First it was Afghanistan with the millions of refuges crossing...

First it was Afghanistan with the millions of refuges crossing the border into Pakistan. That alone made the border area an easy target for recruiting new and desperate people “terrorists” to fight with the Taliban or Al Qaida. Doesn’t anyone care about our involvement in a continuous pattern of displacing millions? No debate, all-silent about our policy on both sides of politics of blindly following and invading endless countries behind the red white and blue. What will be the result of the completion of the new US base in WA? A continuation of falling into line behind the reckless wayward nature that has now become the US of A. Once complete will we have any soul of our own left with no more independent foreign policy? Canada cxomes to mind being cobbled up by that big machine charging throughout the world. Time for a third party, as the other two have merged all ideas and foriegn policies. The Greens seem to be doing well with some poles.

Syria - Iraqi Refugee Crisis
Broadcast: 16/10/2007

Reporter: Matt Brown

LEAD STORY
SERIES 17
EPISODE 16

Synopsis

Matt Brown travelled to the desolate desert territory on the Iraqi/ Syrian border to see the refugee crisis first hand.

He reports that as many as 2,000 desperate Iraqis are crossing the border every day. An estimated 700,000 have fled the sectarian violence in Iraq this year alone. Since US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003 two million citizens have left.

It can take months for Iraqis to get an appointment at the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Damascus. The UNHCR head, Lauren Jolles acknowledges that the re-settlement program is limited. “It’s not going to make a big dent in the one and half million people that are here now.”

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Miqdad said, “The expected help from the international community, including from Australia, has not come despite the fact that Australia is involved in military operation (in Iraq). We hold those countries of being responsible for consequences of their military actions in Iraq.“

Brown reports from the Syrian capital that there are so many Iraqi refugees in Damascus that parts of the city are now known by Iraqi names.

Living conditions for many are desperate and Brown says that only ten per cent of the refugees are receiving any form of humanitarian aid.

Almost every refugee has a tragic tale of how Iraq has become a killing ground. Fatimah Tammami tells Matt Brown that her husband was assassinated by Shiite Muslim gunmen, “because he was a Sunni.”

“Believe me, “she says, “honestly I prefer to commit suicide with my children rather than return to Iraq. Because Iraq for me means death.“

Another woman, Kadija um Hassan, is only alive because here family scrabbled together the US$50,000 in ransom demanded by her abductors. “After that I figure out the life is so hard, so hard. And if I want to survive, with dignity, for my children I have to go.“

In Damascus Kadija is at the centre of a self help community network to provide food and medicine to the most need of the Iraqis. She has managed to enrol her children in school saying, “we have to make this generation ready to re-build their own country because this is their future.“


http://abc.net.au/foreign/content/2007/s2058125.htm