Resettlement Stories: 2/12/08

TIME Magazine recently had an exceptional article, well worth reading in its entirety, on the trials and tribulations of an Iraqi woman resettled to Phoenix:

The $450-a-month unit picked out for them had a busted air conditioner and cockroaches. It was sweltering inside. Faeza was distraught, and the manager of the building was nice enough to let her spend the weekend in the dressed-up unit used to lure new renters… A few days after she arrived in the U.S., she ran into two Iraqi Americans from the local Chaldean Catholic Church, who were in the IRC office to meet Iraqi Christian refugees. When they saw Faeza, who is Muslim, they immediately offered to help… "When I see Khattab, this let me to stay here," she says in her broken English. "O.K., this is for [her 7 year old son] Khattab. This is the future for Khattab."

Other, shorter stories appeared in local papers about Iraqis being resettled in New Hampshire, Providence, Boston and Idaho.

News Roundup: 10/24/07

Among desperate Iraqi refugees, prostitution a growing problem (From the International Herald Tribune): ...the problem is growing as thousands of Iraqis flee their homeland. Most troubling to some human rights groups is the possibility that ever-younger girls may turn to, or be pulled into, the sex trade, desperate to support families barely getting by...

Iraq refugees headed for Twin Falls, ID (From the Times-News): They fled their homeland because they helped the United States... A family of four Iraqis will arrive in Twin Falls from Jordan in the near future, but their exact arrival date is unknown... "It's like the army says, hurry up and wait," [College of Southern Idaho Refugee Service Center Director Ron Black] said.

Fire ravages UN refugee agency warehouses in Syria (UN News Centre): This story has been up for a few days, but is worth drawing attention to...

News: Syria's border closure hits Iraqi refugees

From Reuters:

"SAIDA ZEINAB, Syria, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Suffering kidney disease and living in a Damascus slum, Amal Jabar lost her only means of support when Syria closed its borders to Iraqi refugees a few weeks ago.

"My son Mostafa used to come and bring me whatever little he scraped together from odd jobs in Baghdad. I would be starving now if it wasn't for charity," said Jabar, who fled from the al-Amel district in Baghdad, a focus of sectarian fighting.

"The area is swamped with militias and Mostafa's life is in danger. He was planning to move to Syria, but now he cannot and I haven't heard from him," she said.

Syria's decision on Oct. 1 to shut its borders to Iraqi nationals, except merchants and academics, has disrupted lives of refugees, separated families and trapped thousands amid killings and upheaval, according to refugees and aid agencies.

With an estimated 1.4-2 million refugees constituting up to 10 percent of Syria's population, the government said it could no longer absorb more Iraqis, although thousands were crossing the border every day."...

Read the complete story.

News: A bitter life for Iraq's displaced

A wrenching report from the International Herald Tribune on Iraqis displaced within their own country and therefore not technically considered refugees by the United States or United Nations:

..."In Najaf, estimates of the number of the displaced ranges from 60,000 to more than 400,000. The official number is 10,000 families, or 60,000 people, since humanitarian organizations estimate that there are six people on average in each Iraqi family, according to the International Organization for Migration, which works with governments worldwide on refugee issues. The majority live in squatter villages far from services; there are about 1,700 in the refugee camp.

But Kammal Abdul Zahra, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent's Najaf office, puts the real figure at about 400,000. That would be a 45 percent increase since the Samarra bombing, which marked the beginning of the mass migrations. Numbers are hard to estimate because some displaced families stay only a few months in one place and then move on.

Such a jump in population would present huge problems for cities in a developed country, let alone one in a less developed country still recovering from decades of war."

Read the complete story.

News: Money gone, Iraqi refugees reluctantly head back to uncertain future

From the Associated Press:

"Damascus, Syria: Their money gone, Iman Faleh and her family packed their belongings for Baghdad — a journey they said was like a trip to "death row."

The religiously mixed family — Iman is a Sunni but the others are Shiites — fled their home in a mostly Shiite part of east Baghdad in July and took refuge in Syria, joining an estimated 1.5 million other Iraqis here.

But in early fall, they became part of a growing wave of Iraqis leaving Syria for home — not because they are confident of Iraq's future, but because they ran out of money."

Read the complete story