by Angel Ryono
Americans are rightly happy to put the war in Iraq behind them, but our moral and strategic obligations [do] not end when the last boots [leave] the ground.
—The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Refugees1
Is the United States suffering from a “media induced attention deficit disorder?”2 Or, are we afflicted with an advanced stage of the classically termed “American Amnesia?”3Whatever ails us, Americans are increasingly disengaged from the moral responsibilities that result from our collective actions and, more importantly, inactions. By looking at the history of global migration policies and international refugee laws, it is clear that our government, too, encourages this amnesia with a dismal record of refugee care and protection.4Our disengagement is especially relevant when discussing the Iraqi refugee crisis. Between 2005 and 2006, the US invasion triggered sectarian violence, and Iraqi borders began to “hemorrhage” refugees. Some Iraqis patiently wait with the desperate hope that our government will grant them settlement in the US. However, these applicants are displaced internally, or to neighboring countries, because of the threats of violence they receive or anticipate because of having assisted US military and defense contractors. While millions of displaced Iraqis currently live in limbo, the US corporate media have virtually stopped reporting on their status since 2007. The responsibility of adequate and accurate reporting now falls to independent journalists, some alternative media organizations, and humanitarian organizations.5 Many of the humanitarian organizations doing the reporting are also working directly with Iraqi refugees, thus strained by scale of the crisis. Between 2005 and 2006, the US invasion triggered sectarian vio-lence, and Iraqi borders began to “hemorrhage” refugees. By 2008, as news about Iraqi refugees nearly disappeared from mainstream media, the American public was encouraged to forget.6 Does it not trouble the American conscience that our government feels no moral obligation to the Iraqi people after playing a direct role in displacing them?
American disengagement is not confined to Iraq; alongside the deportation of Cambodian refugees, as reported in a January 2012 Project Censored article, the Iraqi case brings to the foreground an uncomfortable reality. Our fear of terrorism and our anti-immigration culture establishes our political ignorance with regards to the duty to protect refugees as well as aid and abet our government in mistreating those who struggle to survive the consequences of mass violence. Are we willing to sacrifice innocent Iraqi refugees’ lives because so many of us fear new immigrants? This article hopes to reawaken our conscience so that we may take legislative action or make personal contributions to assist Iraqi refugees.
In March 2003, George W. Bush declared war on Iraq, making Operation Iraqi Freedom the third US military attack on Iraq in fewer than twelve years.7 The Bush administration insisted that Saddam Hussein’s regime stockpiled nuclear and chemical weapons, and aimed to threaten the security of the American people. Bush claimed that initiating war with Iraq bore no other motive “except to remove a threat and restore control of [Iraq] to its own people.”8 The pretense for war has since been exposed by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents who risked their anonymity to report how the executive branch misused intelligence. The United Nations, and both liberal and conservative think tanks, have agreed that there was no conclusive evidence of viable nuclear or chemical weapons technology in Iraq.9 Americans might have already forgotten that, between 1990 and 1991, George H. W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq. The short but intense Operation Desert Storm displaced over 1.5 million Iraqis to Iran and Turkey. It is no wonder that antiwar protesters and human rights organizations decried G. W. Bush’s decision as a humanitarian disaster—it was warned that at least two million refugees would result from the first two years of the invasion.10
The G. W. Bush administration claimed that US forces completed their mission in May 2003. Yet troops remained active in Iraq for nearly a decade, and what little infrastructure Iraqis had restored after previous US invasions was steadily destroyed.11 Iraqi civilians felt increasingly insecure; they began to question or resent US presence.12 Soon after Saddam Hussein was removed from leadership, armed groups used violence to vie for power, and some aimed to oust the occupying force. As sectarian violence and regional terrorism broke out in 2005 and 2006, G. W. Bush neglected the signs of a failed mission; he continued to pour US tax dollars into keeping troops in Iraq, and he allowed defense contractors to capitalize on “recon-struction” efforts. In 2006, the bombing of al-Askari Mosque in Samarra “sparked massive waves of displaced people beyond Iraq’s borders. . . . This exodus constitutes the largest movement of refugees in the Middle East since the founding of the State of Israel.”13
Finally, in December 2011, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Baghdad to announce the end of the US military presence in Iraq. Panetta told US service men and women, “You will leave with great pride—lasting pride . . . secure in knowing that your sacrifice has helped the Iraqi people to begin a new chapter in history.”14 What does it really mean for Iraqis to “begin a new chapter in history” after a decade of military occupation? Let us examine what Iraqi people will need to consider in their transition out of conflict by reviewing the occupation’s results:15
The last item in the list above begs the question: how can a country begin a new chapter when five million of its citizens live in exile? In addition to the engineers, physicians, and administrators (especially those associated with the Ba’ath Party or who worked for Saddam’s regime) who fled early in the conflict, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that about 40 percent of the refugees belong to Iraq’s middle class. This means that Iraq has lost a significant percentage of its educated, likely politically moderate, and engaged citizens. A free and sovereign Iraq will be difficult to achieve without them.
