IRAQ:The sheer scale of the problem is threatening to overwhelm the UN aid agency, writes Lara Marlowein Baghdad
SHE WAS a poor, uneducated woman from Baghdad, who like a million widowed or divorced Iraqi women had no husband to support her family.
Daniel Endres, the representative for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Iraq, met her on a fact-finding mission to Syria, which is home to up to 1.5 million Iraqi refugees.
"She was living in a shed with four children. It leaked and the wind cut straight through it.
"Only one of the children could go to school, because they hadn't enough clothes for the others," says Endres. In his mind, that widow in Damascus symbolises the urgency of the world's largest present-day refugee crisis.
Only four years ago, Iraq ranked ninth in the world in numbers of asylum-seekers. Last year, it was first. An estimated 2.8 million Iraqis are internally displaced, and up to two million are refugees outside their country. That means one in six Iraqis have fled or been driven from their homes.
Some 4,000 families left Sadr City, the Shia Muslim slums of north Baghdad, during battles that pitted the Jaish al-Mehdi militia against Iraqi government and US forces between March and mid-May. Most stayed in surrounding neighbourhoods, but 38 families waited out the conflict in a sports stadium. "All but 200 families have returned," said Endres.
The UNHCR has begun repairing their houses. At the moment, the agency detects no further movements of population.
"The main feature of the Iraqi displacement is that there are no big camps," says Endres. "It is very much an urban phenomenon, and it is hidden. Many live in relatively good conditions or in rented housing. But there is creeping poverty, especially in the neighbouring countries, where we've registered 45,000 Iraqis in destitution."
The low visibility of Iraqi refugees has made it difficult to mobilise international sympathy. The UNHCR has budgeted $45 million (€28.59 million) for Iraq this year, but was forced to launch an emergency appeal for $260 million two weeks ago to cope with the crisis in neighbouring countries. "We are running out of money," says Endres. "By July, we won't even be able to support women like the one in the shed in Damascus."
It is difficult to establish accurate statistics. "In Jordan and Syria, there's a tendency to seek recognition for the great burden, so we see a tendency to exaggerate, whereas the Iraqi government would rather downplay the problem," says Endres.
And refugee fatigue has set in. In the summer of 2006, Khaled, then 25, fled his Sunni Muslim neighbourhood in west Baghdad because Shia policemen were murdering young Sunnis in revenge killings. He moved to Damascus six times in 14 months, returning each time he heard conditions had improved.
"In the beginning, the Syrians loved us, because we were Ba'athists. They thought Saddam Hussein was a hero.
"Then they started blaming us for high prices. Every time I bought tomatoes, they'd say, 'Tomatoes were three Syrian pounds a kilo before you Iraqis came; now they're 25 pounds a kilo.' They said Iraqis had to have visas, and they made criteria that were impossible to meet." Last November, Khaled joined the trickle of 110,000 returning Iraqis. Sunni, Shia and Kurds have left their homes in more or less equal proportions, says Endres.
The biggest numbers have fled Baghdad. Shia go to relatives in the villages of the south; the Sunni to Anbar and Diyala.
Refugee fatigue is affecting Iraq too. The governorate of Kerbala has closed its doors. The police chief of Mosul has blamed Sunni refugees from Tal Afar, Basra and elsewhere for al-Qaeda violence in his city. The backlash has even reached generous, liberal Sweden, which received 18,600 Iraqi asylum claims - 41 per cent of all Iraqi applications to industrialised countries - last year. Sweden is expected to reject 19,000 Iraqis and Afghans in 2008.
Mass Iraqi emigration has barely touched Ireland. Manuel Jordao, the UNHCR's representative in Dublin, says Ireland received 285 Iraqi asylum applications in 2007, 61 in the first three months of this year.
The UNHCR has asked the Irish Government to undertake a "selection mission" to Lebanon to consider resettling 80 Iraqi refugees now in Beirut. The UNHCR selects candidates for resettlement on the basis of vulnerability. "But the resettlement countries have their own criteria," Endres explains. "Some take medical cases or social cases, others demand a certain level of education. Our aim is to help those who need it most."
As usual in the Middle East, the Palestinians have fared worst. There were 34,000 Palestinians in Baghdad five years ago. Some Iraqis unfairly blamed these refugees from the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars for the advent of suicide bombing in Iraq. Close to 20,000 Sunni Palestinians fled when Shia militiamen started attacking them. Today, UNHCR is the sole support for some 3,000 Palestinians stranded in dire conditions in the desert on the Syrian-Iraqi border.