The Refugees are the Real Victims

We hear about the Iraqi refugees in "sound bites", but rarely seethis issue reported in any depth during the nightly news programs. The article  "Iraq'sQuiet Exodus" brings to light the real and growing problem.

He sits in an unheated two-room apartment furnished with plastic chairs andbegrimed here and there with mold. Dandling his infant son on his knees, hewears the exhausted, vacant look of a man, living on the edge, scrounging dailyto make ends meet and feed his wife and young family.

For Iraqi physician Nafa Abdul-Hadi, the road to exile and dispossessionbegan in his spacious apartment in an affluent Baghdad neighborhood and hasended here in the tenements of Jordan's east Amman. Threatened with beheading bymilitants, the 50-year-old radiologist decided last July to abandon his practiceand joined the mass migration that is looting Iraq of its most vital asset -- anaccomplished and once dynamic middle class.

As little as a year ago, the number of affluent Iraqis fleeing the sectarianholocaust of Iraq for neighboring Jordan and Syria was still relatively small,scarcely more than a few dozen daily. Today it is a veritable exodus ofwhite-collar professionals who, along with their riches, are the vertebrae ofany stable society.

Totaling well over 2 million -- 10 percent of Iraq's population and thelargest displacement of Arabs since the Palestinian-refugee crisis after theArab-Israeli wars of 1948 through 1967 -- it ranks alongside the great humandislocations of Africa and the Indian Subcontinent. Yet because it began as aflight to safety by wealthy Iraqis leaving on jet planes -- a tableau unworthyof media attention, more accustomed to the tents and straggling lines oftraditional refugee crises -- it has been all but overlooked. Continuedhere:

We may have been welcomed early on by the majority ofIraqis, but that has since changed. The war has disrupted the peoples lives, andnot just temporarily which may have been acceptable. Why is the administrationso  stubborn about anything less than their undefined version of victory?We (lib/dem) keep getting "Support the Troops" shoved down outthroats, we do support the troops!, we do not however, support the war. The supporters of thewar will not hesitate to use the "we saved the people" card, and givethe illusion that they support the Iraqi people, but come on...we know betterthan that.

 

Reuters: "IRAQ:UN conference on refugees raises hopes"

DUBAI, 17 April 2007 (IRIN) - DUBAI, 17 April 2007 (IRIN) - With upto 50,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes every month because of violence, it is hightime the international community did more to settle them and alleviate theirsuffering, was the key message at a United Nations-hosted conference in Genevaon Tuesday.