** Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches **
** http://dahrjamailiraq.com **

From No Man’s Land to Displacement

by Dahr Jamail
from Left Turn Magazine

The Iraqi/Jordanian border is a land of desolation. Coils of razor wire
stretch into the desert whilst sun-grayed plastic bags caught in their
sharpness flap in the hot, dry winds. In No Man’s Land, Jamail exposes
yet another face of the human consequences of the US occupation of Iraq
— the suffering and resistance of displaced Kurdish-Iranian and
Palestinian refugees.

Long columns of trucks wait at the Jordanian border to carry their loads
of supplies into war-torn Iraq. When Iraqi drivers wish to enter Jordan,
they now wait up to 18 days to be allowed in. The al-Karama border is a
land of waiting, but not just for the truck drivers. There have been
others waiting to enter Jordan for far longer. The refugee camp situated
in this bleak area is called No Man’s Land camp because it literally is
just that: an area of land caught between the borders of two countries
with nowhere else to go.

“If you leave me here I will die,” said the elderly Merza Shahawaz as he
was groaning from the pain in his kidneys, “Please help me.” In his tent
covered with plastic sheeting inside the camp, his wife was helping him
sit up. He cannot sit without her holding him up.

“I ask you to help me. I plead for humanitarian people to help us now,”
mumbled the 66 year-old man in dire need of dialysis. His family sitting
nearby shed tears as they brushed flies away from their faces.

His 42 year-old son pleaded, “We are all dying slowly here. You see us
with your eyes, I ask for help. He is dying in front of his family’s
eyes but nobody is doing anything for him. We don’t want our children’s
fate to be this. Death is better than this life. If our children grow up
like this it means they are dead.”

It is one example of the suffering of so many in the camp of over 700
people.

*Hunger strike*

Kurdish-Iranian refugees have a long history of suffering. Initially
having left Iran under persecution from the government over 20 years
ago, some of them were members of the Kurdish peshmerga militia who
fought against fundamentalist Islamic rule and were lucky enough to
escape with their lives. Many of them fled to Iraq, where the regime of
Saddam Hussein placed them in the al-Tash refugee camp, located 80 miles
west of Baghdad, which held over 12,000 Iranian Kurds.

Many of these refugees, after the US-led invasion of Iraq in spring of
2003, said they were threatened by armed groups and told they had to
leave. Several refugees I interviewed in No Man’s Land camp said they
were instructed to leave Al-Tash by the US-backed Iraqi government.
Palestinians, Iraqis, Jordanians and Syrian refugees were also in the mix.

At the time of the invasion the Jordanian government agreed to provide
temporary protection for Iraqis fleeing the fighting and chaos in their
country. But when the Iranian-Kurds from Al-Tash camp reached the
Jordanian border, they were denied access. Others were denied access
because they lacked valid passports. Already burgeoning with refugees
from Palestine and Iraq, the government of Jordan felt it had reached
its limits and denied access to future refugees.

While the local Jordanian Hashemite Charity Organization — with help
from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), CARE
International and other organizations — has been working to assist the
refugees, it appears as though it is not enough.

A tattered sheet tied to a chain-link fence which surrounds No Man’s
Land camp flittered in the wind. It read: “We Iranian Kurd refugees have
gone on hunger strike because we have been paid no attention from UNHCR
and they use demagogy policy towards our just issue and have not tended
to our demand which is resettlement in third countries. Dying once is
better than daily death.”

On the other side of the fence a tarp provides shade for 21 men who were
on hunger strike, demanding more assistance from UNHCR.

Omar Abdul Aziz, is 39 years old. He was living in Al-Anbar at Al-Tash
camp near Ramadi before he came here. “We used to live 23 years at
Al-Tash camp,” he explained, “After the war the horrible security came.
Due to the fact that the occupation forces didn’t control the borders,
Iranian intelligence came into Iraq and began raiding Al-Tash, so we had
to leave.”

The soft spoken man, weak with hunger nine days into the strike, sat on
a mat while he talked. “I am on hunger strike because UNHCR didn’t do
anything for us. This is not the right place for women and kids to live
in, and we have an unknown future. We have no solution here, only moving
from camp to camp, from desert to desert.”

Flies buzzed languidly about the faces of the downtrodden men in the
tent as Aziz continued. “We don’t want to go to Iraq because it is
unstable and it is not our country. What has happened to us is due to
the illegal American invasion of Iraq. We ask the American people,
appealing to their humanity, to evacuate us from this horrible
situation. We are the orphans of the international community. The
international community has kept their mouths closed about us, and
especially the Americans.”

Others spoke of spending over two years in the horrible conditions of
the camp where snakes, sandstorms and scorpions are a daily reality as
they languish in tents seeking shelter from the scorching desert sun.

“We are depressed and we are dying here,” Zaman Shakary told me. The
frustration of the 45 year-old man was vented in anger towards UNHCR.
“Condoleeza Rice goes and shakes hands with Barzani, but does nothing
for us here. I have given an order that if I lose consciousness 10 times
I will continue my hunger strike if UNHCR does not respond and help us.
Humans cannot live this way.”

