[Announce] Consequences of war

[Robert Waldrop]

Iraq's Elite Fleeing in Droves Amira El Ahl, 
Volkhard Windfuhr and
Bernhard Zand, Der Spiegel

Monday 20 August 2007

One in ten Iraqis has left the country. Baghdad's 
elite aretrying to
make ends meet in neighboring Jordan and Syria. 
Washingtonwants the
United Nations to address the refugee crisis. In 
themeantime, the
country is losing its best minds - the very people 
neededto rebuild
Iraq.

The first stage on the road to safety is a $20 
taxi ride. It takes
thefuture refugee past nervous soldiers, through 
dangerous checkpoints
andalong streets with nicknames - like "Grenade 
Alley" and
"SniperBoulevard" - that bespeak the perils of 
travel in Iraq.

Stage one ends at the curb in front of Samarra 
Terminal at
BaghdadAirport, where travelers are so overcome 
with relief that they
hardlyeven notice the gruff way guards treat them. 
Before they are
evenallowed to enter the terminal, security 
officers order them to
deposittheir suitcases and carry-on bags next to a 
yellow line painted
on theasphalt and flanked by two sets of 
six-foot-tall concrete
barriers.While police dogs sniff the luggage for 
explosives, the
travelers -men, women, grandparents and 
grandchildren - stand to the
side in theheat, parents wearing stiff-looking 
travel clothes and a few
childrenin brightly colored wind-breakers.

"We are flying to Amman," says one mother, smiling 
as she hands
herwhining son his stocking cap, "and then to 
Prague and on to
Stockholm.The children think it's snowing there."

The first flight, a charter flight operated by 
Flying Carpet,
isn'tscheduled for departure until the afternoon, 
but the airport is
alreadycrowded at 9 a.m. Three doctors - old 
friends from their
universitydays, who haven't seen each other in 
years - are reunited in
theterminal. One of them, a child psychologist 
named Khaldun Fahmy,
waskidnapped a week earlier when he returned to 
take one last look at
hisabandoned villa. After three terrifying days, 
in which he was
tortured,the $50,000 ransom money was paid and 
Fahmy was released and
taken tothe hospital. "Am I talking too much?" he 
asks his friends.
"It's alltherapy, all self-therapy."

Four flights are departing from Baghdad Airport on 
this
particularafternoon, bound for Amman, Damascus, 
Beirut and Dubai. Few
areshedding tears. Most of the travelers have 
already said their
goodbyes,and their farewells are well considered 
and long planned. Some
expectto return, while others are leaving "for 
good," says Fahmy.

Mass Flight

Iraq, a country still shaken by daily violence, is 
currently the sceneof
what is likely the biggest refugee disaster since 
the displacementof
Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. On 
the eve of the Iraqwar,
the United States, the United Nations and 
neighboring countrieshad
expected refugees to number in the tens of 
thousands. Four yearslater,
more than 2 million Iraqis have already left the 
country. Jordanhas
accepted close to 750,000, the Gulf states 
200,000, Egypt 100,000and
Syria at least 1,400,000. Roughly one in 10 Iraqis 
has fled thecountry,
and about the same number are now internal 
refugees.

They are not just the country's poor and 
desperate. Many are the
elitesof a nation that already lost many of its 
best and brightest
duringdecades of tyranny and economic embargoes. 
Ironically, those
choosingto leave the country today are precisely 
the doctors, lawyers,
judges,engineers and government bureaucrats the 
country will desperately
needto rebuild itself.

The West - especially the two leading coalition 
nations, the
UnitedStates and Great Britain - has opened itself 
up to severe
criticism forits unwillingness to step up to the 
plate. Since the 2003
invasion,Britain has accepted a mere 115 and the 
United States only
about 500 ofa total of more than 14,000 seeking 
asylum in the West. The
Bushadministration has promised to process 7,000 
applications for
politicalasylum this year and has made a 
commitment to accept 3,000.
Formersenior US diplomat Richard Holbrooke calls 
the Bush
administration'sefforts "pathetic" and the 
American public's
indifference "shameful."

