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Support HR 5488 Full text HERE
REPORT:Women for Women 2008 Iraq Report
A ‘Surge’ for Refugees - New York Times
By MORTON ABRAMOWITZ, GEORGE RUPP, JOHN WHITEHEAD and JAMES WOLFENSOHN
IT is a grave humanitarian crisis: 1.5 million Iraqi refugees living in deplorable and
declining conditions in Syria and Jordan.
They are clustered not in camps but in overcrowded urban neighborhoods, crammed into
dark, squalid apartments. Many have been traumatized by extreme violence. Their savings
are dwindling; many cannot afford to pay for rent, heat and food; few have proper medical
care.
After meeting with refugees, leaders in both Syria and Jordan and United Nations experts,
we came to the inescapable conclusion that this crisis could endure for years and that
much more help is needed now.
There is absolutely no denying that the United States has a special responsibility to help.
The sectarian violence these Iraqi refugees have fled is a byproduct of the invasion and its
chaotic aftermath — yet America has paradoxically done far less than its traditionally
generous response.
But while the United States must lead, the scale of this humanitarian emergency and its
uncertain duration require international contributions, including the active participation of
European and Gulf Arab states.
The refugees face three alternatives: return, remain or resettle. None is a good
option. It is too dangerous to go back, they will become increasingly destitute if
they remain where they are, and yet only a few will be resettled in other countries.
The United States and the international community must therefore take three actions to
ease the plight of displaced Iraqis until the day comes when they can safely return home.
First, these refugees simply need more aid. We estimate that to serve this population a
minimum of $2 billion is needed annually for at least the next two to four years and it is
fitting that the United States cover at least half of this cost.
Contributions from the international community have been woefully inadequate. So far this
year the United States has given only $208 million in direct humanitarian assistance for
displaced Iraqis. The gulf states have given $11 million since last October. And with its
significant oil funds, the Iraqi government must do better in assisting its own uprooted
citizens: the $25 million it has allocated in this year’s budget is grossly insufficient. Host
countries must also allow nongovernmental organizations better access to Iraqi refugees
and affected local communities.
Second, because a sizable population of Iraqis will not return home under any
circumstances, more refugees must be resettled in more third countries. Unfortunately,
many doors have closed or are being closed. Again, the United States must lead, and it is
failing: our government has resettled fewer than 5,000 Iraqi refugees since the war began.
This year America should at a minimum meet its target of resettling 12,000 Iraqi refugees
and fulfilling its commitment to admit 5,000 Iraqis (and their dependents) who have worked
for the United States and are eligible for special immigrant visas.
In the years ahead, the United States can realistically admit at least 30,000 Iraqis annually.
European countries — especially Britain, which, like America, bears a particular
responsibility — should be taking in larger numbers of vulnerable Iraqis like single women
with children and those who worked for the coalition.
Third, it is important to bring attention to the Iraq refugee problem. To this end, the
United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, should organize a high-level conference of
regional countries and interested donors.
The conference should examine the plight of Iraqi refugees and pledge concrete help.
Because there is also an urgent need for actions that can improve conditions in Iraq and
facilitate the safe, voluntary return of many refugees, the conference must include foreign
ministers who can grapple with the diplomatic and political aspects of the crisis, not simply
the humanitarian ones.
Discussions about Iraq both here and abroad inevitably focus on the surge and
on time-lines for troop withdrawal. Missing is any realistic assessment of the fate
of Iraqi refugees, 1.5 million people who have a crucial role to play in ensuring the
long-term stability of the region.
Morton Abramowitz is a former president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. George Rupp is a former president of
Columbia. John Whitehead is a former deputy secretary of state. James Wolfensohn is a former president of the World Bank. They are
members of the International Rescue Committee’s board.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
The New York Times February 25,2008
Rising Inflation Creates Unease in Middle East
By ROBERT F. WORTH Link to full article
AMMAN, Jordan — Even as it enriches Arab rulers, the recent oil-price boom is
helping to fuel an extraordinary rise in the cost of food and other basic goods
that is squeezing this region’s middle class and setting off strikes,
demonstrations and occasional riots from Morocco to the Persian Gulf.
Here in Jordan, the cost of maintaining fuel subsidies amid the surge in prices
forced the government to remove almost all the subsidies this month, sending
the price of some fuels up 76 percent overnight. In a devastating domino
effect, the cost of basic foods like eggs, potatoes and cucumbers doubled or
more..............
