A couple of months ago a Congressman asked why isn’t our friend and ally, Saudi Arabia, helping to solve the Iraqi refugee “crisis” by taking some Iraqis to that country on a temporary basis?  I didn’t know the answer.  But, I guess we know how they feel about the topic as they proceed to build a 550 mile high-tech fence to keep their northern neighbors out.   So much for Muslims helping Muslims (what would Mohammad do?) 

Here is an article from the American Thinker with a mention of the super Saudi fence.

One country that clearly recognizes the value of a good fence is Saudi Arabia. Fearing an inflow of unwanted refugees from neighboring Iraq, the Saudis have decided to erect a high-tech barrier [click here to see this engineering marvel] all along their 550 mile border. Justifiably proud of their common sense, one Saudi familiar with the details boasted: ‘It’s being done in true Saudi style. State-of-the-art equipment and no expense spared.’ The project’s estimated cost is $1 billion. Our politicians should blush crimson knowing that the Saudi fence will incorporate many technologies invented and perfected in America.

Guess that helps answer our previous post on the “welcoming” Saudi Arabia.

More on fences.    I’m not always on top of the news so I may have missed it; I do know there has been enormous international criticism of the Israelis for building a fence to protect themselves from terrorist Palestinians, but the silence on the Saudi fence is deafening.

The US is about to embark on an ambitious campaign to resettle Iraqi refugees this year.   The State Department goal is to bring 12,000 during the fiscal year that began a few weeks ago.   Recently Senator Kennedy attached a bill to a larger defense authorization bill to add another 5000.   Washington insiders who support increases in Muslim immigration are pushing this too.   For the United Nations, Kennedy, Muslims in America, and the Volags (non-profit groups) who are paid to resettle refugees, the numbers are not enough nor is the pace fast enough to suit them.     I’m on a quest to discover who these people are, how many are there, why have they  gone to Syria, and so on.   It’s a quest the lazy mainstream media isn’t going to embark on.

The public hype has painted the following picture:  Millions of  poor and desparate refugees streaming out of Iraq, living in horrible conditions (in tents in the desert!), many with death threats against them for having worked for the US government,  no chance of ever going back to Iraq and so on.  The upshot of all this is, of course, we owe it to them to bring them to America at taxpayer expense, disperse them throughout the country, and get them on welfare.   

My first stop in trying to discover the truth is a lengthy report (June 2007) from the Brookings Institution in Washington DC entitled, Iraqi Refugees in the Syrian Arab Republic:  A Field-Based Snapshot.   Although the study often refers to the “refugee crisis” or “refugee disaster” the facts they report to some degree belie the use of such terminology.

Did you know that:

*  The number of Iraqi refugees frequently given is 4 million, but 2 million of those are in Iraq and just not living in their home towns.   Of the estimated 2 million who have left the country, approximately 1.2 million are in Syria but that hundreds of thousands of those are people who left Iraq more than 20 years ago to escape Saddam Hussein.  According to Brookings, the Saddam Hussein regime displaced a million people and the Iran-Iraq War added to those numbers.

*  We really don’t know the true numbers because Brookings says, the “crisis” happened quickly, there is no existing capacity in the Syrian Government to track such information, and the “highly political nature of the problem.”  I read that last to mean that it doesn’t suit the political powers to know the truth; it leaves them free to make up their own truth.

* After the initial US invasion it was anticipated there would be a human flood leaving Iraq, that didn’t happen unless you count the Saddam loyalists leaving Iraq.    According to Brookings, “….the first to come were members of the former regime, many but not all of whom were Sunni and most of whom were wealthy.”

* Many who left Iraq had family living in Syria and others already had business ties to that country.  As we reported yesterday in our “Tent burning” post, the refugees living in Syria are in apartments for the most part.  They do not live in tents.

* Another wave of “refugees” occured when the US initiated the surge.  Many of those perpetrating sectarian violence, including the Mahdi Army, have scooted over the border to Syria. 

* Other “refugees” have headed to Syria because they want to be resettled in a third country and know they aren’t technically refugees if they still live in Iraq.

More to come later, there is so much in this report that I can’t possibly do it justice in one post. 

A few days ago a million dollars worth of tents intended for refugees were set ablaze in Syria.  The origin of the fire is unknown.   Read the story here.

The United Nations refugee agency today reported that a fire in its warehouses near Damascus destroyed tents worth about $1 million, setting back operations in Syria, which is home to over a million Iraqis who have fled violence in their home country.

We have been talking about the drumbeat to bring tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees to the US, but who are the Iraqi refugees in Syria?  There are supposedly 1.2 million of them.    As the violence abates in Iraq, you will be hearing more about the refugee “crisis” because that will be how those opposed to the surge will seek media attention.    It will be all about the refugees.

I’m poring over some reports and hope later today to have some information about who is in Syria.

But, I can tell you this from what I’ve read so far.   Iraqis refuse to live in tents in the desert and the vast majority are living in apartments in Damascus and other sites in Syria.   So, why did the UN have one million dollars worth of tents in storage?  Mismanagment of resources?  Or, cynically, was it to continue the refugee “crisis” hype?