Meanwhile, Washington has been more than generous 
in seeking totransfer
its Iraq responsibilities to the UN. The 
organization, saysZalmay
Khalilzad, the former US Ambassador to Iraq, 
should focus moreof its
attention in the future on the political process 
in Baghdad,security
issues, the country's oil law - and the refugee 
crisis. Butthis is a
tall order, with the UN High Commission for 
Refugees (UNHCR)not even in
a position to get the most vulnerable Iraqis - 
theinterpreters and
reconstruction workers being hunted down 
byterrorists, who accuse them
of collaborating with the occupiers - outof the 
country. US authorities
in Iraq do not accept asylumapplications, and 
those Iraqis who do manage
to make it abroad arebetter off not mentioning any 
ransom money they may
have paid forkidnapped relatives, especially not 
in the United States.
USimmigration authorities define such payments as 
"material support"
forterrorist organizations.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently 
contributed $5 millionto
a fellowship fund for Iraqi academics. The purpose 
of the fund, saysa
foundation spokeswoman, is to "protect Iraq's 
intellectual capital."The
foundation currently receives about 40 
applications a week, but
theprogram's funds are only enough to pay for 
about 150 academics and
willhave been used up within a few months.

Staggering Costs

Meanwhile, the cost to Syria and Jordan, whose 
governments warnedagainst
an invasion and are now being left to deal with 
thehumanitarian
consequences, is running into the billions. Jordan 
has nowvirtually
closed its borders to Iraq, while up to 2,000 
Iraqis crossthe border
into Syria every day. Syrian Interior Minister 
BassamAbdul-Majid says
that Damascus will likely follow Jordan's lead 
before long.

No one knows precisely how many Iraqis there are 
in Syria today. The
demand for subsidized goods like bread and 
gasoline has increased by
one-fifth, at an additional cost to the government 
of several hundred
million dollars. Apartment rents in some 
neighborhoods have skyrocketed,
government-run schools are overflowing with 
students and unemployment
and inflation are on the rise.

The growing crisis has also affected the UN. At 
the beginning of the
year, two employees at the UNHCR office in 
Damascus were sufficient to
register Iraqi refugees. But within weeks, the 
situation spun out of
control. Suddenly UNHCR officials saw thousands of 
people lining up
outside their office every morning.

Today, only half a year later, 30 clerks sit at 
desks in a warehouse in
eastern Damascus, recording personal data and 
translating it into
English. "It's the largest operation of its kind 
that we're running
worldwide," says British UNHCR official Sybella 
Wilkes.

Before the building opens in the morning, 
employees walk through the
crowd with megaphones, warning the refugees about 
con artists. No one
from the UNHCR will ask for money, they say, 
adding that while the
process will be time-consuming and inconvenient, 
it is free. Then health
experts arrive on the scene to scan the crowd for 
the sick and fatigued.
"We have to fish out the most vulnerable ones 
first," says Wilkes,
"otherwise they won't make it through the waiting 
period in the heat."
The disabled, old men in wheelchairs and 
chemotherapy patients are taken
to the front of the line.

Huda Sibawi, 33, a grief-stricken young woman, is 
carrying six death
certificates: those of her mother, her father, two 
uncles, her brother
and her brother-in-law. The father, a wealthy 
Sunni from New Baghdad,had
donated money to a mosque and, at the end of 
Ramadan, broke the fast a
day earlier than is customary among the Shiites. 
He paid dearly for his
infraction. Fighters from the Shiite Mahdi militia 
exterminated most of
his family in a two-week murdering spree.

The killers seized the Sibawis' assets, which 
included 11 apartment
buildings and a small chain of supermarkets. 
Neighbors from Baghdad
occasionally call Huda to tell her that members of 
the Mahdi militia are
now driving the family's company cars around the 
city.

Some of the Iraqi refugees are so desperate that 
mothers have been known
to take their daughters to nightclubs, where they 
offer them to Western
and Arab tourists from the Gulf as if they were 
exotic fruits. "Diana,
for example," says a driver who works for the 
limousine service of a
large, Western hotel, "just arrived from Mosul. 
You can meet her in our
disco after 1 a.m."

Careful Preparations

But so far, abject poverty is still the exception 
among refugees. Many
Iraqis made careful financial preparations before 
leaving the
country,selling their houses and cars in Baghdad 
so that they could buya
partments in Damascus or Amman. Other families are 
using up their
daughters' dowries bit by bit. "Our funds will 
last us for exactly six
months," says Huda Sibawi. "By then we'll need a 
decision on whether a
European country or Canada will accept us."