To where have the millions of Iraqis fled? About two million refugees live in tenuous conditions in neighboring countries such as Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). There are no formal agreements for resettlement in Middle Eastern host countries. Some refugees, including families, have been on the move for three to five years—they are either searching for new, stable homes, or they live and work in the informal economy to avoid being deported to Iraq. Many stay in temporary shelters or refugee camps. Tens of thousands—a majority of whom are women and children—have become victims of human trafficking.
The UNHCR’s 2012 report identified Iraq’s refugee population as the group in greatest need of critical medical assistance in the Middle East. In Syria, over 25,000 Iraqis suffer critical medical conditions; moreover, an estimated 10 percent of the refugee population in Syria has suffered torture. Furthermore, countries such as Syria are undergoing domestic strife and internal instability. Compounding these challenges, the few existing assistance programs lack the capacity and resources to care adequately for all of Iraq’s refugees. For example, UNHCR does not give direct support to refugees; it helps coordinate local assistance efforts and constantly negotiates with host governments for cooperation. With the crisis at the scale of millions of people, UNHCR must also play the role of alms person to the wealthier nations, to secure adequate funding for crucial work.
Although most [Middle Eastern countries] are not state parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, they have abided by broad humanitarian principles, generally allowing refugees into their territory and granting them access to some basic services. In many aspects the approach taken by regional states such as Syria, Jordan and Lebanon are examples of providing protection despite domestic challenges.19
Over one hundred thousand Iraqi refugees strain Syria’s capital, while only a few hundred thousand Iraqi refugees have been admitted for resettlement in Europe, Australia, and North America combined.20 According to UNHCR, “Sweden has been the most welcoming, granting asylum to almost 9,000 Iraqis in 2006, almost 20 times more than the United States and about half the total for all of Europe that year.”21 The Irish have also extended support by increasing their annual contribution to UNHCR’s work as well as legislating for resettled refugees to vote in Ireland. These efforts have historical roots, since the Iraqi refugee crisis evokes memories of displacement that occurred all over Europe during Hitler’s invasion. Some countries acknowledge that adequate care for refugees will always require the effort and cooperation of the whole international community.
However, the bottom line for many US politicians is to avoid pub-licizing information that would implicate their involvement in unjust or illegal conduct in war. Therefore, the media silence around the plight of the Iraqi refugees has political roots. Government officials such as those in G. W. Bush’s administration worked to disconnect the voting public from the reality of war. This is because the defense industry, and the political leaders who it courts, all stand to profit by obfuscating the real costs of war.22
What is the US government’s record on caring for refugees? A review of refugee law and human migration policy history challenges some favored assumptions about US goodwill. After World War II, the vision for a globally integrated system to care for refugees and to appropriately manage human migration quickly faded as hegemonic US interests took center stage. According to author Rieko Karatani, “The current international framework for protecting migrants and refugees is often criticized as being fragmentary . . . [this] resulted from the battle between the United States and the international institutions.”23 A mixture of American exceptionalism,24 the desire to maintain the position of global superpower, and a preoccupation with Cold War politics all contributed to the US government adopting policy to “calculate their needs, both economically and politically, and decide who and how many they wished to let in.”25 This policy has become such standard practice that little or no exceptions are made for refugees directly harmed by US foreign policies or armed forces. The US went further to erode the foundations of a “multilaterally organized migration scheme” by disregarding the authority and knowledge of long-standing institutions such as the International Labor Organization (ILO), instead creating agencies to care for refugees that “became inactive as soon as [they were] founded,”26 and funding organizations that would work solely for the interests of the US.
