Yesterday, I went to a thought-provoking discussion at the Carnegie Endowment in which the International Crisis Group’s Joost Hiltermann presented and discussed ICG’s recent report on the continuing crisis of Iraq’s refugees and IDPs.
Joost is a serious analyst, with considerable experience of documenting and analyzing developments in Iraq. In the presentation, he described the crisis in stark terms, noting that there are now signs of malnutrition emerging among Iraqi refugees in Syria. “We have also seen the evaporation of the Iraqi middle class,” he said, “especially the civil service.”
I imagine Carnegie will be posting the audio record of the event on their website sometime soon. If so, you’ll be able to find it here. It isn’t there yet.
Hiltermann described the political situation inside Iraq as still “very fragile.” He noted, crucially, that “You cannot have any serious advance at the political level inside the country until there is a serious engagement [by the US] with Iran.” He warned that if the US exits Iraq without getting internal political reconciliation in the country, the result could well be a new wave of refugees out of the country– “But this time those seeking to flee may well be stopped at the borders [by the countries they’re trying to flee to], and you would see big tent encampments emerging there at the borders.”
After he spoke, Michel Gabaudan, who’s the UNHCR’s regional representative for the United States and the Caribbean, made a few remarks. He said that from UNHCR’s perspective the treatment that the Iraqi refugees in Syria and Jordan have received from those host governments has improved over the past 18 months, with the numbers of detentions and deportations of refugees going down markedly in both places. “Those who should be noted for their deportations should be the European countries,” he said. He added that those deported by EU countries had often been sent back to Iraq, but finding themselves unable to return to their homes they would end up as IDPs elsewhere in the country.
Gabaudan also, later, noted that some western countries– and he singled out Germany– had been discriminating against the Muslims among the refugees and giving preferential treatment to the Christians. He described that as a very worrying practice that could further stoke sectarian sensitivities and tensions among Iraqis.
Earlier, Joost Hiltermann had spelled out the fact that in Syria, there was a noticeable lack of sectarian tensions and sensitivities among the Iraqi refugees, though they include Iraqis from all the country’s different religious groups. (In Jordan, the government has worked very hard to keep out Iraqi Shiites, though a number of them have managed to take up residence there.)
Actually, as the report itself spells out, calculating the true numbers of refugees in the countries of refuge– especially Jordan– has proven frustratingly difficult.
Here’s what the report says about the size and duration of the problem (pp.3, 4):
- Syria is said to have welcomed around 1.5 million although some Western observers believe the number to be much lower. Similar discrepancies exist concerning Jordan, where the government uses a much higher figure for planning and operational purposes than an independent research institute arrived at [later stated as being government:450,000-500,000 versus Norwegian research institute:161,000.] According to UNHCR, between 20,000 and 50,000 Iraqis live in Lebanon; Lebanese authorities claim there are 60,000 to 100,000. Some 70,000 Iraqis reportedly live in Egypt and roughly 57,000 in Iran…
Statistical variations and uncertainties aside, the number clearly is huge and represents one of the world’s largest conflict-induced displacements of people. The most significant outflow occurred after the February 2006 bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Samarra, which plunged Iraq further into a bloody blend of sectarian conflict, insurgency warfare and criminality. From then on, the number of Iraqis fleeing insecurity, violence and persecution skyrocketed. As of November 2007, over 70 per cent of the Iraqis in Syria had been there for less than a year; in Jordan, 77 per cent of Iraqis arrived between 2003 and 2007, with most coming after 2006.
In the report, Joost and his ICG colleagues have done a generally good job of sifting through the statistics and assessing a number of policy options regarding the refugees. However, after reading the report carefully, I come away with a frustrating feeling that though it is titled Failed Responsibility: Iraqi refugees in Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, still, nowhere in it did they assess the question of responsibility for this problem in anything like a rigorous enough way.
That is, nowhere do they actually spell out the specific responsibility under international law of the occupying and/or UN mandatory power in Iraq for assuring conditions of public security throughout the whole country, a responsibility that the US– which is indeed the power in question– has quite notably and thoroughly failed to live up to. Instead, the report treats the US as, more or less, just another member of “the international community.” Washington’s record on dealing with the refugee crisis (though notably not its record on having caused or occasioned it) is dealt with in Chapter VII of the report, at which point the report implicitly contrasts the relative “generosity” of the US financial contribution to refugee aid with the relative parsimony of the EU and Arab countries.
The report does state, very blandly (p.32) that “Most donor countries believe the U.S. should shoulder the lion’s share of the financial burden.” But it does not give the reasons that other governments adduce for this judgment– and far less does it align the ICG in any way with that judgment.
But if US policy failings have indeed been responsible, in one way or another, for the collapse of public security in Iraq that has motivated the flight of so many millions of Iraqis from their home communities, then how can the displacement crisis be addressed unless US policies– and indeed, the whole US role– inside Iraq are radically changed?