Other refugees retain a place of residence in 
Kurdish northern Iraq soas
not to lose their pension claims. "Most of these 
people are very
well-educated and self-confident," says a UNHCR 
employee who once worked
in West Africa. "Only a fraction comes to us. 
Asking for handouts goes
against their grain. That's the most tragic thing 
about this crisis: The
ones who have left Iraq are its 2 million best and 
brightest."

Meanwhile, the Iraqi nose for business is in full 
evidence in the
Jordanian capital of Amman, dominated by the 
Iraqi-owned Le Royal,
aluxury hotel designed as a striking sandstone 
cylinder, a variation on
the renowned spiral minaret on the mosque in 
Samarra. While Iraqis make
full use of Amman's liberal economic environment, 
the country also
benefits from their presence.

The wave of refugees has also led to rising living 
expenses, rents and
real estate prices in Jordan. "We are a country 
without resources,"says
Jordanian businessman Abd al-Sattar al-Kuda. "We 
have no water, no oil
and little agriculture," he says. "In other words, 
there is nothing the
refugees could take away from us." On the 
contrary, the Iraqis are
partly responsible for a boom in consumer 
spending.

Baghdad's wealthy residents, many already with one 
foot in Amman before
the war, have settled in Abdoun and Deir Ghubar, 
exclusive residential
areas in the city's southwest. They include Iraqis 
tied to the former
regime, such as former dictator Saddam Hussein's 
daughter Raghad, who is
often seen driving her blue BMW sports car and is 
said to have opened a
beauty salon recently. Refugees from the Iraqi 
middle class have settled
in western Amman, while the poor live in the east. 
Although many are in
Jordan illegally, Iraqis have already made the 
Jordanian capital a
different place than it was.

Amman's Transformation

Once-sleepy Amman has turned into a vibrant big 
city with busy
restaurants and cafes. After 2003, many Iraqi 
restaurant owners moved
their businesses from Baghdad to Amman, often 
mimicking the
originalrestaurants and naming them after Iraqi 
provinces and
neighborhoods. At"Anbar" in western Amman, the 
"samak masgouf," a carp
dish, is served just as it's prepared in waterside 
restaurants along the
Tigris River -fresh, rich and moist. The waiters 
and patrons converse in
Iraqi dialects, while Jordanians are in the 
minority. Big cars with
Baghdad license plates are parked bumper-to-bumper 
on neighborhood
streets.

But as harmoniously as Iraqis seem to fit into 
Amman's street
scenes,their status is precarious. The government 
has gradually ramped
up its requirements for residency permits, 
demanding that Iraqis deposit
increasingly large sums of money as collateral. 
Those who are turned
down have no right to appeal the immigration 
court's decision.

Being pushed around like this in Jordan or Syria 
is especially
humiliating for educated Iraqis. Baghdad's middle 
class, in
particular,has always considered itself the Arab 
world's urban elite. An
old IraqiArab saying sums up the way many Iraqis 
see themselves today:
"Books are written in Cairo and published in 
Beirut, but they are read
in Baghdad."

A retired archeology professor from Baghdad, who 
prefers not to give his
name, found a bullet wrapped in a balled-up piece 
of paper in his garden
one day. "Get out, or we'll come and get your 
daughter," the note read.
He packed his bags and drove to Amman with his 
wife and daughter. That
was a year ago, or the space of two six-month 
tourist visas. At some
point, the 70-year-old professor realized that he 
would probably not be
returning to his native country.

But this time, the Jordanian immigration office is 
refusing to issuethe
professor a third visa because he is unable to pay 
the $75,000 fee."Not
to be granted a residency permit in Jordan is 
extremely hurtful tome, a
person who spent decades at the university and 
years working for
UNESCO," he says.

He stands, watery-eyed, in a friend's basement 
apartment in
Amman,wearing a light blue shirt and gray flannel 
trousers. "Do you know
whatI have done now?" he asks. "I have prepared my 
resume and attached
an application to it. Perhaps one of the 
universities here will take
me."