Note: Most Iraqis appearing in this article are described by their first names only in order to protect their privacy and safety.
As
an American living in Japan who has maintained passionate opposition to the war
in Iraq ever since its inception, I could find little reason to turn down an
invitation to join a delegation traveling to Amman, Jordan earlier this summer
in order to meet with Iraqi refugees. The invitation came from a fellow member
of the Iraqi Hope Network, a Japan-based initiative I joined in 2006 whereby NGO
staff, aid workers, journalists, lawyers, university professors and volunteers work together to sponsor projects in Iraq focusing
on humanitarian aid, reconstruction and human rights. The trip to Jordan was aimed at bringing gifts of friendship and solidarity from Japan,
such as clothing, school supplies, and children’s toys—as well as determining
the best ways to offer ongoing support to displaced Iraqis in need.
The situation now facing Iraqis in exile is nothing less than a
humanitarian crisis. Amongst the nearly 5 million estimated Iraqis who have
been driven from their homes due to war and occupation-fueled violence and
instability, an estimated 750,000 are presently in Jordan. Many fled
their country with literally nothing other than their accumulated savings and
the few possessions they could carry—often after having endured extreme traumas such as
kidnapping threats by armed militias, , nighttime
raids by U.S. soldiers in their homes and
the death of family members from U.S. air aids or militia
killings.
While the Jordanian government offers residency to the few Iraqis
who are able to pay at least $150,000, everyone else
is considered a “temporary guest” with no legal status or work permission. Once
these guest permits expire, most Iraqis then make the obvious choice to remain
illegally rather than risk returning to the potentially life-threatening
violence in Iraq. Overstayers are also expected to make payments to the
Jordanian government for every day of their continued stay—something they are
clearly in little position to do given their precarious situation and rapidly
dwindling savings. With the possibility that
overstayers will be deported back to Iraq, and with raids in
workplaces suspected of employing Iraqis illegally, most are forced to stay
home and endure a silent, fearful existence in hiding.
Needless to say, I had many concerns prior to making this trip:
How would I be received as someone from the United States? How would anything
we might provide be able to make up for the immense suffering that had already
been inflicted upon these people? Would my efforts really make a difference?
Ready
to host us in Amman were members of the Collateral Repair Project (CRP), a grassroots initiative spanning four countries (Iraq,
Jordan, the United States and Canada) created
One of my colleagues in Japan from the Iraq Hope Network, a humanitarian aid
worker with extensive past experience working in Iraq, had cultivated a
relationship with the Amman-based members of the CRP during numerous previous
trips she had made to Jordan. The three women comprising the Amman team, Maha, Manal and Sanaa—to where they are needed most.
Using donations collected by the organization’s North American
team members, the CPR is able
We
spent the first three full days meeting with Iraqi refugees, listening to
their stories, and distributing the goods we had
brought with us from Japan. Many of the people whom we met lived in apartments
that were cramped
and substandard in terms of basic living conditions. Nevertheless, people were spending all their savings to make rent payments, and most could not afford to
spend money on nutritious foods for their families such as eggs, milk or meat. Many
were suffering not only from the financial burden of the charges Jordan imposes
Almost
“Every
Iraqi has a sad story to tell,” said one
woman whose experience was particularly disturbing. A follower of the Sabean
faith, her family was repeatedly targeted by militia groups for being
non-Muslim. Her husband was violently beaten, and their house was then burned
down. Even after moving to a new location, the corpses of tortured and murdered
individuals were dumped into their yard to serve as a warning. Finally, able to
take no more, they fled to Jordan. “In Baghdad, we were wealthy,” the woman
told us, in tears. “Now, we have nothing.”
Despite these hardships, however, most of the people we met with
in Amman possessed a very strong spirit and a tremendous sense of dignity. Many also revealed a hilarious, sarcasm-tinged
sense of humor (as is often characteristic, I am
told, of Iraqis in general). They were also extremely gracious, displaying
consistently kind hospitality and treating us to elaborate meals despite their
own precarious situations.
