Iraqi refugees in Jordan helped with private funds

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is an article (thanks again to Chris) about Iraqi refugees who are Palestinians and now living in Jordan.  Apparently some of those are being helped privately and that is a good thing.   See yesterday’s post about private funds helping the Iraqi Chaldean refugees.

Samia says she is willing to work [Jordan must allow refugees to work] but she cannot leave the house due to her daughter’s condition. The family is surviving on assistance from a brother and from NGOs such as Al Tamkeen, a local project funded by the International Rescue Committee and implemented by the Near East Foundation. Samia said the United Nations High Commission for Refugees hasn’t done much for her. 

Then the article goes on to say that the Palestinians living in Iraq were hated by the Iraqis and fled Iraq when we invaded, however it’s puzzling to note that we arrived in Iraq in 2003 and they didn’t leave until the time the surge began in 2006.

The Kouzah family fled Baghdad in 2006. She said Iraqis went after Palestinians after the U.S. occupation began.

A reader asked why were the Palestinians not welcome to stay in Iraq.   The Brookings Institution report I referred to yesterday obliquely mentions this was because the Palestinians were favored by Saddam Hussein.

Another reader, Setare, responds with more interesting information and some links to Human Rights Watch which has apparently taken up the cause of the Iraqi Palestinians.  One article answers the question of why the Palestinians are hated in Iraq.

Here are a couple of links to reports by Human Rights Watch that might be of help:

http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/07/jord…

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraqjordan/

An excerpt from the first linked article:

“Following the 2003 Iraq conflict, many Palestinians in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities came under direct attack, in part due to resentment of the fact that Saddam Hussein’s government provided many of them with homes it seized from Iraqi Shia.”

 Then to add more evidence to what I said yesterday that we are not getting the whole story about the Iraqi refugees another reader, Kris, says this:

It’s funny, a few months ago I met an Iraqui gentleman in Amman visiting for Operation Smile with the Iraqui doctors. I talked with him about the war and he assured me that it was just a blip in the stream of human history and that people were not suffering, that life was normal. It was really hard to reconcile that point of view with the people that I meet every day.

I’m wondering, can’t we get some definitive study about the Iraqi displaced persons situation, maybe from some independent outfit (not the UN or the NGO’s!) so that policy decisions can be made without being distorted by the politics of the War and by those who have assorted motives for wisking tens of thousands of Iraqis to the US.

Sponsor an Iraqi refugee family, not a bad idea

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

The Chaldean Federation of America has a pretty good idea.   According to a recent newsletter, (hat tip: Chris) they aren’t simply demanding that we bring Iraqi refugees here by the tens of thousands, they are taking action by collecting funds and making sure the funds reach the Chaldean families in Syria, Lebanon, or Jordon.    We know that the money needed to resettle one refugee here is enough to care for dozens or more in their present country. 

The Chaldean Federation of America has made it easy for most anyone to help a refugee family. Bakal says the goal of the “Adopt-A-Refugee-Family” program is to help stabilize at least 600 of the direst families. Donors are able to contact the Chaldean Federation of America directly and begin the process of healing. The effort will go far in demonstrating the American people’s generosity and genuine concern for the victims of the Iraqi war.

Read about the Christian Chaldean plan.  Wonder why we don’t see wealthy Muslims in Europe or the US doing the same for their people in Syria?

I almost didn’t read the whole article because an annoying statement by Lavinia Limon of the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants early in the article almost kept me from reading further.  She continues to promote this lie that our involvement in Iraq is entirely responsible for the Iraq refugee problem.   We reported yesterday that these NGO’s had been complaining for several years in advance of our arrival in Iraq that Saddam Hussein was creating a refugee crisis.  Here is what she said in the Chaldean newsletter: 

Many feel the United States have a responsibility to address the refugee crisis caused by the Iraq war and occupation. Current American policy denies any special American responsibility for Iraqi refugees although the entire world believes that the two million refugees are a bi-product of American actions in Iraq says Lavinia Limon. Limon is the former Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Department of Health and Human Service under the Clinton administration and current President and CEO of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI).

Limon would have more credibility if she first admitted that the refugee situation in Iraq was a decades long problem created by Saddam Hussein and yes, exacerbated by the war which began in 2003 and the subsequent mishandling by the Iraqi government.

She goes on to lament that since the refugees are living in apartments in Syria and not in United Nations camps it is hard to help them.  Well, maybe they don’t need so much help because many haven’t even bothered to register with the UN as refugees. 

Readers, we are not getting an accurate story on the Iraqi refugees, because I don’t think the NGO’s want us to have one.  It suits their purpose to keep the “crisis” going because it is how they stay alive.  No crisis=no money.

If you have time and energy, go back to this report from the Brookings Institution which at least makes some effort to find out what is going on in Syria with the Iraqis and does mention, by the way, that many of the “refugees” have been in Syria since Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror.

Here is something else I’ve been wondering about and Judy has written about—the lack of initiative by the primarily Shia government of Iraq to repatriate and resettle refugees.  Go to the end of the Brookings report and see who the refugees are.

