German Jews. That we have a few is due to the work of one brave woman.
curmudgeon99 someone had to open their arms and fight the system tooth and nail to let in 800.
RE: - In Australia there are many Iraqi refugees that have been imprisoned for rape and being sexist pigs because in their country its ok.
How many of the white christian folk in Australia are only there due to an invitation a judge gave their ancestors? Australia started off as a penal colony.
Rape is wrong no matter who commits it. BTW - what is the capital of Ohio again?
Stephen Harper is suing the Leader of the Opposition for slander! The Opposition is accusing Harper's bunch of trying to bribe a dying man a million dollars so as to influence his vote.
Harper's bunch leaked a (as it turns out) inaccurate memo to CTV which decided to send it to the media around the world. They were sitting on that memo for a while waiting until after the Ohio debate.
Harper is sounding more and more like Brian Mulroney (PM and very close friends of Ronnie Reagan).
If you want to leave you country and can then fine as long as you adapt to that new countries laws.
In Australia there are many Iraqi refugees that have been imprisoned for rape and being sexist pigs because in their country its ok.
Just last week a man came up to me while i was in the shop, wearing jeans and a tee shirt and said "where is your man you indecent whore", like it was the wy to treat women with his wfe standing next to him like a pet dog with only her eyes showing.
Im fine with immigration as long as you adjust to the new country and get a job
Im fine with im
Lizard,
I beleive the term is dissonence, or anomie; the alienezation of the individual from the group from which they are a part.
I share this condition as well :)
Vaudree - the answer is ZERO!
we have grudgingly allowed about 800 refugees.
Lizard - welcome to the land of TRUTH.
Traveling to the Middle East was my wake-iup call.
sLiMsHaDy: I have always alienated people. I got Best Personality award though. See, I believe that Americans must realize what the true history of their country is. I feel betrayed because I believed the myth of America as the land of the free. Because of the internet I have been exposed to many ideas and I have researched some. What I learned shattered my view of the United States and its people. I simply was not aware of the amount of death and destruction caused by the US. Suddenly I saw myself in class, all the way from Spot, Jane, Dick and Sally to world Governments in 12th grade and I realized I hadn't learned anything about what really happened. The US was not the good guy. But c,mon. Did you realize that movies about shooting indians was insensitive? I didn't. But they are, incredibly so. I have alienated myself. I am separated, sleeping in a different room from the culture I loved. I don't even like baseball any more. Major disappointment.
Ahmadinejad w/ Maliki in Baghdad. Images of dead Palestinian babies scorch tv screens, are front page news (UK Guardian) everywhere but in the US.
A million dead Iraqi's. Oil shiekdoms that torture dissidents, outlaw freedom and breed suicide bombers as Bush vacations w/ their princes.
Where is Oswald when we need him?
The SPP (ie NAFTA on steroids) is, in part, about harmonizing immigration policy so that those the US don't want in their country cannot immigrate to Canada or Mexico. How many of these displaced Iraqis does the American administration wish to welcome into the US country with open arms?
Young Bushee just gave a Jet Engine contract to EADS, a European company, that is tied in with "The Carlyle Group", a Bush family Corporation
that is taking over the world..
Why is the press so silent on this issue?
The Greed of this Empire is simply out of control, and the Iraq People are the latest victims..Go to the search engine, Google, and
type in "The Carlyle Group" and any company
or people involved anywhere in the World, especially in the Middle East and Asia..
sLiMsHaDy,
Lizard brings a different perspective, I see it as just that, I don't take anything personal.
God gave as a reason the desire to show everyone his power. Truman did the same with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pretending the Japanese would not surrender and wanting to impress Russia. Pretty interesting analogy. the Bible is a study of what we label "criminal behavior" but takes a very insightful look at it.
This might have some merit to it. The rest... about pharaohs minds and God's mak'in a bunch of deals, hey I don't know! So I skip it and ignore it.
Get to the meat of the matter! I hate to skip over stuff.
lizard- you go out of your way to alienate "american" people when it is precisely "american" people that you need to turn this mess around.
The ones responsible are the American people. That's right, the people, not the government. This could not have happened, as it has before, without the warmongering mentality of the American people. There are presently on earth no people who go to war as easily,as repeatedly, and as enthusiastically, as the American people. None.
People are to blame for the wars, torture, rape, murder and starvation in the world. (Anything else you want to name.) Sometimes it is hard to pin the crime on one specific perpetrator, but you can eliminate an awful lot of people and narrow it down to likely suspects. You can certainly eliminate any idea or book. They are not capable of physical action.
It is the oldest excuse in the book to blame someone or something else. People do rotten things because after careful consideration they decided to be rotten. The only exception are the insane and those ignorant of cause and effect.
Bu$h the inferior and Shotgun Dick are primarily responsible for this Iraq occupation although their co-conspirators are legion.
