Coalition of the Willing? More like Coalition of the Heartless, Iraqi Refugees still ignored

The numbers are so staggering that they are hard to process mentally and impossible to process logistically: each month some 60,000 Iraqis are voting with their feet against the surge of U.S. forces by fleeing their homes. Since the invasion, more than 2.5 million Iraqis have left for neighboring countries, while 2.2 million have been forcibly displaced within Iraq—too poor to escape the country or blocked from transitioning through more peaceful provinces, which in recent months have erected checkpoints to keep them out. To put it in stark historical terms: the war has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the displacement of the Palestinians in 1948.

Here is what it looks like on the ground: in two short years, a million Iraqi refugees have poured into Syria, a country of 19 million. In U.S.-population terms, this would be the equivalent of 15 million Iraqis arriving on our shores. Overwhelmed by the deluge, Syria has said it will begin requiring visas for Iraqis next month, the practical equivalent of shutting its doors, while Jordan, which has admitted 750,000 Iraqis, closed most of its border crossings earlier this year.

Despite all this, the U.S. debate about withdrawal from Iraq seems remarkably indifferent to those whose lives have been upended. The Bush Administration talks of staying the course without expending nearly enough political or financial capital to mitigate the humanitarian catastrophe that it pretends does not exist. Many advocates of withdrawal point to the humanitarian disaster as a ground for leaving without addressing how worse suffering might be averted.

Thus far, the American discussion of the refugee crisis has focused on the paltry number of Iraqis the U.S. has let in. Although the U.S. was the lead architect of the invasion, only 535 Iraqis were granted entry last year. Sweden, which opposed the war, took in 8,950. Ironically, in 2000, three years before the war, the U.S. admitted 3,145 Iraqis, whereas fewer than 1,700 Iraqis have been resettled on American soil in the four years since.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1665921,00.html

The UK, one of the main forces that marched us to war, is returning more refugees to Iraq than any other country

Britain has been accused of ignoring the plight of millions of refugees fleeing the violence in Iraq.

A report by Amnesty International said it was "staggering" that the UK had forcibly returned more refugees to Iraq than any other European nation.

As one of the the countries which led the 2003 invasion, the report said that Britain now had a "moral obligation" to provide financial assistance to the estimated two million refugees stranded in Syria and Europe.

"The international community has largely ignored the plight of millions of Iraqis displaced inside and outside Iraq," said Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen.

http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5g3cdr3D2AS2Lhp5oqPK9LeQMMZOg

My government (and not just mine) is not the least bit concerned about the dead...well, unless they can use the dead to score political points.

and the living getting in the way of the reality my government wants to shape?

Well, shame on them for surviving!

The dead can't complain and the dead can be buried, never to be heard from again.

But those pesky refugees? Better to ignore them for as long as possible and pretend it isn't happening. Wouldn't want them to get in the way of America's success in Iraq.


I am so far beyond bitter there needs to be a new level...

British policies towards (or rather, against asylum seekers) are disgusting. You have racism, fuelled by right-wing talk shows; we have anti-immigrant bigotry (which often equals racism), fuelled by the tabloid press.

But this is particularly awful, as we helped to make them into refugees in the first place.