Iraq: Poverty Gets the Survivors
DAMASCUS - More than a million Iraqis were lucky enough to flee into Syria. But in this relatively safe haven, there is no getting away from poverty.
Mohammad Saleem ran a successful supermarket in Baghdad. “I was leading a comfortable life with my family, despite the 13 years of UN sanctions,” Saleem told IPS in Damascus. “My four sons worked together to keep our supermarket running, and so we passed the dark sanctions period successfully. The big suffering started with the 2003 occupation that brought closed roads and reduced income for people.”
The day came when they were told by militias to leave within 24 hours, he said. “It is not possible for us to start over in Syria, and so my brother is selling our property piece by piece so that we can survive.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria. But the economy of Syria itself is struggling under U.S. sanctions. Jobs for refugees on the black market bring no more than 100 dollars a month.
And expenses have risen. “I paid 300 dollars rent when I came here in early 2005,” said Dr. Shakir Awad. “In 2006 I had to rent a smaller flat for the same amount of money because rent went up after more Iraqis fled for Syria when sectarian evictions escalated in Iraq. My assets started to dry up, and I have started selling my property back home to maintain a minimal living standard.”
A very large number of Iraqi refugees live on charity from Syrians.
“My Syrian landlord was generous enough to keep the same flat rent,” Ikhlas Fadhil, a 35-year-old Iraqi woman with two little girls told IPS. “My husband and son were killed by American marines on the highway near Fallujah, and I had to bring my six-year-old daughter for treatment here. I thought things would be better in a year or less, so I sold all my jewellery for 5,000 dollars. I spent all of it in a year, and now I am living on charity.”
Treatment for her daughter is being taken care of by the U.S.-based NGO, No More Victims.
The Syrian government does not allow Iraqis in Syria to work legally, and an increasing number of refugees have taken to prostitution. While there are no precise figures, refugees speak of many cases of families who left their belongings back home, and now have no means to support themselves - and whose women have taken to prostitution.
“There are small Iraqi associations and NGOs that fundraise for what they call special cases like widows and other vulnerable families,” Numan Fadhil, an Iraqi sociologist who now works as a trader in Syria told IPS. “But the problem is that most Iraqi refugee families are vulnerable due to the long-term nature of their refugee status, and the unemployment.”
With every passing day the situation seems to get worse. “It (the refugee crisis) needs a major international effort far beyond UNHCR’s (the United Nations Refugee Agency) current modest assistance to maintain survival for people who were well off before the whole world decided to execute them by sanctions and occupation,” said Fadhil.
UNHCR officials have told IPS that they are under-funded and understaffed.
(*Maki al-Nazzal, correspondent in Syria, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, IPS’s U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported from the region for more than four years.)
Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service
This is US “liberation” at its glorious best. Strange, isn’t it, how the people who get “liberated” never seem to have much say in the matter, and how the results are always so similar to the “liberation” of class warefare at home.
One might almost expect that Americans themselves might acquire some insight into the real “terrorist” threat they face daily and that they might even be inclined to join their brethren throughout the world in opposing it. But one must not be too unrealistic about the capacity for perceptiveness of the inhabitants of the “greatest democracy on earth”.
Another reason to give Iraq back to the people and get the hell out.
GWB stated that he was not in the “nation building” business early on. He seems to be in the nation destroying business in a big way however. Millions have fled Iraq and millions more have been displaced within their own country.
This was all to rid them and the world of WMD. Then is was to liberate them. Then is was to bring freedom and democracy to them. It seemed like we were told to wait until the next election, the constitution ratification, the next parliament the next prime minister, the next anything an everything.
This was, by tacit implication the point at which everything would be all better. Well, more than 5 years later it is not all better. After more than $500 billion wasted and 100s of thousands of lives lost it is not all better.
It is very disheartening when paying the income taxes due each year, to have to realize that a large part of it is helping to cause and continue the misery these people are experiencing. One hopes they know that many Americans are sickened by the needlesss destruction of families and property.
Our illegal invasion of Iraq continues to create such an immense amount of misery and death. Our invasion and occupation of Iraq are war crimes. The perpetrators must be brought to justice.
Kernel wrote: “One hopes they know that many Americans are sickened by the needless destruction of families and property.”
Americans weren’t sick of it when Bush invaded. Then, he was getting high approval ratings. It was a small minority of Americans who were against it right from the start for unselfish reasons.
Americans only become sick of war when they start to suffer. They are never sick of war merely because hundreds of thousands of foreigners are suffering.
This is why the military is developing high-tech robots capable of fighting in the field, why it drops so many bombs from the air, and why it uses mercenaries. If U.S. casualties can be kept low, the American public can be kept quiet.
Mainstream media journalists have condemned comments on the Internet in which anonymous individuals almost egg America on to attack Iran so that it all blows up in America’s face. But the reality is, unless America’s aggression is brought to a head, the U.S. will simply make a “strategic retreat” and wage more wars in the future. In the long run, many more may suffer. This is the rationale behind such comments, and it’s a rationale the MSM journalists fail to explain.
Germany was only stopped after it went too far. Can America ever be stopped if it always - rather sensibly - backs away from the precipice?
Staying SANE:
Very correct on keep the cows happy and they don’t give a shit what happens.
The only winners in Iraq are American companies.