To
share just a few of their stories:
Zainab and her eldest daughter
Zainab, a woman who carries herself with an
extremely fierce conviction that the barriers of language cannot mask, was left
to raise six children on her own after her husband was killed in Iraq when he
happened to be passing by an area that was targeted by U.S. forces. While both
she and her children were lively and friendly during our visit to their extremely
cramped apartment, where a
large photo of their deceased husband/father was framed in the center of the
main room, the stressful uncertainty of their life in Jordan—as well as the
enormity of their loss—was all too clear.
Mostafa, a young man in his mid-20’s
with kind eyes and an extremely gentle demeanor, was almost completely
paralyzed in 2006 when a U.S. military rocket meant for a nearby police station
sent him plummeting down from the roof of his home near Baghdad, where he had
been adjusting his television. Now confined to a wheelchair and using a
catheter, he is slowly rehabilitating but faces a long and painful road to
recovery.
Nada is a Sunni woman who fled to
Jordan from Anbar province with her 14 year-old son after receiving threats
from the Shi’a owners of a nearby market. Her name has been mysteriously
removed from all NGO assistance lists, however, which she attributes to her
abusive ex-husband, who has continued to stalk her since she divorced him while
their son was still a baby. She has also been refused asylum in both France and
Germany, again with no reason given. Despite the hardship of her situation, she
radiated an extremely alive and expressive personality.
Baida’a and Hatm are a 19- and 18-year
old sister and brother from Abu Ghraib who came to Jordan in 2007 to escape the
increasing violence. Both ill with a condition known as thalassemia, they
require over 100 abdominal and insulin injections per month. While medicines
were affordable prior to the invasion in 2003, they must now pay 900 Jordanian
dinars (around $1267) per month in order to continue their regimen of care.
Despite outwardly appearing much younger than her actual age, Baida’a carries
herself extremely gracefully, and has gone on Iraqi television explaining her
and her brother’s plight. In order to survive, both will require bone marrow
transplants—each of which runs to a staggering 150,000 JD (over $200,000).
Ala'a is living in a squalid, dark,
and scarcely furnished basement apartment with her four children. She fled to
Jordan in 2005 after her husband, a goldsmith, was murdered by militiamen who
ambushed his car and stole all of his goods. Her youngest son was in the car at
the time, and now suffers from severe PTSD as a result. Her other children are
also showing signs of depression and behavioral problems, and she is in danger
of having the electricity cut off since she has not been able to make her
payments.
Ali and Enas came to Jordan in 2003
from Baghdad with their four young children due to the deteriorating security
situation. Ali is an electrical engineer who hopes to market a product he made
to cure skin ailments, but is unable to do so because of the restriction upon
Iraqis working in Jordan. The family applied for resettlement shortly after
reaching Jordan, but has so far heard nothing.
Ala'a came to Jordan in 2005 from Baghdad
after her husband, an
imam (spiritual community leader) and
professor of the Arabic language, received a threatening letter from militia
members due to his position teaching at a university. Herself a bank accountant
in Iraq, she now stays home with their four children while her husband does
part-time tutoring on a volunteer basis. One of their children is brain damaged
from lack of oxygen during childbirth, and requires ongoing care.
Saleema is a kind-looking
woman who has three daughters, aged 21, 12 and 9 months. Her oldest daughter
has been bedridden with severe depression since the age of four or five, when
she experienced extreme trauma due to the first Gulf War. She took me aside and
asked me (through an interpreter) to try and talk to her daughter, but she had
apparently run out of the house as soon as she heard visitors approaching.
Hassan is an extremely gentle-looking man who
owned a bakery in Baghdad. He was threatened by militia who demanded $10,000 or
else they would kill him or kidnap one of his young sons. The family fled to
Jordan in 2005, leaving siblings behind in Iraq. He is applying for asylum, but
so far has heard nothing.