“Now we have to choose: we either eat or stay warm. We can’t do both,” said
Abdul Rahman Abdul Raheem, ............ He ticked off a list of prices: potatoes
have jumped to about 76 cents a pound from 32 cents. A carton of 30 eggs
went to nearly $4.25 from just above $2; cucumbers rose to 58 cents a pound
from about 22. All this in a matter of weeks.
“These were always the basics,” he said. “Now they’re luxuries.”
====================================================
Jordan Times 14 February 2008
Iraqis exempted from fines
By Linda Hindi and Hani Hazaimeh link to full article
AMMAN - Iraqi nationals residing in the Kingdom who wish to leave
permanently will be fully exempted from accumulated fines, while those who
wish to stay have two months to rectify their residency status and will have
their fines slashed in half, the government announced on Wednesday.
Interior Minister Eid Fayez also announced that Iraqis who leave Jordan and
intend to return or newcomers will have to obtain a visa from offices that will
soon open in Iraq.
“All the regulations and measures in connection with fine exemptions or visa
applications will be announced shortly through the Interior Ministry,” Fayez
said yesterday.
The two-month duration for Iraqis who want to apply for a yearly residency
starts on February 17.
The minister pointed out that the decision was taken based on His Majesty King
Abdullah’s directives to facilitate outstanding residency issues for Iraqis, who
are guests in the Kingdom, and extend all possible assistance.
Furthermore, Fayez called on all Iraqis to move quickly and rectify their status
within the two-month period.
A government source told The Jordan Times that the vast majority of Iraqis
living in the Kingdom are “illegal” and have long overstayed their visas.
According to regulations, any visitor who overstays is charged JD1.5 per day,
which means tens of thousands of Iraqis owe thousands of dinars each in
accumulated fines.
Iraqi Ambassador to Jordan Saad Hayyani recently told The Jordan Times that
there are many Iraqis who now wish to return home, but cannot afford to pay
their dues.
Meanwhile, the visa system was introduced at the request of the Iraqi
government to organise the flow of Iraqis to the country.
Many Iraqis have complained that it is a risky and costly endeavour to reach the
Jordanian border only to find out that they are refused entry for certain
reasons.
UN figures place the number of Iraqis in Jordan at around 750,000.
According to the results of an independent research institute, Jordan currently
hosts around half-a-million Iraqi nationals, who mainly reside in the capital.
The survey’s findings also showed that one in every five Iraqis in Jordan has
concrete plans to emigrate to a third country.
====================================================
In other words, Iraqis refugees in Jordan are given just two months (Feb 17-
April 17) to make one of four untenable choices:
- Go back to Iraq - a sure death sentence for many
- Flee to a third Country - the number of those accepted by 3rd countries is
very small so this is not an option for most
- Get Legal Residency - which is restricted just to the very few who can put
$100,000+ into an account. This is not an option for the vast majority of
Iraqis in Jordan who are living in or on the edge of destitution
- Pay the halved fines and register - even the reduced fines are beyond the
capability of most Iraqis. Iraqis, living in the shadows already because of
fear of being detained and deported back to Iraq are terrified that
registering will put them in a data base that may be used in the future to
locate them for forced deportation
So those who cannot pay the fines and do not register will be in violation of
these new rules. This in itself may possibly make them vulnerable to arrest and
subsequent deportation to Iraq (Sasha Crow)
====================================================
US Congressional Panel Considers Iraqi Refugee Problem
By Dan Robinson
Washington
27 February 2008
link to article
In testimony to a congressional committee, a United Nations official has
expressed renewed concern about conditions facing Iraqi refugees who have
fled to neighboring countries. VOA's Dan Robinson reports from Capitol Hill.
Iraqi refugee children (file)
Deputy United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Craig Johnstone, says
the Iraq refugee situation remains the largest in the world.
Four to five million Iraqis are estimated to have fled their country, many to
Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, although Johnstone says exact figures are difficult.
The U.N. official says there is now a somewhat improved asylum situation in
neighboring countries, with diminished threats, at least for the time being, of
forced return.
At the same time, Johnstone says Iraqis who have fled their country, many of
them well-educated, face difficult and desperate circumstances as urban
refugees.
"If you can't have a job, if you have no money you will starve to death as a
well-educated person just as fast as somebody that has no education, and I
think sometimes that gets lost on us because when we talk to these people they
are extraordinarily articulate, very capable, they would provide an asset to any
society in which they found themselves and yet they are in absolutely dire
circumstances. It really is an amazing situation," he said.
Forty seven percent of Iraqi refugees are women facing particularly difficult
circumstances. Johnstone says women make up 20 percent of all heads of
families, taking care of children because so many men have been killed in some
way in conflict in Iraq.