Albeit the sample is small, only 22% are Shia and the remainder are Sunni, Christians, Kurds and others.  It occurs to me, but I’m just guessing, that the elected Muslim Shite majority government of Iraq might not want any of these minorities back.   The 22% Shia represented in the Brookings report might be the extremists who dashed out of Iraq when the surge began which might further explain why the government of Iraq is dragging its feet on bringing home its displaced people or even sending them money to survive in neighboring countries.

Perhaps it really doesn’t want any of them—the minorities (including their own former persecutors, the Sunnis) or the extremists.

P.S.  I wonder how many families the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants is planning to sponsor with their own funds (not taxpayers money)?

Food stamp fraud in New York

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Add New York to our list of locations where Food Stamp fraud is occuring.   There is a common thread in all these cases and I’ll give you a hint, check out the names of some of those arrested in the last line of this excerpt.   You might first read this earlier post on the topic. 

Welfare recipients have been trading food stamps for cash, accepting about 70 cents on the dollar from several Westchester merchants who have been profiting from the illegal practice, police said yesterday.

Undercover Westchester County police this week busted shopkeepers from three delis in Yonkers and Mount Vernon, after a six-month investigation into misuse of the county’s food-stamp debit-card system.

“The debit cards are only supposed to be used to purchase food items,” said county police spokesman Kieran O’Leary. “These workers swiped the cards and gave the undercover officers cash out of the register. The people accused in this investigation on average offered them 60 to 70 cents on the dollar in exchange for providing them with cash.”

The illegal transactions were carried out at two Yonkers businesses – Raffi Boys Deli at 62 Yonkers Ave. and Lydia’s Deli at 52 Yonkers Ave. – and Hilltop Deli at 271 S. Fourth Ave. in Mount Vernon, O’Leary said.

Rafael Fana of Queens, 56, the owner of Raffi Boys; Lydia’s owner Lydia Rivera, 39, and clerk Carlos Rodriguez, 66, both of Yonkers; and Hilltop owner Fadhle Algahim, 34, and clerk Mohamad Ali Algohim, 46, both of Mount Vernon, were all charged with fourth-degree grand larceny, a felony, and misuse of food stamps, a misdemeanor.

If you still didn’t get it, the common thread is that there is always an immigrant from a certain region of the world in the list of alleged perpetrators.   What do they have some business strategy meetings before they come to the US—get rich in America quick by opening a convenience store and ripping off the US taxpayer?

I’m going to bet also that the initial investment in the business is coming from Arab-world financers.

See all of our earlier posts on Food Stamp fraud here.

In 1948 Arab leaders created the Palestinian “refugee” problem

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Since I’ve now done two posts today on who is originally responsible for the refugee “crisis” in Iraq, it seems fitting to give you new information about who created the Palestinian refugees.

The so-called Palestinian “refugee” problem was created by Arab leaders who told Palestinians to leave the newly created Israel in order to facilitate its quick destruction.    Anyone who wanted to stay was called a traitor, according to new evidence reported today at Palestinian Media Watch (from Jihad Watch).   Read it all here. 

It occurs to me that this narrative of blaming Israel for 60 years for supposedly doing evil to the Palestinians has worked so well to keep hatred going that they are now using the same strategy on us.  Blame the US for all the refugee problems in Iraq and fuel the fires of hatred for generations to come.   The disgusting part is that Americans, especially in the NGO community are helping fan those flames by hiding the role Saddam Hussein played in the Iraqi humanitarian chaos.   And, our dhimmi leadership in Washington seems ready and willing to take the blame and guilt.

Why can’t the Bush Administration just stand up and say “look we didn’t create the entire Iraq refugee situation, we won’t take all the blame, the new government of Iraq needs to step up,  and dammit it’s about time that wealthy Arab countries like Saudi Arabia helped their fellow Muslim refugees–the Palestinians and the Iraqis!”

To Human Rights Watch and Refugees International: where is the report?

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

In researching the previous post on Iraq’s internally displaced people I came across several references including the one below (from the US State Department website) to a report called “Life under Saddam Hussein” that was ostensibly written by some of today’s most vocal NGO critics of the Bush Administration’s handling of the Iraqi refugee issue.   To hear them today, the refugee “crisis” is all Bush’s fault.

I’m not always the greatest at finding stuff on-line so it’s possible I overlooked it.  If anyone has a link to this pre-Iraq War document please send it to me at our e-mail address in the right column.  I would really appreciate it.

Human Rights Watch estimates that Saddam’s 1987-1988 campaign of terror against the Kurds killed at least 50,000 and possibly as many as 100,000 Kurds. The Iraqi regime used chemical agents to include mustard gas and nerve agents in attacks against at least 40 Kurdish villages between 1987-1988. The largest was the attack on Halabja which resulted in approximately 5,000 deaths. o 2,000 Kurdish villages were destroyed during the campaign of terror.

Iraq’s 13 million Shi’a Muslims, the majority of Iraq’s population of approximately 22 million, face severe restrictions on their religious practice, including a ban on communal Friday prayer, and restriction on funeral processions.

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

“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.”

In August 2003, Refugees International published a plan which Judy wrote about here.   But, the excerpt above was published at the State Department in April 2003, so there must have been some earlier report about Saddam Hussein creating a refugee crisis.