ANALYSIS: A SECOND MIDEAST REFUGEE CRISIS
By Claude Salhani

United Press International
Oct 29 2007

VICTORIA, British Columbia, Oct. 29 (UPI) — Ten percent of Iraq’s
population has been turned into refugees, almost half in their own
country, a direct result of the U.S.-led invasion and subsequent
occupation of the country in March 2003, creating the second-largest
refugee problem in the Middle East. Only the Palestinian refugee
crisis, with close to 5 million displaced Palestinians scattered around
the Middle East and beyond, tops the Iraqi refugee crisis. But these
numbers might change very suddenly, catapulting the Iraqi refugee
crisis to the top of the list. Threats of potential incursions into
northern Iraq by the Turkish military in hot pursuit of members of
the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, may yet create a new wave of
Iraqi refugees. This time the bulk of the refugees fleeing will be
from Kurdish-controlled areas, which until now have enjoyed relative
calm and prosperity. The Kurdish problem complicates an already thorny
issue, placing additional stress on Turkish-U.S. relations. Washington
can ill-afford to lose the support of either the Kurds in northern
Iraq or that of the Turkish government across the border. Both play
a vital role in supporting the U.S. war effort in Iraq, and Turkey
allows the U.S. Air Force the use of its air bases as forward-operating
bases in the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Losing access to those
bases would set the U.S. military back considerably; it would instead
have to rely on bases as far away as Germany. By that same token,
Turkey, too, is a strong ally of the United States in the fight
against terrorism. But Ankara remains adamant in its fight against
Kurdish separatists and the outlawed PKK. In trying to appease both
Turkey and the Kurds, Washington seems to find itself caught between,
excuse the pun, Iraq and a hard place. If Washington stands with the
Kurds, it risks upsetting Ankara, with whom relations are already
thinly stretched by recent attempts by the U.S. Congress to pass a
non-binding resolution declaring the mass killing of Armenians by
Ottoman Turks 90 years ago a genocide. Regardless of what happens
next, the problem of Iraq’s refugees is not about to go away anytime
soon. After the end of major combat operations, violence in Iraq
continued to claim lives as the war took a different turn, plunging
into an undeclared civil war with unprecedented sectarian killings
and counter-killings, pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians to
flee. The arrival of a million refugees in Syria and another million in
Jordan is placing unprecedented strain on the host countries, taxing
their housing markets and their public health and education systems
to the breaking point, forcing officials to reassess their open-doors
policy. If until now Iraq’s neighbors have shown compassion toward
their fellow Arabs by opening their borders along with their arms,
that policy is starting to change. While no official figure exists,
the United Nations estimates the number of Iraqis who have escaped
their country as a result of armed violence at around 2.6 million
since the start of the war. Some 2 million Iraqis have fled to Jordan,
Syria, Lebanon and other countries in the region. Yemen, Iran and
Turkey have also seen increased flows of Iraqi refugees. Another 1.8
million have become "internal displaced personnel" — refugees in
their own country. Those are people who have run away from their homes
to seek safer refuge in other parts of the country and within their
own communities after suffering sectarian violence, receiving death
threats or having one or more members of their families killed. But
as the numbers continue to grow, Iraqi refugees are beginning to feel
they are reaching the point where they have overstayed their welcome.

Syria and Jordan, the two main reception centers for Iraqi refugees
until now, are starting to request that future refugees obtain
visas first. And when visas are issued for three or six months,
Iraqis are forced to travel back to Iraq in order to renew them — an
expensive, not to mention dangerous, undertaking in a war zone. For
the Lebanese who face an already serious crisis with Palestinian
refugees, the previously opened door to Iraqi refugees is rapidly
closing. In Lebanon, which hosts about 50,000 Iraqis, refugees are
increasingly arrested if found to be in the country illegally. Some
find themselves imprisoned and forced to choose between imprisonment
or deportation. The cry from many Iraqis is that while the Arab
neighbors are closing the doors on immigration, the United States,
which bears a certain degree of moral responsibility, has kept its
doors to Iraqi immigration pretty tightly shut. Since the start of the
war, the United States has only admitted 700 Iraqis. More recently,
the United States announced it would consider for resettlement up to
7,000 Iraqi refugees referred to it by UNHCR. The peace conference
President Bush hopes to hold in Annapolis, Md., next month should
address, in part, the question of Palestinian refugees.

But as Iraqis continue to trickle out of their homeland by the
thousands, who is looking out for their interests before the question
of Iraqi refugees turns into another refugee crisis on a scale equal
to that of the Palestinians?

(Claude Salhani is editor of the Middle East Times)