Despite progress in negotiations with host governments that has allowed
increasing numbers of refugee children to attend school, Johnstone points to a
climate of fear among Iraqi parents that doing so will make them more
vulnerable to forced return at some point.
The Bush administration has faced sharp criticism over the number of Iraqis
approved for resettlement in the United States, with reports last month quoting
State Department statistics that U.S. admissions had declined since last October.
Johnstone, an American, hopes that will change, but he is skeptical. "One can
afford to be skeptical looking at the slow start that they have. I do see that the
Department of Homeland Security is far more mobilized today then it was two
months ago on the issue," he said.
Subcommittee chairman, Democratic Congressman William Delahunt, is among
lawmakers who say the United States bears a special obligation. "This sad
reality imposes a moral responsibility on this administration and this Congress,
for we cannot deny that the proximate cause of this human tragedy is the
invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. It is believed by many that this is an
American-made crisis," he said.
Republican Dana Rohrabacher disagrees, saying the problem is not America's
alone but an international humanitarian issue.
U.N. statistics show a decline in the number of Iraqis returning home in recent
months.
International Organization for Migration (I.O.M.) official Rafiz Tschannen says
that as internal displacement rates in Iraq have significantly declined, in part
due to improved security, the rate of internal displacement now slightly exceeds
the rate of return from other countries.
Whether or not refugee flows out of Iraq pick up again, Tschannen says
insufficient international financial contributions place Iraqis in jeopardy.
"Funding remains insufficient. IOM has barely received 28 percent of its $85-
million appeal for IDP [internally displaced people], with the U.S. too often
being the largest donor, and the one whose support has been the most
consistent. But lack of funding remains," he said.
In his testimony Tuesday, Deputy U.N. refugee commissioner Johnstone said
Jordan and Syria have shouldered most of the Iraqi refugee burden, and
should be thanked for their generosity.
But despite their support, he says the international community must take
advantage of a window of opportunity to step up financial assistance, and take
advantage of improved security in Iraq, to deal with the refugee situation,
keeping in mind that new refugee flows are always a possibility.
====================================================
JORDAN: Cost of health care a major hurdle for Iraqi refugees
humanitarian news and analysis
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Only 4 percent of Iraqis living in Jordan can afford proper medical care
AMMAN, 27 March 2008 (IRIN) - The high cost of drugs and medical care in Jordan is a
major problem for impoverished Iraqi asylum-seekers, according to a survey by the
International Medical Corps (IMC) and the US Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health (JHSPH) released on 26 March.
Only four percent of respondents said they could afford medical assistance, according
to the survey conducted among an undisclosed number of Iraqi patients in health clinics
run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Amman.
Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, over half a million Iraqis have settled in
Jordan, most from the middle class, but many have used up their savings and are now
relying on basic medical help offered by NGOs.
Nearly 50 percent of respondents said they spent at least one quarter of their income on
health bills, while 14 percent said over half their income went on medical care,
particularly for specialised services. Free medical centres often provide basic tests, but
in many cases patients need specialist treatment or care not available at these centres.
Adam Sirois, the IMC country director in Jordan, said most Iraqi medical spending was on
drugs to manage chronic diseases, specialist diagnostic tests and surgery. "More
attention needs to be paid to these services which most Iraqis in Jordan cannot afford,"
he said.
The survey found that 83 percent of patients seeking free care at NGO-run clinics were
unemployed.
Public hospitals
More on Iraqis in Jordan
Government calls for more funds to host refugees
Visa fine waiver not enough to lure Iraqis home
Schools creaking under burden of 24,000 Iraqi students
Iraqi government calls for refugee visa fine waiver
Few Iraqis returning home
Iraqi asylum-seekers fall victim to resettlement scams
Jordan had previously barred Iraqis from receiving subsidised treatment in public
hospitals, but late last year, the government changed its policy under international
pressure and allowed migrant Iraqis to obtain health care in public hospitals. But this
has not helped those who have to pay fees for long-term treatment and medication.
Radhi Jwarneh Radwan, a Ministry of Health spokesman, confirmed the new policy,
adding that children received free vaccinations.
Adel Abdul Rahma, a former university professor in Baghdad, said he had tried to get
medical help in public hospitals but found it impossible. "Public hospitals are
overwhelmed with patients. Doctors often advise patients to turn to the private sector
for fast treatment, if their medical condition is urgent," said the 62-year-old Iraqi asylum-
seeker.