Jehad is a
schoolteacher from Basra whose now three year-old son, Mohammed--an adorable
child with a vivacious personality despite his illness--was diagnosed with
leukemia at the age of
one in 2006. The entire family was able to immediately
cross the border into Jordan, where
Mohammed began seeking treatment at the King Hussein Cancer Center. Now
receiving
support from the Japan-Iraq Medical Network, they are
unable to return to Iraq due to the poor
security situation and mounting medical
bills. They are hoping to resettle in Canada, where
some former students of Jehad
are now living--or any other country that will accept them.
Nahoko Takato with Baida’a and Hatm
While
the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) does provide financial support to Iraqi refugees,
this reaches only a handful of families since there are not nearly enough funds
to go around. Several large non-governmental organizations operating in Amman
also issue payments, primarily CARE International and CARITAS, although these
come in the form of very limited funds for only a short period of time. Given
these restrictions, smaller organizations with strong, on-the-ground networks,
such as the CRP and the Iraqi Al Aoun (Iraqi Support Team)—which collects
donations from wealthy Iraqis and distributes them to needy Iraqi refugee
families—are left to pick up the slack.
“When Iraqis call up these larger
organizations and ask for help, instead of doing it themselves, they just turn
around and call me,” Maha commented to us dryly at one point during our stay.
At this point, Iraqi refugees truly have nowhere to go. Most
of the people we met with declared that
they wanted to get out of Jordan immediately and be resettled into a third
country—the U.S., Australia, Sweden, or anywhere that would take them in. With
Iraqi President Maliki under pressure from George W. Bush to assure the world
that Iraq is on a path toward safety and normalcy, however—and with the
Jordanian government also finding itself unable to accommodate the Iraqis in
their midst——the refugees are finding that the powers-that-be are pushing them
to return home. For most displaced Iraqis, however—with the reality of
continuing violence in Iraq, combined with the lack of any real guarantees for
their safety—this is an extremely fearful prospect indeed. Truly, every option
facing them now seems fraught with nothing but uncertainty and instability.
“Iraqis do not receive any exemption from
health fees since we are outside the official social security insurance system
in Jordan,” said Bushra, a vivacious and tell-it-like-it-is woman working with
the International Relief and Development (IRD) nongovernmental organization to
connect vulnerable refugees with support services.
Amongst
many Iraqis, in fact, the perception is that George W. Bush—in
his zeal to prove that the situation in Iraq has improved—has pressured Maliki
to usher the refugees back to Iraq, since their very existence represents an
embarrassment in terms of his failed Iraqi strategy. “Now, after every visit
that Maliki makes to Jordan, there is a new restriction placed upon Iraqis
living here,” lamented Samar, one of the lucky few Iraqis with legal working
status—although she shares the same grief as other Iraqis at being unable
return home to visit her family members who have remained in Iraq.
One
of our most memorable visits was to the home of Salah, one
of the CPR’s neighborhood volunteer leaders. After accompanying us all day to
the homes of the other refugee families in her area along with her small son,
Taha, she brought us back to her home for a rest and afternoon tea. Slowly, her
story unraveled: Sunnis living in a Shi’a neighborhood, her nephew was one of
the countless young Iraqi men who was brutally tortured and murdered for no
reason. Taha had also been targeted for kidnapping, but managed a lucky escape
when his grandfather yanked him away from his would-be abductors.
Salah’s
family applied to the UNHCR three years ago for overseas asylum, but has so far
heard nothing. “Here in Jordan, how we can we be expected to provide a future
for our children when we ourselves are living like prisoners? Our only hope is
to be resettled elsewhere,” Salah told us, beginning to weep. “We might smile
and appear to be happy, but inside we are torn apart.”
Article 9 and Conflict Regions
Experiencing the horror
firsthand: The view from inside Iraq
Although the CRP also works with Iraqis displaced internally within their own country’s borders, the CRP’s work in Iraq was recently transferred to a well-known international humanitarian NGO (instead of the previously existing setup whereby individual case workers worked directly
In addition, despite the extreme hardships facing the Iraqis
exiled in Jordan who are portrayed in this article, their circumstances on the
whole are a step above those still inside Iraq’s borders—including those
displaced in squalid refugee camps, as well as those who remain subjected to continuing
violence and instability at home.