These refugees can either add or reduce the violence in the world. They have to choose as much as is in their power to be peaceful. It takes courage to be peaceful - a lot of people have been killed - trying to do no harm to anyone.
There should be plenty of jobs for Iraqi refugees to return to in a few years. For example, they could work in the oil fields owned by Exxon/Mobil, operated by Halliburton. Or perhaps could get a good minimum wage job at one of the Hilton Hotels or even McDonald's. Maybe KBR will even built them some low-income housing.
Several million refugees...
This is why I cringe everytime the number 4,000 (American combat deaths not counting suicides, contractor deaths, Iraqis, trillions spent, billions stolen, thousands of lies told, tortured prisoners, tours extended, etc...)
is used as the primary measuring stick for this war.
What would happen if millions of Iraqi refugees (Sunni, Sh'ia or whatever) would (if they could) become squatters in Israel?
Mission Accomplished!
I heard on NPR about a family that returned to their home only to find it occupied by someone else. They're now squatting in an old Iraqi army base, living literally from hand to mouth. But yeah, the surge is working, ain't it McCain?
You're doing a heckuva job, Bushie!
militantliberal:
In Damascus we met many shias as Sunnis, kurds, Turkomans, christians.
The violence in Iraq is happening to everyone.
In the poorer areas of Iraqi refugees, fully 1/4 had left because they were mixed,usually shia-Sunni, families who were threatened in their neighborhoods, both sunni and Shia.
We saw and heard how the sectarian differences were no more violent than Dems and Repugs in the US, prior to the unsolved bombings of religious shrines, sunni, shia, and christian alkie. Nobody we spoke could imagine anyone they knew doing such terrible deeds. Almost to a person, they condemned the bombings as inhuman.
Bombings like this that triggered sectarian violence did not occur before our occupation.
In fact, for whatever ostensible reason the Iraqis are refugees, the unalterable truth is that if the US had not illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, there would be no refugees.
militant liberal: You are right. The new testament is not like that.
Several million refugees with no where to call home and nothing to hold on to other then the memory of an imperialist power that slaughtered, raped, tortured, robbed them and destroyed their ancestral home.
I'm sure none of them will ever want revenge. I feel so much safer now. Thank you Mr. Bush.
I wonder if when it comes to pass that Iraq has been totally destroyed, and is under martial law imposed by the US military bases, it will be looked upon as fertile ground for jewish settlers.
But to the article at hand, I don't see the refugees' ethnicity and religious affiliation mentioned explicitly, but it sounds like they're Sunni Arabs. They may not return to Iraq even when the U.S. is out because the Shi'ite majority has taken over. The Surge is working: we've created an obedient client state...for Iran. Whether that's a bad thing for people other than Sunni Arab Iraqis remains to be seen.
Lizard wrote: "In contrast [the Bible], the Koran is much more gentle."
Which part of the Bible? Some of Exodus and the Mosaic Law, maybe, but hardly true as to the rest of it. There's nothing in the Quran like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) or the letters of Paul.
A reminder on what Jesus said (or is alleged to have said):
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give him your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.
You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:38-48.
Now check out this:
Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits; for Allah does not love transgressors. And slay them wherever you catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter; but do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they first fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith. But if they cease, Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.
Quran 2:190-93
George W Bush is a better Muslim than Christian. And why not? Jesus was so impractical. No one can be perfect, so why even try?
Americans now believe the war is going well. What can I say that has not already been said?
The more things change, the more they stay the same. I am currently reading "Ovrthrow" by Stephen Kinzer. It is the story of the US empire's overthrowing governments from Hawaii to Iraq. We keep doing it and I was suprprised at what we have done. We have never been the "good Guys" from the get-go. We committed genocide on the people who lived here before our ancestors came and tried to wipe them out for their own gain. Money is the end all and be all for the USA.
Thnak you Maki and Dahr, for letting the outside world know what's going on. Sure we know Bush, Petreus and their friends are playing the old shell game or the version I'm more familiar with, 3 Card Monte.
But to get real information means that I and all the readers of this are also responsibile for not letting this continue.
The US is ruled by war criminals, and this is habitual. Kennedy, Johnson,Nixon, Carter,Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes are guilty of crimes which, if the law were enforced, would lead to their execution. I am not exaggerating, it is the law. In the US, the law is not universally applied. This is also true almost everywhere on the planet. Life is for the smart to live off the fools. This describes perfectly America's actions.
In contrast, the Koran is much more gentle.
The first false flag operation was the plagues. God got into the mind of the pharaoh to prevent him from agreeing to let the jews go. He did this repeatedly until he had carried out all the plagues. God gave as a reason the desire to show everyone his power. Truman did the same with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, pretending the Japanese would not surrender and wanting to impress Russia. The Bible is a course in gangster politics, it is not surprising that its most ardent followers turn out to be criminal.