To be examined by a specialist in a public hospital, patients sometimes have to wait two
to three months, consultations cost US$15-30, and medical drugs are considered among
the most expensive in the region.
Mental health
The survey also revealed that half of the respondents said they needed mental health
and psychosocial services but only 5 percent had access to help in this field.
At least 64 percent of interviewed patients said they felt stressed, and 22 percent had
witnessed violence or were generally affected by displacement.
"Concrete steps must be taken to prevent Iraqi families in Jordan from falling into
poverty or becoming more vulnerable due to out-of-pocket health payments," the survey
said, adding: "Iraqi society needs more NGO-supported maternal-child health and family
planning services, more affordable secondary and tertiary care, and mental health and
psychosocial support."
During a recent meeting of countries hosting Iraqi asylum-seekers, Jordan said it
needed JD 176 million ($248 million) to build clinics and renovate hospitals in Amman,
Irbid and Zarqa to be better able to provide medical help to the Iraqis.
==============================================================================
WHAT DO WE OWE IRAQ?
John Ross
SAN FRANCISCO/MEXICO CITY (March 20th) - Lurching down Valencia Street last week, I
all but stumbled over a homeless young man squatting against the wall of the now
moribund New College. Begging his pardon, I could not help but note that he was
leafing through a dog-eared volume scavenged from a nearby free book box
serendipitously entitled "What We Owe Iraq." Indeed, my inattentiveness to the young
man's pedal extremities was the by-product of my contemplation of just that subject.
What do we owe Iraq for over a million dead and ten times that number wounded or
otherwise devastated in five years of Bush's unrelenting bloodletting?
For 5,000,000 people who have been uprooted and displaced from their homes, half of
them forced to flee their homeland, 65% of them women and children, 80% of the children
less than 12 years of age?
What do we owe Iraq for having perverted governance into an aggregation of death
squads? For corrupting public officials and leveling essential services, leaving the
nation in the dark most days, contaminating the water supply, destroying the agricultural
sector in the birthplace of agriculture, and aiding and abetting the looting of the cradle
of civilization?
What do we owe this country "where the first letter was written, the first law put, the first
university built, the first money issued, and the first poetry written?" asks Eman
Kammas, a fearless Iraqi journalist now forced into exile.
The $3,000,000.000.000 USD Joseph Stiglitz calculates this illegal war will cost U.S.
taxpayers will not compensate Iraq in per capita reparations. The quotient of Iraqi blood
shed in this genocidal exercise cannot nearly be repaid by all the hemoglobin extracted
from the 4000 dead Americans who gave up their lives in this pointless fracaso. The
blood they spilled is only a drop in this bottomless bucket.
What do we owe Iraq? The damage can never be quantified. "The debt is too great to
comprehend," considers my colleague Sasha Crow, founder of the Collateral Repair
Project whose NGO seeks to repair some of the damage done.
The book the homeless comrade on Valencia Street (was he a vet?) was perusing
consists of a series of essays by one Noah Feldman, a New York University law
professor and once senior constitutional adviser on "the ethics of nation building" to L.
Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority. On its now tattered pages, Feldman
grapples with framing "the interests of the people being governed (read conquered)
and our own interest in exercising power over them." The problem, as Bremer's lawyer
saw it, was how to build "responsible, capital-driven nations whose own citizens will not
seek to destroy us" (sic.) Or. in other words, how to save Iraq by breaking it, an ethical
quandary that 40 years ago perplexed the architects of the U.S. genocide in Vietnam.
Feldman's moral compass only tackles the "nation-building" part and evades completely
the legality of invading and breaking a sovereign nation. The constitution Feldman
helped to write indeed handed Iraq over to the assassins and their U.S. sponsors. What
we owe Iraq is to string Professor Feldman up from the nearest lamppost in Washington
Square.
What Bush's America thinks it owes Iraq was strikingly encapsulated in a recent New
York Times dispatch that told of the "exceptional luck" of an Iraqi toddler. When
Marines raided two year-old Amenah al-Bayati's home in Anbar province to detain her
father on suspicion of supporting the insurgency, they noted that her feet were turning
blue, a sign of congestive heart failure. Captain Kevin Jarrard prevailed over the
objections of Homeland Security to have the child flown to Tennessee for corrective
surgery. "The kid couldn't help who her daddy was," Captain Jarrard told the New York
Times, adding that he now was friends with the imprisoned man. Amenah's homecoming
when she returned to Haditha was described by the Times as "a public relations coup"
for the Marines.
In April 2005, a U.S. Marine unit killed 24 civilians in Haditha in cold blood, five of them
children. The killers have since been absolved.
