Medea Benjamin: Iraqi Refugees, America's Shame

Iraqi Refugees, America's Shame
by Medea Benjamin | June 21, 2008


Sister Marie-Claude Naddaf is obviously tired of talking to the stream of well-meaning foreigners who have been traipsing through Syria to learn about the plight of the over one million Iraqi refugees now living here. Humanitarian groups, religious delegations, migration experts. They write reports full of lofty recommendations. So much talk, so little action.

A Syrian nun at the Good Shephard Convent in Damascus, Sister Marie-Claude had work to do attending to the crisis of the day -- an Iraqi girl who had been raped in Baghdad, then dumped on the Syrian border and disowned by her family. Reluctantly, she agreed to give me 10 minutes of her time. An hour later, she was still talking about the horrors she has seen. "It's shameful, shameful," she cried, her head in her hands. "What has happened to the Iraqi people is shameful. Girls sold into prostitution, single mothers begging for handouts, men with no jobs, no future, no hope. And the people of the United States, whose government unleashed this disaster of epic proportions, don't seem to know or care."

The invasion and the ensuing spiral of violence has led to the most massive displacement in the Middle East since the creation of the state Israel in 1948. Some 1.2 million Iraqis fled to Syria before the Syrian government, its schools and hospitals overwhelmed and local people reeling from soaring rents and food prices, closed its doors in October 2007. The Jordanian government allowed some 500,000 Iraqis to enter the country but has also closed its borders.

Some refugees are wealthy Iraqis who worked with Saddam's government and cashed out when he was overthrown. They reside in the wealthy sections of Amman, living off their savings. But the vast majority of refugees are middle class and poor Iraqis who fled the post-invasion meltdown. Most are not just fleeing the generalized violence, but experienced personal tragedies at the hands of U.S. soldiers, Iraqi soldiers, sectarian militias, Al-Qaeda fanatics or criminal gangs that thrive on social disintegration.

Layla Atiya is a 50-year-old woman from Baghdad whom I met outside the UN food distribution center in Damascus. She was a Shia who married a Sunni, something very common pre-invasion. They had a large family -- eight children -- but Layla's husband worked hard as a mechanic and managed to provide a decent life for his family.

In March 2005, he was kidnapped by Shia militias trying to rid the neighborhood of Sunnis. Ten days later, his body was found dumped in a ditch, riddled with drill holes from torture.

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