Acknowledging the grim reality - Iraq’s growing refugee emergency

The fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq and the fall of Baghdad passed with little mention of the growing human “displacement crisis” in the region. Nowhere in the world are refugee numbers growing at a faster rate.

The United Nations estimates 100,000 people are fleeing the country every month. About two million Iraqi refugees are now sheltering in neighbouring countries, the majority having fled since the downfall of Saddam. Iraq is haemorrhaging refugees.

Displacement inside the country is occurring on an equally horrific scale as the civil war forces people to flee from their homes: 727,000 Iraqis are thought to have been displaced within the country since February 2006 when the Samarra Shrine was bombed leading to a massive outbreak of sectarian violence.

The diverse character of the refugees and displaced people reflects the all-against-all nature of the war and deepening divisions in the country. Sunni are being expelled from Shia areas as Shia are expelled from Sunni dominated regions. Christians and Mandeans are increasingly under threat of attack. Kurds are accepting some of the displaced people moving north to escape the violence, even as they persecute and push out Arab-Iraqis who Saddam encouraged to move to Kurdistan. The Sudanese, Palestinian and Somali minorities who once found some protection in Iraq are no longer welcome.

Many of those who have made it out of the country are wealthy and skilled professionals, the very sort of people necessary for a successful post-war reconstruction.

Syria and Jordan, where 90 per cent of Iraqi refugees reside, have generally maintained an “open door policy” in the name of Pan Arabism. But the sheer number of bodies crossing the borders means that their hospitality is wearing thin. Neither of these two countries has signed the 1951 Refugee Convention prohibiting returning or refouling refugees to their countries of origin where this places them in grave danger. Iraqi refugees live in constant fear of deportation.

The United Nations and Non-Government Organisations have been hampered by a lack of political and financial support from the Iraqi and US administrations, both of which are reluctant to declare a state of emergency in the country.

As a consequence, very little international money has been dedicated to providing immediate assistance to refugees and displaced people. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) which has primary responsibility for the displaced people in the Kurdish and southern regions of the country operates with a pitiful budget of $US 8-9 million.

One frustrated UNHCR official recently asserted that $US150 million would not be enough to provide for the basic needs of those in flight.

Assisting Iraqi refugees and displaced people is critical for more than just humanitarian reasons. A recent report from the Brookings Institution refers to Iraqi refugees as potential “carriers of conflict” and points to the danger of the war spilling over to engulf the region.

It is common for displaced people to seek revenge against the leaders and regimes that forced them away from their homes. Those who have been “warehoused” for years and even generations without any prospect of resettlement or return can become refugee warriors and even terrorists. In the absence of hope, refugee camps are sites for festering hatreds and the perpetuation of violence.

To acknowledge this grim reality is not to suggest that Iraq is doomed to collapse and should be abandoned. On the contrary, the desperate situation of the displaced people in the region offers an opportunity for the coalition of the willing and other concerned nations to make the most of a bad situation.

In the last six months many experts ranging from arch realists to members of the Iraq Study Group have stressed the need to engage with neighbouring countries to assist in addressing the conflict. These calls have been ignored by the Bush administration because such a rapprochement with Syria and Iran would be seen as a declaration of weakness and as a fundamental compromise to its foreign policy values.

However, greatly increasing funds to allow international and local organisations to provide humanitarian assistance to both refugees outside the country and those displaced within Iraq would serve as a valuable trust-building exercise. It would demonstrate to many Syrians, Saudi Arabians and Iranians that the Coalition of the Willing has no immediate intention of changing the balance of power in the region.

It would also send a positive message to Iraqis that the occupying forces are genuinely concerned for their welfare and that they are capable of providing them with protection. Helping Iraqi refugees would do more for the country’s security and for America’s international public diplomacy efforts than bringing down a thousand statues of Saddam Hussein.

Such a humanitarian surge would also help build domestic support in Coalition of the Willing nations where people from broad ideological backgrounds have become sceptical about the motives behind the invasion and continuing war.

In February President Bush announced that the US will resettle 7,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007. This is been criticised as a paltry number given Sweden’s pledge to take in 9,000. To advance their humanitarian image and public diplomacy efforts, particularly in Muslim regions of the world, it is important for Western nations to increase the number of settlement places open to Iraqis who are assessed as having no prospect of safely returning to their country in the near or intermediate future.

However, the political and humanitarian situation is not so dire that hundreds of thousands of resettlement places are necessary as was the case in the late 1970s with respect to the Indochinese refugee crisis. The Iraq War is not like the Vietnam War, at least not yet.

Die-hard advocates of a “stay the course” war plan might argue that the best thing that we can do for Iraqi refugees is to direct all of our efforts to killing the insurgents who have overrun the country.

This view which concentrates on decapitating the enemy is not at odds with the assistance of refugees and displaced people. However, the current obsession with the evil face of terror fails to address the broader structural reasons that will perpetuate the conflict and produce insurgents and terrorists for many years to come.

An Iraqi war strategy that is focused more on assisting displaced people would not necessarily lead to immediate large-scale troop reductions. It would mean redeploying troops to Iraq’s borders to set up safe havens or buffer zones where displaced people can be protected and processed, thereby containing the spillover.

These zones would serve the additional purpose of keeping out foreign insurgents. The troops would by no means be safe, but they would not act as a cause célèbre and be as frequently attacked as many Coalition forces today.

Addressing Iraqi’s growing refugee emergency is not a cure-all for a complicated and multi-faceted international problem. It would however, ensure that things don’t get any worse and provide the prospect for things to get better.