Iraqi Refugees

When President Bush spoke to the nation about Iraq last week he predicted that if American troops left soon, "Iraq could face a humanitarian nightmare. " He's right. Things could get worse. But Iraqis already face a humanitarian nightmare as millions of refugees flee their homes to escape ethnic cleansing. More than 2 million are displaced within Iraq, and 2.2 million have poured into neighboring countries, according to U.N. agencies. That's around a sixth of Iraq's entire population, many living in desperate conditions, with tens of thousands still escaping monthly.

In several recent speeches on Iraq, there was one issue President Bush never mentioned. That's the issue of Iraqi refugees. More than two million Iraqi refugees are struggling to survive outside Iraq, the bulk of them in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Only a small percentage are rich former Baathist supporters of Saddam Hussein. Most are middle-class Iraqis, including thousands of Christians who were "ethnically cleansed" from urban neighborhoods and forced to flee for their lives.

SAN DIEGO - Federal officials said Thursday they had broken up a drug-trafficking ring involving Mexico's most powerful cartel and members of an Iraqi immigrant community in the United States who were caught selling illegal drugs, assault rifles, grenades, and homemade explosives. About 60 people from the Iraqi community were arrested after a six-month investigation carried out by the Drug Enforcement Administration and police in El Cajon, a working-class city east of San Diego. Many of the suspects are Iraqi Chaldeans - Christians who fled their homeland amid threats from al-Qaeda and other extremists.

The U.S. military yesterday began airlifting Shiite Muslim refugees from southern Iraq to a camp in Saudi Arabia, where they are expected to stay until it is safe for them to return home. Five planes yesterday carried about 340 refugees from a U.S. Army-protected camp in Safwan to a camp erected by the Saudi government in Rafha. By tomorrow, the daily number of passengers is expected to increase to as many as 1,500, so that by early next month, up to 15,000 Iraqi Shiites will be moved to Rafha.

WASHINGTON - Authorities are rescreening more than 58,000 Iraqi refugees living in the United States to determine whether lapses in immigration security allowed former insurgents and potential terrorists to enter the country, U.S. officials said. The investigation was given added urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Yemen had tried to exploit immigration loopholes in an attempt to infiltrate the country with their operatives. The rescreening began late last year after the FBI learned that an Iraqi man in Kentucky had participated in roadside bomb attacks in Iraq before he was granted U.S. political asylum in 2009.

The Al-Manar Restaurant in Northeast Philadelphia is closed Sundays. Except this one. As apple-scented smoke from a water pipe filled the room, five men, Iraqi refugees all, kissed one another on the cheek, shook hands, and said, "Congratulations. " Then they sat, smoking and talking, watching Arabic television, and shouting "monkey" and "coward" when Saddam Hussein's picture appeared. (A typical comment: "You got $750,000. Couldn't you get a haircut?") The calls started coming in at 5 a.m., from family in Baghdad, friends in Detroit, and all over the world.

When Tamara Daghistani's cell phone rings in Amman, Jordan, the caller is usually another desperate Iraqi refugee. As we sat together last month, the call was from a woman who had fled Baghdad with her husband and three kids. Her husband was killed during a visit back to Baghdad to bury his mother. Now the woman has no way to support three young children. She sends her boys out to nightclubs at night to beg. Daghistani spends her time helping less fortunate countrymen. With around 2 million Iraqi refugees crowded into Jordan and Syria, and 30,000 arriving in Syria weekly, this exodus is the biggest Iraqi crisis almost no one discusses.

Washington is creating more animosity among Iraqis and friendly Middle East nations with its pathetic response to the growing refugee emergency in Iraq. The United Nations estimates that 700,000 Iraqis fled to neighboring Jordan, as many as one million more to Syria, and an additional 160,000 to other countries to avoid sectarian violence. Syria and Jordan are straining under the added population. They have made clear they expect others to take some of those refugees to relieve the stress.

THE "Walter Cronkite of Iraq" lives in Northeast Philly in a second-floor apartment next to a gas station on Bustleton Avenue. Bahjat Abdulwahed, now 72 and an Iraqi refugee, was a dashing young man in his 20s when he worked as the chief TV news announcer for the government-run station in Baghdad in the 1960s. He then jumped to the radio side of the government-owned media complex, lending his perfect Arabic diction to broadcasting the major news events for two decades, including the daily anxieties of the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988.