The following is an excerpt from an e-mail message sent this past
May from Iraqi journalist and human rights activist Isam Rasheed to members of
the Iraqi Hope Network on the occasion of the Global Article 9 peace
conference:
I’m Isam Rasheed, an Iraqi
journalist. I live in Baghdad, and I am in the middle of a horrible life under
illegal occupation. I see the death, blood and bombs every day in my country,
and I see the hopelessness in the eyes of my people. Day by day I lost the
colors and my life became dark. It is like there is no light in the
skyline—just a very dark future. I have been looking for any hope to take me
and my nation from this chaos and save us with a peaceful life. And before I
lost this hope I visited Japan and met many friends, which was a very important
point in my life since my great Japanese friends gave me hope to survive. I
learned from them that I don't have to despair at all.
We as Iraqi people are all
suffering from this continuing war every day because of the occupation. And
because I am in the middle of this suffering, I know very well the meaning of
the word “war.” I do not want any nation to get involved in any war, and I wish
and hope that all of our world will live in peace. There is no reason to make
any war, and there is no result that can be gained from any war. We are human
beings, not monsters made to fight one another. It is my wish for us to talk
and understand each other, and to make love as our base.
I ask all of you, the
Japanese people, to save Article 9 of the Japanese constitution in order to
save Japan from any war and keep the country in peace forever. I wish I could
be in Japan now to ask every Japanese to please save this article.
Three months after writing this message, he experienced two
life-changing events in the same week: the joyful birth of his newborn son,
which was followed just days later by a suicide bomb attack in his Baghdad
neighborhood that killed many of his friends and neighbors (including a relative)—the
aftermath of which he witnessed with his own eyes. Still, however, he continues
to maintain a positive outlook, writing in another e-mail correspondence: “There is always hope… and so I will never
give up.”
What You Can Do To Help
The destruction wrought upon the lives of the innocent and
beautiful human beings portrayed in this article represent only a fraction of
those Iraqis who have suffered similar tragedies. Despite the fact that U.S.
policy and military action in Iraq bears a large responsibility for this
suffering, however, the U.S. government has budgeted only 17 million USD
for Iraqi refugees, as compared to 200 billion for military-related purposes.
The U.S. government has also fallen fall short of its responsibility to take in
Iraqi refugees, agreeing to accept only 12,000 in 2008—a mere drop in the
bucket considering the total number of more than four million displaced Iraqis.
The Collateral Repair Project is presently seeking support In
order to make a difference in the lives of Iraqi refugees. As described in this
article, the CRP collects funds to help displaced Iraqis set up small home
businesses that are in line with their particular skills and means. Individuals
and families in need are profiled on the CRP website, and donors may specify
which particular people and projects they wish to fund. All funds are collected
and dispersed through the CRP’s fiscal sponsor, the International Humanities
Center (a 501(c)(3) registered nonprofit organization).
In addition, the CRP is now collecting funds to build a Family
Resource and Community Center in Amman, which will serve as a space for relief
distribution, courses in English and computer skills training, a gallery and
workspace for artists and handcrafters, a lending library, supervised play
groups and structured events for children, counseling to improve coping skills
for those suffering from depression and PTSD, social activities in a welcoming
environment, and much more.
In order to raise the estimated $150,000 necessary to open the
center, each of the 50 U.S. states is being asked to raise $3,000 toward this
goal. The CRP is using the analogy of the American tradition of barn-building,
whereby each state is being asked to recruit 300 people to purchase one
symbolic nail each for $10 so that all 50 “boards” can be assembled in order to
make the Center a reality.
“Hearing of the Iraqi peoples’ heartbreak breaks my own heart,“
says Sasha Crowe, who co-founded the CRP with partner Mary Madsen. “But it is
also their spirits, which are still so strong despite being so badly battered,
as well as their hospitality, warmth, and incredible courage, that keep me
going and inspire me.”
For more information on these initiatives and how to donate, see
the CRP’s website at www.collateralrepairproject.org.
--Kimberly Hughes
(Originally published in Kyoto Journal magazine #72. June 2009)
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