Iraqi Refugees

Today is World Refugee Day, when more than 70 countries around the globe are commemorating the humanity of 33 million people displaced inside and outside their countries and the inhumanity that has forced them to leave their homes. The Scandinavian countries are launching a campaign, "Let's Keep Them Safe," aimed at discouraging forced repatriation of refugees and asylum-seekers. Angola is holding a poetry contest to raise awareness about sexual and gender-based violence. Brazil will host a soccer tournament, Nepal is sponsoring a film festival, and Romania has organized a handicrafts bazaar.

I really think an educated, highly motivated, courageous and bilingual Iraqi refugee and expatriate is in a much better position to weigh the relative merits of our brutal nonsensical invasion and occupation of Iraq than some well fed entitled Republican with a highly dubious and self serving theory about the inherent good will of Americans in general ("Iraqi student should send Karl Rove a thank you note," Readers respond, Feb. 23). That the letter writer claims the student should thank Karl Rove for his good fortune is like thanking Wall Street Ponzi schemes for one's unemployment.

Farouk smiles, spreads his arms wide and thanks "everyone for letting me come here."From a camp in Turkey, the Iraqi refugee tried for 18 months to get to "this beautiful green town.""He's been in Turkey and thinks the green is so beautiful," said Anwar. "I've been in Saudi Arabia for 18 months. Imagine how I feel."Farouk and Anwar are among 23 Iraqi refugees and former prisoners of war temporarily housed at the New Windsor Service Center."They have had nothing and lived in fear," said Mayor James C. Carlisle.

Ahmed's hands trembled as he stepped to the microphone. Despite the horror and tumult that had visited his home city of Baghdad, he had never been the sort of boy to confront politicians. But before him stood one of the chief advisers to the U.S. president who had abruptly halted the calm routines of Ahmed's youth with bombs and tanks. Ahmed could not live with himself if he remained silent. If Saddam Hussein paid for vicious crimes with his life, Ahmed asked Karl Rove, what should the punishment be for the invaders who cost millions of Iraqis their lives, their homes, their health and their security?

It's not that Muhammad Shumri imagined building a new life in Baltimore would be easy. But he didn't expect it to be so hard. The 48-year-old physician was a high-ranking official in the Iraqi Ministry of Health when a photograph that placed him at a meeting with U.S. officials was stolen from his computer. Soon he was receiving anonymous threats warning him to stop working with the Americans. He moved his wife and five children out of Iraq, traveled alone to the United States and requested asylum.

WASHINGTON -- The United States remains on track to accept 12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, despite having fallen sharply behind the pace needed to meet that resettlement pledge, administration officials said yesterday. The Bush administration fell well short of last year's target of admitting 7,000 Iraqis and has resettled fewer than 3,000 in the first half of the current fiscal year. But Ambassador James Foley, the top State Department official on Iraqi refugees, said the government is now able to process many more candidates for admission.

Americans can be glad they don't live in Sweden. If they did, they might have to get acquainted with some of the Iraqi refugees who have been uprooted by the war President Bush started in 2003. The small city of Sodertalje, a little ways south of Stockholm, last year took in twice as many refugees as - Baltimore? No. Miami? No. California? No. The entire United States? Yes - 1,100 Iraqis went to Sodertalje, out of 9,000 admitted to Sweden, compared to the 500 who reached the United States in 2006.

SAN DIEGO -- Assad's desperate flight from Iraq began on foot. For days, he trekked from Iraq to Turkey and from Turkey to Greece. He slipped through remote rural villages and crossed a river's rushing waters to escape the violence that had left his cousin dead and his father in hiding. Finally, after paying smugglers to get him on flights to Spain, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico, he joined the crush of Spanish-speaking migrants on a bus ride to America's doorstep. Assad, an Iraqi Christian and the 21-year-old son of a liquor merchant, said his stomach lurched as he tried to convince the U.S. border patrol agents here that he was no ordinary migrant.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Adnan al-Sharafy sees a few obstacles holding up the return of Iraqi refugees to their home country: the U.S. military, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the news media. Sharify, an official at the Iraqi Embassy here in Syria, helped to organize government-sponsored bus trips at the end of last year that he says carried 420 Iraqi families back to Baghdad. (The United Nations estimates the Iraqi population here at 1.2 million.) More free rides home are planned, Sharify says.

There are now more than 2.2 million Iraqi refugees - the vast majority of them in Syria and Jordan - along with another 2 million who are internally displaced in Iraq. On a typical day, thousands of families swarm the border checkpoints, hoping to escape the violence. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that 60,000 Iraqis flee each month. At least 50,000 Iraqis (some estimates are double that number) have been employed by either the U.S. government or private American organizations, meaning that at least 250,000 family members (again, it could be double that number)

It's not that Muhammad Shumri imagined building a new life in Baltimore would be easy. But he didn't expect it to be so hard. The 48-year-old physician was a high-ranking official in the Iraqi Ministry of Health when a photograph that placed him at a meeting with U.S. officials was stolen from his computer. Soon he was receiving anonymous threats warning him to stop working with the Americans. He moved his wife and five children out of Iraq, traveled alone to the United States and requested asylum.