All this amounts to a major sidestepping of responsibility to care for Iraqi refugees. Even today, the US government continues to stall or reject the immigration of refugees: “The United States took several thousand Iraqis a year after the [1991] Gulf War, but the numbers it accepted fell precipitously after the attacks of Sept. 11 and the [2003] invasion of Iraq.”27 By 2006, the US government “admitted a mere 202 refugees,” and in 2007, admissions increased slightly to 466.28
The US government made vague promises to the UN to resettle Iraqi refugees who worked as full-time employees for US armed forces and intelligence. In 2007, some US legislators initiated public discussions about “the special dangers faced by Iraqis working for Americans and acknowledge the need to grant them safety in the United States.”29 Rachel Schneller, who worked as a US diplomat in Iraq, tells the New York Times that the reputation of “working with Americans . . . has more or less become a death sentence in [the southern part] of Iraq. I must get desperate e-mails every other day from one of them.”30 However, testimony in 2001 by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to Congress, about the potential risks that some Iraqi refugees pose to national security, quickly extinguished interest in the resettlement of select refugees. In fact, the FBI is currently investigating the files of more than 57,000 Iraqi refugees living in the US, most of whom were granted settlement after the First Gulf War. They now face the threat of deportation on the grounds that they pose risks to national security.31 The FBI’s actions tread uncomfortably into a violation of Non-Refoulement principle (protection against returning refugees to places where their lives and freedom will be threatened) and a circumvention of principles laid out in the Bill of Rights as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All refugees, without prior knowledge and due process, are targeted in FBI investigations. US officials estimated that the government would only accept a small fraction of the 9,000+ applications for resettlement filed by the UN on behalf of Iraq refugees. But, the government has delayed processing even those applications.32
The New York Times, perhaps the leading source among corporate media that is committed to reporting on the status of Iraqi refugees, estimates that at least 69,000 Iraqis worked for American contractors, as cleaners, construction workers, and drivers.33 As of 2012, Iraqi refugees seeking asylum or resettlement in the US face difficult restrictions:34
The UNHCR laments that there is “very little understanding of the difference between refugees and migrant workers.”37 This statement certainly applies to Americans and is reflected in our government’s disorganized, disingenuous, and poor treatment of refugees, including non-Iraqis. Indeed, the US government has instituted harsh, broad anti-immigration policies that have impacted refugees from around the world.38 As long as voting citizens do not question what the US government does abroad and are not able to distinguish among refugees, migrant workers, and “illegal” immigrants, we enable our government to impulsively spend public funds on military violence as a strategy for foreign relations. Though the current American bias and antipathy toward immigrants are cultivated separately, increasingly removed from the negative consequences of US actions abroad, a culture of fear and hate provides fertile grounds for public consent toward irresponsible and illiberal government actions with repercussions felt well beyond Iraq. For instance, thirty years after Congress passed special legislation to resettle those displaced as a result of US involvement in the Second Indochinese War, about 2,000 Cambodian refugees have either been deported or face deportation. The deportation of Cambodian refugees and the plight of Iraqi refugees who wait indefinitely for resettlement in the US make clear that our government is unconcerned with moral obligations to innocent lives that are lost or harmed as a consequence of its wars.
The needs of Iraqi refugees remain substantial . . . Iraqis still continue to seek asylum in neighboring countries. Those who remain in countries of asylum have become more vul-nerable as their displacement has lengthened and their coping mechanisms have become depleted. Despite their increased vulnerability, the majority of Iraqi refugees have indicated little interest in returning to their country of origin.39
Will we continue to shut our minds and hearts to people who need our help, who risked their lives to support our troops and our fellow Americans who worked in Iraq, and who require our government to take responsibility for their safety? It is up to us to remind our elected officials that their neglect of Iraqi refugees means the disintegration of our society’s moral fabric. At minimum, US citizens can pressure congress and the senate to conduct hearings in order to resume resettling the list of Iraqi refugees who have worked for US security forces.40 Beyond the minimum, citizens can push for government officials to continue to fund, generously, the work of UNHCR and other regional assistance programs that support the welfare of Iraqi refugees.41
Notes
1. The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Refugees, 2012, http://www.thelistproject.org/history/europe-1933-1945.
