As usual, Ann Corcoran is apoplectic over the idea that Iraqi refugees might be resettled in the United States, and she’s got some questions for the UNHCR.
After reading a news story about 186 Iranian Kurdish refugees being moved from the Iraq-Jordan border Al Waleed camp to a larger camp closer to the Syrian border, Ann’s first thought was:
Al Waleed is one of the camps we have come to know as a “Palestinian” camp with miserable living conditions (or so the refugee industry lobbyists say). Is this the strategy, move people to miserable camps then tell the world they live in misery and need to be resettled to the West?
Why yes, Ann! It is all part of a vast conspiracy to make refugee resettlement agency employees fabulously wealthy with lavish 30k per year salaries and easy 80 hour workweeks.
Not to mention the undermining Western civilization part. Can’t forget that aspect of it. That’s my favourite part of this work, personally.
Oh, and you definitely shouldn’t trust Human Rights Watch or any other group that has visited camps like Al Waleed to see the refugees’ living conditions first-hand. No, you should trust the robust and thoughtful skepticism of far right bloggers who err on the side of all refugees being a little less than human and probably terrorists.
Incidentally, these are internally displaced people and I’m wondering if we are establishing a pattern here—-are we going to be in the business of helping other countries sort out their minority problems by moving them to the US, as we are with the Palestinians?
Ann, Ann, Ann. Educating you grows tiresome, but here’s a little lesson in the messiness of things you so clearly do not understand.
Many refugees fall into minority group categories in their home countries. Where they aren’t national minorities, they are often numerical minorities where they used to live. Minorities of all kinds –racial, ethnic, religious, sexual– are often the first victims in internal conflicts, and they are commonly left in situations of life-threatening vulnerability and destitution even after a conflict formally ends, because many post-war power-sharing arrangements result in ethnically-based spoils systems and even legal orders that de jure disenfranchise minorities (this has certainly been the case in post-war Bosnia, for example.)
By the way, Ann, five churches were bombed in Baghdad yesterday. The attacks targeted Iraq’s dwindling minority Christian community. Religious minorities (Christians, Mandeans, Yazidis and others) have been completely driven out of many areas of Iraq and those left face constant predation.
Ann was annoyed –and confused, naturally– by this statement:
UNHCR figures published last August said Iraq had more than 42,000 non-Iraqi refugees, mainly Palestinians, Turks, and Iranians (Kurds and Arabs), and some Syrians, Sudanese and Somalis.
She wrote:
Why are all these people with different ethnic backgrounds classified as “refugees” if they are still in Iraq, surely they didn’t all just arrive there from elsewhere—who in their right mind would arrive in Iraq these days seeking asylum?
Ok, this is getting ridiculous. If you’re going to pass yourself off as some kind of contrarian expert on refugees from the Middle East, you should actually know something about the Middle East.
Iraq is not the only country the in region that has seen violent conflict and internal repression over the past few decades, nor the only one seeing those now. There are Iranian refugees (Kurds and Persians) in Iraq because they fled repression by the Iranian government. Remember (or, rather, please educate yourself about how) the historical homeland of the Kurds is divided between four countries, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. And Kurds have been badly treated by the governments of all those states.
The Sudanese and Somalis likely ended up in Iraq because they were trying to get somewhere else and got stuck, or decided to apply for refugee status with the first UNHCR office they came across, rather than risking a longer and more perilous journey to Europe.
Please don’t tell me we (with our buddies in the UN) are helping Iraq get rid of minorities—helping it toward ethnic and religious purity of sorts?
Of course not. The UN would like Iraqi minorities to stay where they are, but right now, for far too many, that’s not safe, and because the UN cannot provide security for these people, the next best thing (or least worst thing) is to provide them with another alternative in the form of assistance in refugee and IDP camps, and, for those who cannot reasonably be expected to ever go home again, permanent resettlement in a third country.
1 Comment
July 21, 2009 at 9:08 am
I’m so glad I’ve found your blog. I’m sick of finding Refugee Resettlement Watch come up on Google when I’m trying to do research, and their ignorance makes me feel both angry and very, very sorry for them. I will be sure to follow your blog from now on.