DAMASCUS, Syria - Adnan al-Sharafy sees a few obstacles holding up the return of Iraqi refugees to their home country: the U.S. military, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the news media. Sharify, an official at the Iraqi Embassy here in Syria, helped to organize government-sponsored bus trips at the end of last year that he says carried 420 Iraqi families back to Baghdad. (The United Nations estimates the Iraqi population here at 1.2 million.) More free rides home are planned, Sharify says.

WASHINGTON -- The United States remains on track to accept 12,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of September, despite having fallen sharply behind the pace needed to meet that resettlement pledge, administration officials said yesterday. The Bush administration fell well short of last year's target of admitting 7,000 Iraqis and has resettled fewer than 3,000 in the first half of the current fiscal year. But Ambassador James Foley, the top State Department official on Iraqi refugees, said the government is now able to process many more candidates for admission.

WASHINGTON -- Ban Saadi Abdallatif still has trouble sleeping some nights, remembering her uncle and cousin, shot dead by the militia, or thinking about her brother's narrow escape from kidnappers. But it's nothing like the fear she lived with back in Diyala, where law and order broke down after U.S. forces invaded Iraq, and insurgents targeted her mixed Shiite-Sunni family. "I feel relief to be in the United States," said the 31-year-old former teacher, who arrived in Laurel with her 9-year-old son in September.

Americans can be glad they don't live in Sweden. If they did, they might have to get acquainted with some of the Iraqi refugees who have been uprooted by the war President Bush started in 2003. The small city of Sodertalje, a little ways south of Stockholm, last year took in twice as many refugees as - Baltimore? No. Miami? No. California? No. The entire United States? Yes - 1,100 Iraqis went to Sodertalje, out of 9,000 admitted to Sweden, compared to the 500 who reached the United States in 2006.

There are now more than 2.2 million Iraqi refugees - the vast majority of them in Syria and Jordan - along with another 2 million who are internally displaced in Iraq. On a typical day, thousands of families swarm the border checkpoints, hoping to escape the violence. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees estimates that 60,000 Iraqis flee each month. At least 50,000 Iraqis (some estimates are double that number) have been employed by either the U.S. government or private American organizations, meaning that at least 250,000 family members (again, it could be double that number)

Ahmed's hands trembled as he stepped to the microphone. Despite the horror and tumult that had visited his home city of Baghdad, he had never been the sort of boy to confront politicians. But before him stood one of the chief advisers to the U.S. president who had abruptly halted the calm routines of Ahmed's youth with bombs and tanks. Ahmed could not live with himself if he remained silent. If Saddam Hussein paid for vicious crimes with his life, Ahmed asked Karl Rove, what should the punishment be for the invaders who cost millions of Iraqis their lives, their homes, their health and their security?

A dateline in yesterday's editions incorrectly located the town of Zakho in Turkey. It is in Iraq.The Sun regrets the errors.ZAKHO, Turkey -- U.S. military officials said yesterday that they expected thousands of northern Iraqi refugees to begin returning home tomorrow, after Kurdish guerrillas agreed to stop blocking their path from refugee camps near the Turkish border.Following a meeting between allied military commanders and Iraqi Pesh Merga leaders near the Iraqi mountain border with Turkey yesterday, Pesh Mergas disappeared from checkpoints along the 10-mile road between the mountains and Zakho, where they earlier had been stopping refugees from going home.

Today is World Refugee Day, when more than 70 countries around the globe are commemorating the humanity of 33 million people displaced inside and outside their countries and the inhumanity that has forced them to leave their homes. The Scandinavian countries are launching a campaign, "Let's Keep Them Safe," aimed at discouraging forced repatriation of refugees and asylum-seekers. Angola is holding a poetry contest to raise awareness about sexual and gender-based violence. Brazil will host a soccer tournament, Nepal is sponsoring a film festival, and Romania has organized a handicrafts bazaar.

SAN DIEGO -- Assad's desperate flight from Iraq began on foot. For days, he trekked from Iraq to Turkey and from Turkey to Greece. He slipped through remote rural villages and crossed a river's rushing waters to escape the violence that had left his cousin dead and his father in hiding. Finally, after paying smugglers to get him on flights to Spain, Brazil, Guatemala and Mexico, he joined the crush of Spanish-speaking migrants on a bus ride to America's doorstep. Assad, an Iraqi Christian and the 21-year-old son of a liquor merchant, said his stomach lurched as he tried to convince the U.S. border patrol agents here that he was no ordinary migrant.