Looking Back on Iraq: A Personal Perspective
By:Whitney Kweskin
About the Author
From April 2014-15, individuals arriving from the Middle East have grown in number due to continuing unrest and violence in the region. In that time, we have helped to welcome 165 individuals from Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
"The U.S. resettles approximately 70,000 refugees from all over the world every year.Refugees from the Middle East comprise about one-third of that number, about 22,000 people a year."
Everyone in my class looks tired. It could be that it's approaching 100 degrees outside although the sun set an hour ago. Or perhaps, it's that I'm asking them to speak English after a full day of caring for children, working or looking for work. Or, it could be that they are slowly succumbing to the mind-numbing apathy that is endemic in refugee camps – there is nowhere to go, no end in sight, and very little chance that they will live anywhere but in this tent city for the foreseeable future.
I worked with refugees for four years in the U.S. prior to moving to Kurdistan, and I had heard stories from the camps, but I had yet to see it with my own eyes. Here, in Kawergosk in Erbil, Iraq, I was seeing one piece of the story—that of the Syrian Kurds fleeing Bashar Al-Assad and/or ISIS (Da'ash). Refugee camps are often the safest place that a person fleeing conflict can be, but that does not make them necessarily safe nor does it by any stretch of the imagination make them an enjoyable place to be. As I was reminded by my students in Kawergosk, the camp would never be anyone's home.
Since the 1980 Refugee Act was passed in the U.S., there has been a steady stream of refugees entering the U.S. fleeing various conflicts in the region.The U.S. resettles approximately 70,000 refugees from all over the world every year.Refugees from the Middle East comprise about one-third of that number, about 22,000 people a year. Refugees come from three major countries in the Middle East: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and then in smaller numbers from other countries in the region. Recently, the UN has announced that they intend to declare 30,000 Syrians eligible for overseas resettlement due to growing concerns over insecurity in countries hosting refugees and within Syria itself.
Internal strife followed by a U.S. invasion and protracted wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan left millions displaced both internally and externally. Many of those fleeing the tribal and sectarian violence in Iraq went to Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. People fleeing persecution under the Taliban in Afghanistan fled to Pakistan, Iran, India, and Turkey. Over the past 12 years, these host countries have found themselves less and less capable of managing the overwhelming numbers of refugees within their borders. While refugees in these host countries are safe from the immediate danger of the conflict, the ethnic or religious aspects of the conflict often follow refugees into the camps and the violence continues.
Many of the refugees who are coming to the U.S. are now on their second round of refugee status. Many who fled the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989) were later caught up in the recent Syrian conflict which began in 2011 or ran afoul of the Iranian regime. Others fled one war, seeking protection in Libya or Tunisia only to have the Arab Spring push them into refugee status again. Some were political activists or involved in the Arab Spring protests, but most are families with no political affiliation other than their ethnic or religious group who live in fear of returning to the chaos that was once home.The United States also offers special immigrant status to people who worked for the U.S. military during the occupation of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.These workers (usually translators) and their families routinely receive death threats from their own governments and other militia groups, qualifying them for these visas to safety in the U.S.
Even with all of the effort to bring as many people as possible to safety,the United States still is only able to resettle one half of one percent of the refugees in the world.The students I was so privileged to teach left behind ancestral homes that families had held for centuries. They had crossed the border into the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq with the approximately 500,000 other people who streamed in between 2010 and 2013. Due to their relatively protected status within the Kurdistan Region, they are very unlikely to be resettled in a third country. Really, though, all they want is to go home.