Why does the ICG report say nothing about this question? Why do they spend just about all of their pages criticizing the governments of Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and the US-installed “government” of Iraq, without anywhere addressing the responsibility of the occupying/mandatory power?
In introducing Hiltermann, Carnegie President Jessica Mathews described the report as an exemplary piece of analysis of the complex intersection of humanitarian and political concerns. Actually, I don’t think it addressed the crucial political dimension of the crisis nearly sufficiently.
Toward the end of the Q&A portion of yesterday’s discussion, Joost voiced the decidedly depressing expectation that “We probably won’t see any significant returns of the refugees to their homeplaces within the next ten years.”
Afterwards, I went up and chatted with him a bit, and got him to confirm that that meant he did not see any significant breakthrough in the intra-Iraqi peacemaking within that time period.
I was horrified. “But Joost!” I protested, “of course there are ways to get a good, durable settlement inside Iraq in a much shorter amount of time than ten years! Look at all the work all of us have been doing providing guidelines for how that could be done. Yes, I realize it would also require a fair peacemaking process in which all of Iraq’s neighbors could be involved, including Iran, and Syria, and Saudi Arabia, but that is possible too.”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe we could see how it could be done. But I don’t see the political will to do it.”
Well, maybe it’s true that we don’t yet have the political will– primarily, here in the US, but also elsewhere– to do what needs to be done to allow for real reconciliation and conflict termination within and around Iraq. But I think we should still all work really hard for that outcome. Political currents can change, and can change fairly rapidly in the present era.
Maybe I’m just an optimist by nature. But I do strongly sense that the tide here in the US has been turning pretty rapidly toward significantly decreasing the amount of control our country seeks to hang onto in Iraq. This is a great shift in the right direction. So let’s try to push it as far and as fast as it will go. Ten more years of chaos and fratricidal conflict inside Iraq, and ten more years of the massive displacement of so many millions of Iraqis from their homes, is a situation quite too horrible to contemplate.
There’s no question that you are an optimist. Unfortunately the reality is that the US has promoted turmoil in the Middle East for years and seems intent upon continuing its divide-and-conquer strategy in what the US government sees as its own best interest. The best example is I/P. Who can doubt that the US could have brought an end to that terrible situation with a snap of its fingers years ago?
I believe that the US went into Iraq and consciously promoted civil strife to ensure a need for a continuing US military presence. I believe that, based on evidence, the US military was complicit in the 2006 Samarra mosque bombing which greatly escalated the civil strife. The US has eschewed the Hamilton/Baker Report for the same reasons.
Arthur Silber: “The Bush administration has drastically destabilized the Middle East, setting the stage for a wider war. The next target is unquestionably Iran — which had been the primary target from the beginning. They want destabilization of the region, and they want a wider war — for it is by these means that they seek to consolidate United States dominance of the Middle East, guaranteeing our control of the region’s resources (among other factors).”
Any hope from Obama or McCain? It’s difficult to see any.
Gramsci: Optimism of the will, pessimism of the intellectual. (I always was wilfull.)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice…
MLK: “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.”
Read him and weep. I do.
I agree with Don’s first comment, admirably expressed. It makes sense, even though it runs against “common sense” that war is a bad thing and to be avoided.
Nevertheless, I sense (optimistically) the push to invade Iran has lost momentum. Obama’s switch to Afghanistan as the vital battlefield indicates a different priority. Further, MK Bhadrakumar’s article in the current Asia Times sees a looming Russian energy presence in the ME which could move Europe closer to Russia and even put Iran and US on the same side.
“…in Syria, there was a noticeable lack of sectarian tensions and sensitivities among the Iraqi refugees, though they include Iraqis from all the country’s different religious groups.”
I am not sure why that is at all remarkable. After all, there has historically been quite a serious “lack” of sectarian tensions and sensitivities among Iraqi people, and from everything I have been able to tell there is a similar “lack” in Syria.
“But if US policy failings have indeed been responsible, in one way or another, for the collapse of public security in Iraq that has motivated the flight of so many millions of Iraqis from their home communities…”
‘If’? ‘In one way or another’? The ‘Collapse’ of public security? ‘Collapse’? Is this serious? If?
‘Optimism’, ‘pessimism’? No. It is the inmitigated corruption, corruption, of the intellectual, and the academy, in these times.
God help us, though we don’t deserve it, because other innocents as yet unslaughtered, or still surviving somehow, as yet not set to wander the world stripped of everything, do.
[Joost Hiltermann has predicted that] “We probably won’t see any significant returns of the refugees to their homeplaces within the next ten years.” He did not see any significant breakthrough in the intra-Iraqi peacemaking within that time period.
Even though Sir Oracle did not choose to mention it explicitly, he must also have foreseen that the Parliament of Man™ and the “international community” will not suddenly become able and willing to cope with this sort of thing between today and 2 August 2018.
About that point, at least, he is probably entirely correct.
Happy days.
Michel Gabaudan, should high light the treatments of Iraqi by US.