Gabriela Bulisova is a go-getter. Much of her artistic activity early in her career has been documentary photos of marginalized people in several lands, most notably at Chernobyl. And in 2009, she turned her attention to a hot-button issue: Iraqi refugees in our country. These pictures by this young Washington photographer, who hails from the former Czechoslovakia, are on view in her show - "The Option of Last Resort: Iraqi Refugees in the United States" - at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

Long after the last U.S. soldier left Iraq, thousands of Iraqis who worked for our military and civilians are still living in dangerous limbo, waiting for promised U.S. visas that haven't arrived. Radical Shiite militias are threatening to kill these Iraqis because they helped Americans. I just learned of one case in which a medical syringe and a jar of concentrated sulfuric acid were left at the Baghdad door of a former Iraqi interpreter for U.S. forces. The accompanying note said the man's face and body would soon be washed with the acid.

THE "Walter Cronkite of Iraq" lives in Northeast Philly in a second-floor apartment next to a gas station on Bustleton Avenue. Bahjat Abdulwahed, now 72 and an Iraqi refugee, was a dashing young man in his 20s when he worked as the chief TV news announcer for the government-run station in Baghdad in the 1960s. He then jumped to the radio side of the government-owned media complex, lending his perfect Arabic diction to broadcasting the major news events for two decades, including the daily anxieties of the Iraq-Iran war from 1980 to 1988.

Last week, I spoke on the PBS NewsHour about Iraqis who worked for our civilians and military before we left the country - and who now face death threats because we betrayed them. I've received a slew of e-mail from Iraqi interpreters who are in hiding because Shiite militias have pledged to kill the "traitors" who aided the Americans. I've also received e-mail from U.S. military officers desperately trying to get their "terps" out of the country. And I've heard from ordinary, concerned Americans.

In September 2007, Barack Obama made a stump speech berating the Bush team for breaking faith with Iraqis who had helped Americans. "One tragic outcome of this war," said Obama, "is that the Iraqis who stood with America - the interpreters, embassy workers, and subcontractors - are being targeted for assassination. . . . And yet our doors are shut. "That is not how we treat our friends. That is not who we are as Americans. " If that is so, Mr. President, why are our doors still virtually closed to our Iraqi helpers, as we exit their country?

SAN DIEGO - Federal officials said Thursday they had broken up a drug-trafficking ring involving Mexico's most powerful cartel and members of an Iraqi immigrant community in the United States who were caught selling illegal drugs, assault rifles, grenades, and homemade explosives. About 60 people from the Iraqi community were arrested after a six-month investigation carried out by the Drug Enforcement Administration and police in El Cajon, a working-class city east of San Diego. Many of the suspects are Iraqi Chaldeans - Christians who fled their homeland amid threats from al-Qaeda and other extremists.

WASHINGTON - Authorities are rescreening more than 58,000 Iraqi refugees living in the United States to determine whether lapses in immigration security allowed former insurgents and potential terrorists to enter the country, U.S. officials said. The investigation was given added urgency after U.S. intelligence agencies warned that al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq and Yemen had tried to exploit immigration loopholes in an attempt to infiltrate the country with their operatives. The rescreening began late last year after the FBI learned that an Iraqi man in Kentucky had participated in roadside bomb attacks in Iraq before he was granted U.S. political asylum in 2009.

Gabriela Bulisova is a go-getter. Much of her artistic activity early in her career has been documentary photos of marginalized people in several lands, most notably at Chernobyl. And in 2009, she turned her attention to a hot-button issue: Iraqi refugees in our country. These pictures by this young Washington photographer, who hails from the former Czechoslovakia, are on view in her show - "The Option of Last Resort: Iraqi Refugees in the United States" - at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts.

Even though Iraq's election is over, the vote was so divided among political coalitions that it may be weeks before a new government is formed. However, we do know that the parties that claimed to rise above sectarian divisions did well - most notably Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Rule of Law alliance. This indicates that many Iraqis are eager to move beyond the bloody divisiveness of past years. We don't yet know, however, whether Iraqi politicians will heed the voters' message.

Iraq's refugee crisis Kudos to Trudy Rubin on her column documenting the humanitarian tragedy of more than two million Iraqi refugees who have lost their homes and livelihoods ("Bush shamefully flees Iraqi refugee crisis," April 2). As a result of our invasion and the ensuing chaos, Iraqi refugees barely subsist in neighboring countries that don't want them. Their children are becoming a lost generation, often without schooling, who will make perfect recruits for the jihadist radicals.

In several recent speeches on Iraq, there was one issue President Bush never mentioned. That's the issue of Iraqi refugees. More than two million Iraqi refugees are struggling to survive outside Iraq, the bulk of them in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Only a small percentage are rich former Baathist supporters of Saddam Hussein. Most are middle-class Iraqis, including thousands of Christians who were "ethnically cleansed" from urban neighborhoods and forced to flee for their lives.