2. Arthur Bruzzone, “Obama’s Plummeting Numbers Reveal Larger Trends,” Huffington Post, March 13, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arthur-bruzzone/obamas-plummeting-pollnu_b_1341892.html.
3. Rudy Perkins, “Obama’s Worrisome Amnesia on Iraq War,” Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 23, 2011, http://www.gazettenet.com/2011/12/23/obama039s-worrisome-amnesia-on-iraq-war?SESSd2014118de53aa565f89dc7cfa9e2706=gnews.
4. The US record with regard to refugee care and protection is part of a constellation of reasons that challenge the grounds on which US government officials have justified war. What we believe with regard to how innocent civilians should be treated during and after war disagrees with how US government actually prioritizes the protection of vulnerable civilians, funds organizations to care for displaced people, and treats asylum seekers and refugees settled in the US.
5. The competition of truths, or the “war of information,” is another regretful feature of the recent US occupation in Iraq. Nearly a thousand embedded journalists signed contractual agreements with the US military in order to travel through the terrains of conflict with military protection, ultimately abandoning journalistic objectivity and impartiality. Independent and unembedded journalists, like Dahr Jamail, are rare and few. Jamail’s work involves unprotected travels in Iraq and a commitment to capture the experiences of civilians who are rendered invisible by the fog of war. Those who are committed to accurate and adequate reporting of the Iraq refugee crisis do not only struggle with resources to do so, but their work often does not have the same reach as corporate media.
6. S. Harris & Nir Rosen, “Between Iraq and a Hard Place,” New York Times Magazine, May 13, 2007,http://www.video.nytimes.com/video/2007/05/11/magazine/1194817106017/the-flightfrom-iraq.html.
7. Operation Desert Storm (1991), Desert Fox Air-Strike (1998), and Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003).
8. “Bush Declares War,” CNN, March 19, 2003, http://articles.cnn.com/2003-03-19/us/sprj. irq.int.bush.transcript_1_coalition-forces-equipment-in-civilian-areas-iraqi-troops-and-equip-ment/2?_s=PM:US.
9. “Bush Legacy on Iraq: Misinformation on False Pretense, Center for American Progress, January 12, 2004, http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/01/b19351.html.
10. “Oxfam’s Iraq Refugee Plea,” BBC News, March 18, 2003,http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_ news/2861069.stm.
11. T. J. Nagy, “The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the US Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply,” USA Today, September 2001,http://www.progressive.org/mag/nagy0901.html.
12. Cesar G. Soriano and Steven Komarow, “Poll: Iraqis Out of Patience,” USA Today, April 28, 2004, http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-28-poll-cover_x.htm.
13. The List Project to Resettle Iraqi Refugees, 2012, http://www.thelistproject.org.
14. Michael S. Schmidt, Robert F. Worth, and Thom Shanker, “In Baghdad, Panetta Leads Uneasy Moment of Closure,” New York Times, December 15, 2011, Middle East edition,http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/16/world/middleeast/panetta-in-baghdad-for-iraq-military-handoverceremony.html?pagewanted=all
15. The Costs of War, Watson Institute for International Studies, Eisenhower Study Group 2011, http://www.costsofwar.org.
16. Dahr Jamail, “Refugees Speak of Escape from Hell,” Inter Press Service, April 7, 2007, http://www.dahrjamail.net/refugees-speak-of-escape-from-hell.
17. Iraq Body Count (http://www.iraqbodycount.org) estimates between 105,718 and 115,471 Iraqi civilians have died violent deaths. Censored 2009 reported “Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation,” as Censored story #1 for that year, based on the study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). See Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, eds., “Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation,” Censored 2009: The Top Censored Stories of 2007–08 (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2008), 20–25; Johnny Heald and Munqeth Daghir, “More than 1,000,000 Iraqis Murdered Since 2003 Invasion,” ZNet, September 16, 2007,http://www.zcommunications.org/more-than-1-000-000-iraqismurdered-since-2003-invasion-by-orb.
18. Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The True Cost of the Iraq War: $3 Trillion and Beyond,” Washington Post, September 5, 2010,http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2010/09/03/AR2010090302200.html.
19. 2012 Regional Response Plan: Iraqi Refugees, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2011, 2–3, http://www.reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Full%20Report_604.pdf.M
20. Ibid.
21. Markus Sperl, “Iraqi Refugees,” New York Times, http://www.topics.nytimes.com/top/news/inter-national/countriesandterritories/iraq/iraqi_refugees/index.html; and Sperl, “Fortress Europe and the Iraqi ‘Intruders’: Iraqi Asylum-Seekers and the EU, 2003–2007,” UNHCR, October 2007, http://www.unhcr.org/470c9be92.html.
22. It is well known, perhaps considered common sense, that armed conflict, war, is a leading cause of human displacement. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) argues that if there is will on the part of political leaders and awareness on the part of the citizens, then most armed conflicts are preventable. To really understand the breadth of the effects of war, please visit: The Eisenhower Study Group, “The Costs of War,” September 2011, Brown University, http://www.costsofwar.org.
23. Rieko Karatani, “How History Separated Refugee and Migrant Regimes: In Search of their Institutional Origins,” International Journal of Refugee Law 17, no. 3 (2005), doi:10.1093/ijrl/ eei019.
24. Here, “exceptionalism” means that while some Americans believe the mission of the country is to spread liberty, justice, and democracy around the world, Americans can be exempt from the obligation to participate in global efforts addressing such concerns.
25. Karatani, “How History Separated Refugee and Migrant Regimes.”
26. Ibid.
27. “Iraqi Refugees,” New York Times, http://www.topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/coun-triesandterritories/iraq/iraqi_refugees/index.html.
28. Rachel L. Swarns and Katherine Zoepf, “More Iraqis Are Headed to US,” New York Times, February 14, 2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/14/washington/14refugees.html.
29. David Rohde and Sabrina Tavernise, “Few Iraqis Reach Safe US Haven Despite Program,” New York Times, August 29, 2007,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/world/ middleeast/29refugees.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnl=1&ref=iraqirefugees&adxnnlx=13302902 82-nG6Dvf4pYubpIN4o/csDTA.
30. Ibid.
31. Aamer Madhani, “Terror Threat Slows Iraqi Refugee Flow to US,” USA Today, February 6, 2012, http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/02/gannett-terror-threat-slows-iraqi-refugeeflow-to-us-020612.
32. Rohde and Tavernise, New York Times, 2007.
33. Ibid.
34. Tim Arango, “Unrest and American Safety Concerns Strands Iraqis in Syria Awaiting Visas for US,” January 23, 2012, New York Times,http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/world/middleeast/unrest-strands-iraqis-in-syria-awaiting-american-visas.html.
35. Ibid.
36. 2012 Regional Response Plan: Iraqi Refugees, 7.
37. Ibid., 78.
38. Angel Ryono, “The Quiet Campaign to Break Up Cambodian Refugee Families,” Project Censored, January 3, 2012,http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/the-quiet-campaign-to-break-up-cambodian-refugee-families.
39. 2012 Regional Response Plan: Iraqi Refugees, 77.
40. Editorial, “Take Iraqi Refugees In,” Milford Daily News, January 28, 2007, http://www.milford-dailynews.com/opinion/8998973966395637759.
41. Refugee International, “Iraq,”http://www.refugeesinternational.org/where-we-work/middleeast/iraq.
ANGEL RYONO is a graduate of Saybrook University. Her MA research discusses local and grassroots capacities for reconciliation and peacebuilding in Cambodia. In general, her writings investigate the realities of post-conflict transitions—what happens after we declare a war, or after genocide has ended? She is a contributor to the anthology Peace Movements Worldwide (ABC-CLIO) and to Peacebuilding and Subjectivities of Peace: History, Memory, and Politics (Routledge). She has served as the development manager for the Virtual Tribunal Project (now formally adopted as a UN archive project) for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.