Iraq: biggest Middle East population displacement since 1948

Patrick Cockburn: ``The US and UK are loath to admit that one of the world's great man-made disasters is taking place''

Recent White House rhetoric and obfuscation on Iraq mainly has ignored the enormous and accelerating exodus of Iraqis from their homes that is now taking place. The word ``refugee'' was not uttered by Steven Hadley in his Iraq briefing yesterday, or in two major speeches delivered in January by President Bush.

Yesterday's subject for Hadley's spin was a partially declassified intelligence estimate (NIE) entitled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: A Challenging Road Ahead." According to news reports, the NIE says that "Iraq is unraveling at an accelerating rate, and even if U.S. and Iraqi forces can slow the spreading violence, the country's fragile government is unlikely to deliver stability to its people during the next year."

Hadley was trotted out to spin the intelligence estimate. He used it as support for the president's escalation policy, at one point quoting it:

Let me continue to read: "If coalition forces were withdrawn, if such a rapid withdrawal were to take place, we judge that the Iraqi security forces would be unlikely to survive as a nonsectarian national institution. Neighboring countries, invited by Iraqi factions or unilaterally, might intervene openly in the conflict. Massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable.

Probable? Massive population displacement is happening now.

According to Patrick Cockburn:

Iraqis are on the run inside and outside the country. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said 50,000 Iraqis a month are abandoning their homes. Stephanie Jaquemet, regional representative of the UNHCR, said that two million Iraqis have fled abroad and another 1.5-2 million are displaced within the country - many of them from before the fall of Saddam Hussein.

They flee because they fear for their lives. Some 3,000 Iraqis are being killed every month according to the UN. Most come from Baghdad and the centre of the country, but all of Iraq outside the three Kurdish provinces in the north is extremely violent. A detailed survey by the International Organisation for Migration on displacement within Iraq said that most people move after direct threats to their lives: "These threats take the form of abductions; assassinations of individuals or their families."

The presence of the US occupation so far has accelerated and massively compounded the displacements of the Saddam era, rightly decried in White House propaganda four years ago:

According to Human Rights Watch, "senior Arab diplomats told the London-based Arabic daily newspaper al-Hayat in October [1991] that Iraqi leaders were privately acknowledging that 250,000 people were killed during the uprisings, with most of the casualties in the south." Refugees International reports that the "Oppressive government policies have led to the internal displacement of 900,000 Iraqis, primarily Kurds who have fled to the north to escape Saddam Hussein's Arabization campaigns (which involve forcing Kurds to renounce their Kurdish identity or lose their property) and Marsh Arabs, who fled the government's campaign to dry up the southern marshes for agricultural use. More than 200,000 Iraqis continue to live as refugees in Iran."

Look at the numbers. We have a scale of refugee creation equivalent to the entire Saddam era happening on a monthly basis. But now, Bush and Hadley can't even utter the word "refugee."

In fairness, I should point out that there is a State Department official concerned with the Iraqi refugee problem. She is Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. She told the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 16, that

due to the upsurge in sectarian violence in 2006, this trend has reversed, and at present more Iraqis are fleeing their homes to other areas of Iraq and to neighboring countries then are returning. UNHCR estimates that between 1 to 1.4 million Iraqis are in countries bordering Iraq, though a large percentage of them had left Iraq prior to 2003. We believe the current population of Iraqis in Jordan and Syria is a mixture of the Iraqis who departed before 2003 and newer arrivals. Many organizations, including UNHCR, have raised concerns about new arrivals and growing numbers of Iraqis in these countries, though neither UNHCR nor the governments of Jordan or Syria have definitive figures on the size of the population. UNHCR has argued that the refugee crisis it predicted would occur, but did not materialize after the invasion in 2003 is now upon us.

So, somebody at State recognizes the problem. Still, it is soft-peddled, without proper attribution of the fundamental cause--the disintegration of Iraqi society as a direct result of US attack, conquest, occupation, and domination.