US Responsibility to Iraqi Refugees a Question Mark

Back in February, US State Department officials appeared at a special briefing with the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres and made the noble assertion, "We have a responsibility to respond to the immediate needs of Iraqis who have fled violence and persecution, and the United States will provide leadership in meeting those needs."

Only, seven months later, leadership is lacking. Actually, it's near-nonexistent. The Iraqi refugee crisis has become one of the world's most severe humanitarian situations with 1.2 million Iraqis now living in neighboring Syria, and another 700,000 in Lebanon. 60,000 are now leaving their Iraqi homes every month, and the US has admitted barely any.

There are few excuses, considering that in the months after the fall of Saigon, the US airlifted 125,000 Vietnamese into air bases in the Philippines and Guam before they were brought to the US. It's not a matter of logistics.

News coverage of US delinquency has been increasing. What follows is a roundup of recent reports. And an update: the State Department has leaked news of a "tenfold increase" in the number of Iraqis hitting American shores in the last month. Too bad that still means a meager 500, but at the same time it's clear that the pressure is on.

"Tens of thousands" of Iraqi refugee schoolchildren attended their first day of school in Jordan late last month. Schools in Jordan and Syria are only one of the many parts of state infrastructures that are feeling strained because of the heavy influx of an entirely new population. In response, the US has pledged $30 million in response to a request from UNHCR and UNICEF to send 155,000 children to school in Jordan, Syrian, Egypt and Lebanon.

60 Minutes focuses on Iraqis who worked as translators for the US for in Iraq who are now stuck in limbo, away from their homes, nowhere to go, with a target on their backs. Despite the fact that these people were good enough to work for coalition forces in Iraq, a State Department official points to 9/11 as a cause for heightened security in admitting refugees into the country.

Efforts have been made by the American government, apparently, but the Times reports that Iraqis in danger are not allowed to apply for resettlement because, simply, the facilities aren't accessible in Iraq. They actually have to head to Syria or Jordan, despite the fact they face the very real chance of being turned away at the border.

And the UN has been negotiating a tenuous visa situation for refugees in Syria, though the latest word is that Iraqis will not be forcibly deported.

60,000 Iraqis Are Now Fleeing Their Homes Every Month

On the heels of a New York Times report about an Iraqi Red Crescent Organization assessment that the number of internally displaced Iraqis has doubled since February, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has announced that the humanitarian situation is worsening, and displacements are "soaring."

According to the UN, 60,000 people a month are now fleeing their homes. A total of 2 million are scattered within the country. More than 1.4 million more now live in Syria. Neighboring countries are feeling the strain on their infrastructure and schools. Refugees are also flooding into Europe, Jordan and Iran.

“Displacement is rising as Iraqis are finding it harder to get access to social services inside Iraq and many Iraqis are choosing to leave ethnically mixed areas before they are forced to do so," said UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis in a statement. "Some Iraqis who stayed in the country until the end of the school year recently started leaving the country with their families.”

Sudanese Refugees Band in Gangs on Cairo Streets

The streets of Cairo today are witnessing a confluence of American gang culture and strife in Sudan.

According to a Reuters report, there are nearly a million Sudanese refugees living on the streets of Egypt's capital city, regularly considered the cultural hub of the Arab world. And the ensuing strife sounds like Los Angeles in the early 1990s, only the rival gangs are not the Bloods and the Crips. In Cairo there are the Outlaws and the Lost Boys.

And they hack each other to death, as Abigail Hauslohner reports, with machetes.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, this population wave comes not from the genocide in the western Darfur region of Sudan, but from the ostensibly resolved two-decade old war with Christians in the south. As the war ended, UNHCR shifted their policy and the displaced lost their refugee status. Now the millions of Sudanese on Egyptian streets face racial discrimination and violence. They cannot find work and have joined gangs loyal to particular Cairene neighborhoods.

UNHCR wants the refugees to either return to Sudan or integrate into Egyptian society, but as is the case with so many refugee waves, without a plan for assimilation, the groups end up disenfranchised and do double damage: they lose out on opportunity, and the local region, in this case Cairo, which is a remarkably safe place, now has violence on its streets.

(Photo of downtown Cairo by Andrew Bast.)