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Iraqi teens participate in team-building exercises organized by aid workers in a Jordan area refugee camp. (RASHID HAMASHANI)
JORDAN — With the news that U.S. forces were withdrawing from Iraq, nearly five million Iraqi refugees learned that the nightmare that started in 2003 was over. However, most are convinced that going back to a pre-sanctions or even pre-war Iraq is a mere pipedream.
“All Iraqis wanted the war to be over, but the Iraq that existed before has disappeared from the face of the earth, and no one has any idea how living in the new one will feel,” said Malik Abdul-Razzaq, a 37-year-old Iraqi refugee now living in Amman, Jordan. Abdul-Razzaq left Baghdad, where he had lived all his life, in early 2006, after being threatened by an “unknown armed group” due to his relationship with a human rights organization.
“Politically what will happen? The country is destroyed, the militias are everywhere,” said Abdul-Razzaq, whose feelings of bewilderment were a common theme among refugees.
Of the 4.7 million people that are estimated to have been uprooted since 2003, half of them remain in the country, but far from their towns and cities and separated from family and friends. Approximately two million have spilled into Syria and Jordan, where they have been living in what human rights organization Amnesty International calls “ramshackle camps and struggling to meet basic needs, like food and medicine.”
About 200,000 have made it beyond the Middle East, mainly to Europe. In most cases, Iraqi refugees are not allowed to work and must depend on the black market.
Amira al-Fadl, 31, now living in Stockholm, says that “since the Samarra bombing in February 2006 [when a dome of the Al-Askari Mosque was destroyed by bombs], my parents have been locked in their neighborhood, away from my sisters.” Al-Fadl is doubtful that she will return. “To leave, I had to peddle my house, my furniture and the family jewelry, and I still needed to borrow $10,000. I’m sleeping on a relative’s couch, but I’m not sure what I have to go back to.”
Leyla Jarrah, 33, also in Stockholm, can’t keep tears of joy from coming down her cheeks. But she is not planning to go back either. “I’ve lost most of my family and I don’t think I’d be able to find my friends. As promising as people say it now is, I can’t see myself starting all over again.”
Harun Saeed, 45, is planning to return to Baghdad. He is one of only 2000 or so Iraqis to have made it to the U.S. “Two of my Air Force colleagues were assassinated. I spent 14 months and all my savings in Syria. Now, I am barely surviving.” Despite extensive experience as a technician for the Iraqi Air Force, Saeed has been unable to find a job paying more than minimum wage. He is now dreaming of going back and seeing his wife and two children. “I have no idea what will happen now, but for the first time in many years, I am hopeful.”
When Timur Barzani, 47, heard the news, he thought of his children. “Life in Damascus is hard, and my wife and I have had to send our sons to work. My sons now say they will be too embarrassed to go to school, they think they are too old to learn the ABCs. But I think in Najaf we will find many children in the same situation, and they will not be embarrassed,” Barzani explained.
Until the U.S. withdrawal, Iraqi refugees usually had only two options. Either they could face the humiliation of living as refugees without rights or hope for a better future, or they could face likely death if they returned to their shattered country. The common feeling among Iraqi refugees today is of hope for their country, for their friends and relatives, and for their lives.
They know that the social fabric of the county has been destroyed by the war and the occupation, and that the challenges are huge. But as Abdul-Razzaq says, “The withdrawal is only the first step. At least now, we Iraqis will be free to choose our own future.”
Finally the USA has come to realize the right to self determination.
Comment on November 13, 2008 11:38 am