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Analysis: Iraq's Forgotten Refugees

Council on Foreign Relations

October 16, 2007
Prepared by: Greg Bruno

Ghaith Mubarak and Eenas Alkaissi are among the lucky ones. Death threats and kidnappings forced them to flee Iraq in 2006. When they landed in Fort Worth, Texas, last month, they became two of only sixteen-hundred Iraqis granted asylum in the United States this year. “It was a desperate situation, seeing people die every day,” Mubarak told the Star-Telegram, his new hometown newspaper, in October 2007. Yet protection is increasingly hard to come by for Iraq’s war-ravaged citizenry. Syria and Jordan have changed visa rules, effectively cutting off their states to fleeing Iraqis. Doors are closing internally (Guardian) as well, with ten of eighteen provinces “denying entry to civilians” trying to escape sectarian violence. Even European countries, quick to take in refugees in past years, now are returning asylum seekers to Iraq. Only Sweden, it seems, is willing (Reuters) to keep its doors open, albeit temporarily.

At the center of the growing refugee storm is the United States which, despite relying on thousands of Iraqis for contracted services in the country, maintains a bureaucratic resettlement program criticized (AFP) by human rights groups as slow. Amnesty International, which calls the situation in Iraq “the fastest-growing displacement crisis in the world,” took a not-so-veiled swipe at the United States in a September 2007 report (PDF). The humanitarian plight of Iraqis “has been largely ignored by the rest of the world,” the report said, “including states whose military involvement in Iraq has played a part in creating the situation.” Amelia Templeton, of Human Rights First, was more direct: “People believe the U.S. has a special responsibility to deal with this crisis. But we’re doing nothing” (Reuters).

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.