Germany didn’t go to far it was just not a smart run war. If they had kept on bombing England ( with the help from Texaco gas, well documented) for a few weeks more then the whole picture would have changed. Hitler changed and turned the war away from England and toward Russia. From that day Germany started to loose.
I can remember in late 2002 and early 2003 before the invasion of Iraq, a lot of people were very pro invasion. They thought that the inspectors were useless, so let’s get on with it. There was a lot of lingering sentiment that we should have gone into Baghdad in 1991 when we had the chance.
Bush and Cheney trying to link Al Qaeda with Iraq was an out and out lie and they knew it. Talking about WMD and “mushroom clouds” was pure deception and they knew it. It is one thing to have a different take on things or have false information, it is another to know full well that you are lying through your teeth and do it anyway. Not just once, but over and over again, even after it has been proven to be false. That takes more than gall, that takes evil and a complete lack of conscience and soul.
It’s genocide, pure and simple. Not much different than what Israel has done to the West Bank and Gaza.
FWIW, civilians who aid and abet war crimes, knowing they are being committed, are subject to prosecution as war criminals. Not just the military and government decision makers.
good luck wrote: “very correct on keep the cows happy and they don’t give a shit what happens.”
I know a couple of cows who graze on the mainstream media. When a bomb explodes killing U.S. soldiers, they say, “Look what THEY are doing!” (”they” meaning all Iraqis, even when it’s a foreign suicide bomber). But when U.S. soldiers massacre Iraqis indiscriminately or rape little girls, or when Bush bans Iraqi oil unions or illegally tries to sell off Iraq’s assets, there is silence from them.
I don’t think we should underestimate how much prejudice/hatred/dislike/indifference there is towards Arabs.
Women and girls forced to be prostitutes so their families can survive. I see that going on here in America. I guess this is the sort of Liberation America is bringing to the World.
You got that right, sjc. GW is no Nation-Builder, he is a Nation-Destroyer.
It’s criminal what we have done to these people! What’s even sadder the ones responsible will never have to pay for the crime.
tumbleweed — says
Please do consider that _ K A R M I C A L L Y _, they are already reaping what they sow, and the gapping wound of their { near } EMPTY HEART, can never be filled with mere material trinkets, power over others, and sunshine pumped up their nether regions.
The more and harder they try — the SOFTER and less forgiving that LIFE returns– their STONE gaze and heartless actions toward embellishing humankind’s suffering and poverty.
is their theme song and subconscious { omnipresent } chant
THey are already paying and their unmitigated raping is rotationally turning into their penultimate reaping of the crimes that they’ve sown.
ok, Namaste, what does “penultimate” mean???
What can I say about Irak? It’s beyond words, beyond pain. Karma won’t fix it and won’t fix the sociopathic predators that are fouling the world with their hellish excrement. Is it even possible to help without getting nailed for aiding and abetting terrorism? How?
MY MISTAKE, I was thinking quintessential, and wrote the wrong word
MEDUSA — Potential enforcement of un-Constitutional THOUGHT CRIMES — do NOT even glance or TOUCH upon one’s BEING’ness and context for existence.
It is the SPIRITUAL side of US (not-in-action), in the “field” of IMAGINATION of what might possibly BE, that OUR HIGHEST and strongest powers EXIST to transform the world.
As the pen trumps the sword, one’s BEING’ness precedes ALL DOING & HAVING, and literally creates possibility (your mileage will vary, some restrictions do apply, and the SECRET that is out is part of this ( The LAw of Attraction )
If we are not careful GW will destroy this nation as well. There has been a run out the clock mentality about all this lately. This little weasel can do a lot of damage in the remaining months and will if we let him.
Another example of what happens when bush touches anything.
There are much more poverty in the US these days, and counting.
Just wait until the butchers come home and move next door…
Easy, djwolf–don’t add to the fear mongering…The men and women coming home will need help–not distrust or indifference or fear in their face–try some compassion. Give them what they didn’t get or give in war…maybe they will change and so will we all.
Realistically though Papananook, Wolf is right. The government will be vetting to place these egregious war criminals in positions of authority, in many places armed with guns and operating alongside the existant corruption that is policing, and homeland insecurity in America. They’ll be uniform cops, prison guards, FBI agents if they’re clever.
While for those who already recognize how atrocious their crimes were, compassion is well placed, most of these meatheads are submersed in a John Wayne Psychology under which their gun toting woop ass of impoverished foreigners could be applied to homelanders with little variance. Some are even worse, literal devil worshippers, human splattering adrenaline junkies and crack addicts.
When I was in the military, cocaine was amongst the drugs of choice, for it’s short duration in the urine. The pilots regularly take meth amphetamines, which while certainly good for concentration, tends to kill the soul when long abused, especially when mixed with flying jets and exploding people. In using the words “kill the soul”, I feel I must clarify: deaden empathy, further even, heighten arrogance.
So these returning war criminals will intently be placed by government in positions where they will inflict their brand of harsh treatment upon the tax payers who bought so much misery for impoverished foreigners. The cycle continues, justice eternal…
Why do you suppose it was that Bush was so OBVIOUS about not having any reason to invade Iraq? The administration was caught in lie after lie… The troops though, for accepting orders emanating from an obviously criminal entity, the US Executice Branch, these soldiers have earned their title as war criminals.
More than compassion. It will take boatloads of indisputable facts. Like free fall speeds of Steel Sky Skrapers.