One thing we do not owe Iraq is another "public relations coup" but that's what appears
to be up ahead as the war de-accelerates. Youngsters maimed by the aggression that
Professor Feldman rationalizes will be flown to the U.S. by "humanitarian" aid scams and
faith-based Christian charities to massage the collective guilt of America for having slept
through the massacre into coughing up big bucks. Celebrity telethons and "We Are The
World" clone mega-concerts will follow. Reconstruction swindles with billions in
contracts let to Halliburton and Blackwater (to protect the reconstructors) and the
annexation of the nation's damaged oil fields by Big Oil will drive the final neo-liberal nail
into Iraq's coffin. Just like the Feldman scenario, first we destroy 'em and then we save
'em. It’s the American way.
What we owe Iraq is about to become one more corporate boondoggle - if we let it.
In the years after the debacle in Vietnam, those who had savaged that country and those
who had stood fast against the carnage considered this same question: what did we owe
the people of Vietnam and their damaged land for our appalling war upon them both?
Some returned to the scene of the crime to fraternize with the enemy and calculate the
damage they had done. Vets' groups and peace activists took action to repair what
collateral damage they could. Hospitals were built and potable water systems installed.
Kids horribly burnt by our napalm were flown to California for plastic surgery. It seems
almost axiomatic that once the U.S. has destroyed a nation, we are driven to repair it.
Who repairs the collateral damage is crucial in this equation. Should repair and
reparations be relegated to the same profit-driven corporate entities responsible for the
damage? Or are the people we have indiscriminately bombed best served by grassroots
response?
Military euphemisms aside, collateral damage is the willful decimation of a civilian
population designed to terrorize those who might consider resisting the conquest of
their country. One antidote to this homicidal hypocrisy is collateral repair.
Collateral repair begins at home. Having read of the killing of an ambulance driver by U.
S. troops in the northwest city of al-Qaim during the first days of "Operation Iron Fist" in
October 2005, Crow began collecting small donations from her Seattle neighbors to
repair a part of the damage, eventually providing the driver's widow and four children
with four walls and a roof and a few sheep. Others joined in and a Vets for Peace group
installed a potable water system at the hospital whose ambulance had been crunched.
The first effort blossomed into the Collateral Repair Project (www.collateralrepairproject.
org) which seeks to soften some of the unspeakable damage Bush Inc. has inflicted
upon the Iraqi people, person to person, family to family, hand to hand. and heart to
heart.
Small things are accomplished: a kids' school uniform is paid for, a tank of propane to
heat refugee hovels in winter is purchased, dollar reading glasses for sewing women
are shipped over, soccer balls exchanged for toy guns - band-aids, yes, but as CRP asks
"what else can we do?"
The dimensions of the damage are hard to comprehend. One does what they can and
where they can do it. For the past year, Collateral Repair has focused on the nearly
1,000,000 Iraqis who have been driven into exile in Jordan, sometimes with only the shirt
on their back, where they are hounded by authorities much as ICE beats up on
undocumented Mexicans on the homefront.
Iraqi families who have sought sanctuary in Jordan now have until April 17th to pay
thousands of dollars in fines for seeking refuge in that Hashemite kingdom or face
deportation and possible death back to Iraq, or flee to a third country - the U.S. which
instigated this butchery in the first place and where Homeland Security restricts refuge
to collaborators, is not an option. However, its not all bad news - those Iraqis with
$100,000 in the bank will be allowed to remain in Jordan.
Crow understands what we have taken from Iraq is irreplaceable, so she and her partner
Mary Madsen work on the little things, the sewing machines, the price of baking a loaf of
bread, a camcorder for Um Muna to record the ceremonies of life in her Amman refugee
community. A collection we took up at my 70th birthday party paid for it.
What else can we do?
What we owe Iraq is our attention. It has faded as the years and the corpse heaps have
piled up, remembered once a year on the anniversary of the invasion when those who
have suffered this damage must live it 364 more days a year for five years now and how
many more?
What do we owe Iraq? Not a new president who praises the U.S. killing machine and
pledges "orderly withdrawal" by 2013. Not corporate solutions to the suffering of those
we have treated so callously until now.
What we owe Iraq is to change the way America does business in the world and the only
way to do that is to radically change this gangrenous system and root out the source of
all this damage. What we owe Iraq is really nothing short of a revolution.
*********************************
John Ross is back in Mexico and will now turn his attention to this beautifully chaotic
republic for a while. If you have further information, write johnross@igc.org
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