You know those Iraqis who are streaming back into Iraq?

They aren't going willingly:(link via Moonbootica of Devizes Melting Pot)

DAMASCUS, 22 November 2007 (IRIN) - Lack of funds and the Syrian government’s refusal to renew their visas, more than the perception of improved security in Iraq, are prompting some Iraqi refugees in Syria to return to Iraq, according to personal refugee accounts and figures from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

The Iraqi government recently announced that 46,000 refugees returned to Iraq in October, mostly from Syria, while a Syrian immigration source said that between 1 October and 19 November 60,000 people had returned to Iraq.

Some media reports and Iraqi government officials have suggested the refugees are returning because of improved security following the US military “surge” earlier this year.

However, in a report released on 22 November, the UNHCR - which interviewed 110 Iraqis in Syria this week - found that only 14 percent of respondents said they were returning to Iraq because they believed the security situation had improved, as opposed to 70 percent who cited financial and visa reasons.

“I have no money because I’m not allowed to work,” said an Iraqi man waiting by the Iraqi embassy in Damascus, and who wished to remain anonymous. He and his family are planning to leave Syria for Iraq on 26 November. “Also my official visa has run out and the Syrian government won’t renew it.”

The majority of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees in Syria are not allowed to work legally and, with the price of basic commodities and rent soaring, many who have used up their savings in Syria are now unable to afford to stay any longer.

Update: Another viewpoint:

GENEVA (AFP) — The United Nations refugee agency on Friday expressed concerns over reports Iraqi refugees are returning to the country, particularly from neighbouring Syria, saying there was no large-scale movement.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees "does not believe that the time has come to promote, organise or encourage returns" given the volatile and unpredictable security situation in Iraq, spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis told journalists.

"Presently, there is no sign of any large-scale return to Iraq," she added.

More than 1.4 million Iraqis have fled to Syria since the US-led invasion of 2003, but they are coming under increased bureaucratic and financial pressure as the country's social infrastructure struggles with the influx.

A survey by UN staff in Syria found that the majority of returning Iraqi families are doing so because they are running out of money or resources and facing difficult living conditions, or because their visas have expired.

Syria imposed visa requirements on Iraqis from October 1. Those seeking to enter the country must now obtain visas from the Syrian embassy in Baghdad, which are given only for commercial, transport, scientific or educational reasons.

Iraq said earlier this week that it will offer Syria 15 million dollars (10 million euros) to help pay the costs of sheltering refugees.

The desperation of the Iraqi refugees in Lebanon

Where they are now being jailed with criminals:

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Iraqi refugees face a wide array of problems in the Middle East, from lack of basic assistance to political obstacles, and are being increasingly detained in Lebanon, a U.S. group advocating refugee protection said in a report Monday.

The report by the Washington-based Refugees International was issued after its team visited Lebanon, Syria and Egypt for a month to gauge what homeless Iraqis deal with.The report highlighted the plight of Iraqis in Lebanon, where an estimated 50,000 Iraqi refugees live. Lebanon's history of sectarian violence and its stated refusal to act as an asylum country has led authorities to deny Iraqis any rights or access to services, the report said.

It said authorities began «systematically arresting and detaining those who are in Lebanon illegally» since May, when government troops battled al-Qaida inspired militants holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in the country's north.
«The government has taken to detaining Iraqis, placing them in jail with common criminals,» the report said.

Lebanese government did not immediately comment the report but security officials, speaking on conditions of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to media, said about half of the estimated 1,000 jailed illegal migrants were Iraqi. Most of them likely face deportation because the country's main prison is packed 50 percent over its 2,500-inmate capacity, the officials said.

The Iraqis are picked up for overstaying their visas or for entering the country illegally, the report said.

Human rights activists say the Iraqis are generally jailed for a month, then offered the choice of returning to Iraq or staying on in prison _ until they give up and opt to go home.

Riverbend is back!

In Syria.

(Via PSoTD)

Riverbend is leaving Iraq.

Riverbend at Baghdad's Burning finally posted again. She and her family have decided to join the flood of refugees leaving Iraq and find a new life elsewhere.

On the one hand, I know that leaving the country and starting a new life somewhere else- as yet unknown- is such a huge thing that it should dwarf every trivial concern. The funny thing is that it’s the trivial that seems to occupy our lives. We discuss whether to take photo albums or leave them behind. Can I bring along a stuffed animal I've had since the age of four? Is there room for E.'s guitar? What clothes do we take? Summer clothes? The winter clothes too? What about my books? What about the CDs, the baby pictures?

The problem is that we don't even know if we'll ever see this stuff again. We don't know if whatever we leave, including the house, will be available when and if we come back. There are moments when the injustice of having to leave your country, simply because an imbecile got it into his head to invade it, is overwhelming. It is unfair that in order to survive and live normally, we have to leave our home and what remains of family and friends… And to what?

It's difficult to decide which is more frightening- car bombs and militias, or having to leave everything you know and love, to some unspecified place for a future where nothing is certain.

Godspeed, Riverbend. May you and your family go safely and land in a place that welcomes you.