Most of the refugees were asking for resettlement, but not necessarily
to another refugee camp. “We are asking for resettlement in another
country. I have been on hunger strike for 9 days, and my demands are
that if I die it is for life, I do not live for death,” said Suwady
Rashat. The 43 year-old added, “I want to tell the American people that
the Iraqi government deprived us of what we need, and it is because of
the invasion which has not truly benefited Iraqis.”

Nearby sat a 6 year-old boy with a lost, sad look on his face,
antagonized by flies. “I am here because my father is on hunger strike
for 9 days now,” he told me, “Please, someone needs to help us here.”

Another man in the camp, Hassan Sadiq, lived in the US for a year before
the recent invasion. He returned to Iraq just before the invasion, then
fled to No Man’s Land Camp as chaos engulfed Iraq. Prior to his time in
America, Sadiq had fled Iran because of his Human Rights advocacy
against the regime there. He had initially spent time in the nearby
Ruwaished camp — another refugee camp an hours drive into Jordan — where
he went on hunger strike for 36 days in protest of UNHCR, who according
to him, were not doing enough to assist him from being extradited back
to Iran.

“Now UNHCR wants to close this camp and put us back in Ruwaished. When I
was there I was under constant threat of being extradited back to Iraq.
Now I’m concerned they will transfer us back to Ruwaished, which is
nothing but a jail in the desert.” His situation is reflective of many
others in the camp. “I would like to say to the American government that
I remember George Bush says he is fighting for freedom. But by God, here
I need freedom and they have forgotten us. The US has been ignoring us
since 1974. The American government is responsible for us being here,
because we are displaced because of the war.”

The camp was fraught with health problems — without enough clean water
or medical care, diarrhea, minor respiratory problems, sore eyes, and
dehydration abound. Many people tell me they have trouble breathing when
sandstorms hit, which is several times each week.

In another tent a man told me his 13 year old son was killed on the road
by a passing truck. His wife aborted her fetus when fighting broke out
near the Iraqi border several months ago. There have been problems in
the camp, aside from the aforementioned health and depression symptoms.
The hunger strike was aimed at UNHCR for not doing enough to help them;
however, UNHCR recently managed to move the entire camp into Jordan.
*
Dismal Place*

On May 29, with the assistance of the Jordanian Hashemite Charity
Organization and CARE International, UNHCR moved the 743 residents of No
Man’s Land camp to the Ruwaished refugee camp. The long struggle to
obtain permission from the Jordanian government ended with the agreement
that UNHCR would vigorously pursue further solutions for the refugees,
who were moved in three convoys.

Jaqueline Parleviet is the Senior Protections Officer for UNHCR in
Amman, Jordan. “The hunger strike ended because of the move,” Parleviet
noted. “All of the refugees I spoke with were happy to be moved. The
problems and resistance we encountered inside the camp went away when we
moved them.”

UNHCR is now pursuing the solutions of either voluntary return or
resettlement to another country for each refugee in the Ruwaished camp,
which is now filled with about 880 refugees. Yet Ruwaished camp, while
at least sitting inside a country, still remains a dismal place. There
are no trees in sight of the wire fence enclosed spot in the middle of
the desert.

While there are some improvements — residents can leave for short
shopping trips in nearby Ruwaished, CARE international is providing some
vocational training and schooling, and the Jordanian Hashemite Charity
Organization is providing food, stoves, water and other necessities —
the mood remains quite bleak.

Rahma Shaban left Palestine in 1948. Under the intense midday sun, she
told me of having to leave Iraq because of the horrible security
situation after the invasion. “Baghdad is a great place,” she added,
“But I must have security for my children.” Other refugees blame the new
Iraqi government for there difficulties. “I can’t blame Iraqis for our
problems,” said Donia Baltergy, “I blame these Iraqis who came with the
invaders.”

She began to cry as she continued to discuss her situation in the camp.
“It’s difficult for us to live in this harsh place,” she said while
holding her hands out while she pleads, “We’ve been sitting here for two
years. They don’t let us go out, they don’t like for us to talk to the
press, they don’t give us rights to do anything.”

Like the former No Man’s Land camp, the Ruwaished camp is plagued with
sandstorms and scorpions, and the residents continue to endure health
problems and cope with ongoing depression. There was little hope for
change when I visited, and many refugees expressed discontent towards
UNHCR and other organizations for not doing more to assist them.

According to Parleviet, some of the Somali and Sundanese refugees were
resettled in the US and Australia, along with 387 Iranian Kurds
previously moved to Sweden. “We have cases pending now for the UK and
Ireland,” she added. Yet despite small instances of success, the
refugees recently relocated from No Man’s Land are now united with 133
other displaced people in the middle of the desert, close to one of the
worst conflict zones on the planet today.

Discontent towards what has become of Iraq, the country most of these
people love and had to leave, continues to be vented at the US. Standing
in front of a small brown tent used to teach women health classes, Rahma
Shaban exclaimed through tears, “The Americans said they were coming to
help Iraqis. Now we see their lies, proven by the fact that they have
done nothing but cause us pain, suffering, and erased our future and the
futures of our children.”

And until their situation is changed, these feelings will most likely
persist.

_______________________________________________
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