Till now there is certain numbers about Iraqi detainees in US camps, although some Iraqi saying that there are women and teenager detainees in US camps.
What make this climes supported six month ago US official said they have intrude new regime of using religious men in their camps to educate these kids by trying changes their mind of resisting US.
The fact is if any one to be blamed in the case if humiliating of Iraqi and Iraqi refugees is US and it’s allied. This war was a deliberate of distractions of nation if some trying to draw another picture and put balms on numbering countries for their treatments of ten of thousands of Iraqi fled to them is understandable with their limited resources and no clear immigrations polices in addition to their fears of demography changes that may established the regimes in these countries.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr: The arc of history is long but it bends towards justice…
Helena, world without believers who tooke it abroad means nothing.
Your “Martin Luther King” said these words because what his black ethnic suffered under the white ethnic, it’s not because US treatment of other nations across the world which still for decades.
Iraqis treatments in other westren countries:
Swedish Migration Board Iraqis applied for asylum and depression decreased significantly »in the work of immigration brokers in Iraq
Iraqis applied for asylum and depression decreased significantly »in the work of immigration brokers in Iraq
Oop’s boken link,
This is in Arabic. This the translated one
The ICG is controlled by major U.S. and W. European former-politicians. Transnational.org has a discussion of ICG here.
So, at one level, ICG isn’t in the America-criticizing business.
But, at another level, is there anyone who is in doubt as to who is responsible? Doesn’t Joost save himself some grief, and lose himself nothing, by not pointing out the obvious?
I think it is laughable to think that America intentionally decided to create civil strife. I think America’s role in creating social strife was simply a result of stupidity, ignorance, laziness and hubris.
was simply a result of stupidity, ignorance, laziness and hubris.
Josh SN, You are wrong in this. Its not at all “stupidity, ignorance, laziness and hubris” they might make you and other to believe in this way but what US did and doing in Iraq “intentionally” deliberate to creates the miss.
You can not ignore “intentionally” Paul Bremer CPA creation when he deliberately chosen ethnics panel for his CPA.
Salah,
That’s a perfect example of limited information (ignorance) and hubris. Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer had the ******** audacity to assume that they understood Iraq. Now, to you, and to me (at least for the last year), this is obviously the wrong thing to do. But to a small-minded America, who views politics through the prism of Republican partisanship, where Blacks and Latinos are in one camp, and the True Religious Americans(Tm)(All Rights Reserved) are in another, automatically creating race and religious based parties is a no-brainer.
So an American with little intelligence or wisdom and a whole lot of hubris can get to the same exact result (create basis for sectarian conflict in Iraq) as your putative evil-doers.
I’m not trying to let them off the hook. I certainly know they intended to start the war all along, which makes them international war criminals. The response to the incidents in Fallujah in 2004 appear to me to be war crimes, for which Bush, Rumsfeld and Bremer should be tried and, inshallah, convicted. (that’s a bit of a joke, I’m atheist).
But, in truth, ignorant Bremer probably thought he was being _smart_ when he learned there are Kurds, Sunni, Shia, Turkomen, Yazidi, etc, and acted on the basis of that knowledge.
I probably haven’t convinced you, but I am right.
Josh, I don’t think Bremer really learned much beyond the lie that Sunni/Shi`a/Kurds hate each other and have been slaughtering each other since time immemorial. He might have heard of Turkmen, and maybe he heard there were some Christians there, but I doubt he knew anything about Yezidis or Mandaeans, or had any clue about the great variety of Christians ranging from the ancient Assyrians, who were among the first peoples to adopt Christianity, or the Chaldeans, who are part of the Roman Catholic Church, or the Armenians, so many of whom were rescued and protected and helped by Muslim families when they fled for their lives to northern Iraq, and who became an integral part of society. And I’ll bet he had no clue that there were also Protestants all over Iraq, too.
You know, Bremer supposedly took daily instruction in Arabic while he was ruling Iraq, and in the end he could barely say “hello, how are you”. That says a lot right there.
Syria has performed miracles by taking in 1.5 million refugees which would have increased its population by nearly 10%. Extraordinarily it has been able to provide housing and infrastructure support without help from the UN or massive donations from international aid organisations.
Jordan has done even better. Taking in some 700,000K refugees, which incresed its population by nearly 18 per cent.
I know that here in wealthy Australia if we were suddenly faced with 2 million refugees – 10% of our population – it would be a national crisis. We simply would not have the resources or the infrastructure to cope.
On the other hand, perhaps the figures have been wildly exaggerated?
Josh SN,
I probably haven’t convinced you, but I am right.
With what you trying to convinced me?
There more facts and incident telling US did damage due to deliberation and there are many stories telling that.
If you think different that’s your problem and you are not different from those hubris Americans.
I don’t think Bremer really learned
When Bremer dispatched to Iraq he came not to learn he came for a mission of distractions of state that his job, he ruled CPA like Saddam as a dictator. He started the miss that’s why the war running for five years. If any one think other than that, that his problem of short sited of what this war all about