Update 4/30: We know it won't be the United States. Think Progress:

“Before the 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States accepted several thousand Iraqi refugees a year; since then, and amid heightened security requirements, that number dropped to several hundred. So far this year, just 68 have been resettled.” In total, “an estimated 4 million Iraqis have fled their homes during the four years of war.”

Losing the minds of the next generation

By killing them in the halls of learning:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide bomber triggered a ball bearing-packed charge Sunday, killing at least 41 people at a mostly Shiite college whose main gate was left littered with blood-soaked student notebooks and papers amid the bodies.

Witnesses said a woman carried out the attack at the business school annex to Mustansiriyah University, but Interior Ministry officials said they were still investigating those reports. The school's main campus was hit by a string of bombings last month that killed 70 people.

And chasing away doctors:

According to a December 2006 report by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, 34,000 physicians were registered in Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Since then, about 12,000 have fled and 2,000 have been killed, it said.

At al-Jarrah, two doctors have been kidnapped and killed. Two were kidnapped and released. Three have left Baghdad. Thirteen remain on staff.

"It's a campaign to drain the country," said Aviad Najeed, a surgeon at al-Jarrah. "A very, very well-organized one. We don't know who's behind it."

Sitting in their lounge, a windowless room with lockers and leather chairs, four doctors at al-Jarrah talked about the hope they had after the invasion. They recalled buying oranges and flowers to greet U.S. troops. They thought the Americans would bring the best technology and medicines.

And professionals:

(01-16) 04:00 PST Washington -- Iraq is in the throes of the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948, a mass flight out of and within the country that is ravaging basic services and commerce, swamping neighboring nations with nearly 2 million refugees and building intense pressure for emigration to Europe and the United States, according to the United Nations and refugee experts.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which appealed for $60 million in emergency aid last week, believes 1.7 million Iraqis are displaced inside Iraq, whose prewar population was 21 million. About 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing inside Iraq each month, the United Nations said, and 500,000 have been displaced since last February's bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra. These figures are as of January 2007.

The Bush administration and the governments of Jordan and Syria, the nations that accept the bulk of the refugees, have been reluctant to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis, experts said.

"I think everyone at this point is in denial about the human consequences of the war," said Kathleen Newland, director of the Migration Policy Institute, who is familiar with the State Department's views.

The Iraqi health-care system was once considered one of the best in the Middle East, with the most up-to-date equipment and well-educated doctors. Iraqis could get basic health care free, and each town had at least one hospital. That changed when the U.N. Security Council imposed an embargo after Iraq invaded Kuwait, leading to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Medical instruments and drugs used to be shipped from Germany, France, Japan and Switzerland. Now, hospitals buy cheaper supplies from Egypt, Jordan and India, the doctors said.

One good way to ruin a secular country right in the middle of the Middle East and Asia is to gut it of the people who love it enough to try and save it. Nice job, Bush.

Iraq's refugees flood the world

Washington Post:

As the fourth year of war nears its end, the Middle East's largest refugee crisis since the Palestinian exodus from Israel in 1948 is unfolding in a climate of fear, persecution and tragedy.

Nearly 2 million Iraqis -- about 8 percent of the prewar population -- have embarked on a desperate migration, mostly to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The refugees include large numbers of doctors, academics and other professionals vital for Iraq's recovery. Another 1.7 million have been forced to move to safer towns and villages inside Iraq, and as many as 50,000 Iraqis a month flee their homes, the U.N. agency said in January.

Update: Fleeing from this:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The Iraqi Interior Ministry estimates that about 1,000 people have been killed throughout Iraq in the past week due to gunbattles, drive-by shootings and bomb attacks, a ministry official said Sunday.

The figure includes members of militia and terrorist groups, civilians and Iraqi security forces. The official said the data was gathered by Iraq's Interior, Health and Defense ministries.

Update 2/5:
Some refugees cannot get Syria to give them shelter:

More than 700 Palestinian refugees who have been driven out of Iraq are stranded in squalid tented camps on the Syrian border. Damascus is refusing to let them in, despite the wintry conditions and limited supplies of food, water, fuel and medicines.

"This is a human tragedy," Tayseer Nasrallah, head the of the refugee affairs committee in the West Bank city of Nablus, protested yesterday. Other Palestinians charged the Iraqis with ethnic cleansing. Officials in Ramallah said at least 180 Palestinians had been murdered in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Human Rights Watch reported last week that only 15,000 of the 34,000 Palestinian refugees living in Baghdad before 2003 were still there. "They are harassed by the Iraqi government and are targeted by Shia militias because of the benefits they used to receive from Saddam Hussein's government and their perceived support for the insurgency in Iraq," said the New York-based organisation.

Iraqis trading homes for lives

"Until early this year, Raad Chasep was a prince of the farming plains in the Abu Ghraib area of the Euphrates Valley, west of Baghdad. Today he and his family are paupers, displaced and distraught as civil war tears Iraq apart.

On the verge of tears, the 39-year-old described the rural mansion they swapped last week for a two-room hovel in this Shiite quarter of Baghdad's north-west: "We had three reception rooms, nine bedrooms and seven bathrooms. We had our own meat, vegetables, milk … but tonight we have no dinner.""