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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings, Torture and Big Money |
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June 5th,
2007 - 4.2 Million Iraqis Are Now Displaced |
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4.2 Million Iraqis Are Now
Displaced By Eliane Engeler Associated Press June 5, 2007, 4:20 PM CDT Geneva - More than 4 million
Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country, the U.N. refugee
agency said Tuesday, warning that the figure will continue to rise. The number of Iraqis who
have fled the country as refugees has risen to 2.2 million, said Jennifer
Pagonis, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. A further 2
million have been driven from their homes but remain within the country,
increasingly in "impoverished shanty towns," she said. Pagonis said UNHCR is
receiving "disturbing reports" of regional authorities doing little
to provide displaced people with food, shelter and other basic services. "Individual
governorates inside Iraq are becoming overwhelmed by the needs of the
displaced," Pagonis told reporters in Geneva, where UNHCR has its
headquarters. More than half of Iraq's 18
governorates are preventing displaced people from entering their territories,
either by stopping them at checkpoints or by refusing to register them for
food aid and other basic services. Astrid van Genderen Stort of
UNHCR said checkpoints are increasing in northern governorates, specifically
along the "green line" that divides Kurdish-controlled zones from
the rest of the country. Displaced people are also being stopped on the roads
leading out of the cities of Karbala and Najaf, which are both south of
Baghdad and considered holy by Shiite Muslims. While many of the
checkpoints were originally established for security reasons, they are being
increasingly used to prevent displaced Iraqis from moving around the country,
van Genderen Stort said. Almost half of all displaced
people have no access to official food distribution programs, according to
U.N. estimates. Most of those uprooted from
their homes come from Baghdad and its surrounding districts. More than 85
percent of the Iraqis displaced within the country have moved to central and
southern regions, Pagonis said. She said about 30,000 Iraqis
continue to flee each month to Syria, which is now housing 1.4 million Iraqi
refugees. Another 750,000 are in Jordan. While Iraq's neighbors are
bearing the bulk of the refugee burden, few Iraqis are being welcomed into
countries farther away, particularly in Europe, Pagonis said. The Bush administration says
it will allow up to 7,000 Iraqis to settle permanently in the U.S. - up from
202 in 2006 - by the end of September and will pay more to help Iraq's
neighbors cope with the surge of refugees. UNHCR hopes to find a
permanent home for 20,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of the year. Copyright © 2007, The
Associated Press External link: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-un-iraq-refugees,1,2574808.story |