070619-1000: Iraqi, Return

In Reuter's, Alistair Lyon reports today on the harrowing conditions facing more than one million Iraqi refugees in Syria. [1]

In the recent past, the UN estimate of externally and internally displaced Iraqi pegged at 4.5 million (Patrick Cockburn writing for The Indepent a little more than a week ago put the figure at 5 million). [2]

The organization Refugees International notes, "Vulnerability is extremely difficult to assess. Most of the Iraqis fleeing their country are in a dire situation. As their resources run out, they find themselves deprived of any legal status in their countries of asylum, with no right to work. Resettlement, however, can only be an option in extreme cases of vulnerability, as it is impossible -- both for lack of resources and political will -- to resettle all civilians fleeing Iraq." [3]

With Iraqi military and paramilitary force numbers climbing into the low hundreds of thousands (and another 162,000 U.S. troops in the country [4]), one may wonder what percentage of the 4.5 million refugees might be lured back to fight for the democratic solution to sectarian bloodshed.

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1. Lyon, Alistair.  "Iraqi refugees in Syria face poverty trap."  Reuters, June 19, 2007

2. Cockburn, Patrick.  "UN warns of five million Iraqi refugees: Half of displaced people have no access to food aid."  The Independent, June 10, 2007.

3. Younes, Kristele and Garcia, Sean.  "Iraqi Refugees: Resettles the Most Vulnerable."  Refugees International, January 16, 2007.

4. Powell, Stuart M.  "U.S. quietly, dramatically increasing Iraq troop levels."  Seattlepi, May 22, 2007.

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Correspondence and Permissions: James S. Oppenheim

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