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August 24th, 2007 - More Iraqis Said to Flee Since Troop
Increase |
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More Iraqis
Said to Flee Since Troop Increase By James Glanz and Stephen Farrell New York Times August 24, 2007 Baghdad - The number of
Iraqis fleeing their homes has soared since the American troop increase began
in February, according to data from two humanitarian groups, accelerating the
partition of the country into sectarian enclaves. Despite some evidence that
the troop buildup has improved security in certain areas, sectarian violence
continues and American-led operations have brought new fighting, driving
fearful Iraqis from their homes at much higher rates than before the tens of
thousands of additional troops arrived, the studies show. The data track what are
known as internally displaced Iraqis: those who have been driven from their
neighborhoods and seek refuge elsewhere in the country rather than fleeing
across the border. The effect of this vast migration is to drain religiously
mixed areas in the center of Iraq, sending Shiite refugees toward the
overwhelmingly Shiite areas to the south and Sunnis toward majority Sunni
regions to the west and north. Though most displaced Iraqis
say they would like to return, there is little prospect of their doing so.
One Sunni Arab who had been driven out of the Baghdad neighborhood of
southern Dora by Shiite snipers said she doubted that her family would ever
return, buildup or no buildup. “There is no way we would go
back,” said the woman, 26, who gave her name only as Aswaidi. “It is a city
of ghosts. The only people left there are terrorists.” Statistics collected by one
of the two humanitarian groups, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, indicate
that the total number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled,
to 1.1 million from 499,000, since the buildup started in February. Those figures are broadly
consistent with data compiled independently by an office in the United
Nations that specializes in tracking wide-scale dislocations. That office,
the International Organization for Migration, found that in recent months the
rate of displacement in Baghdad, where the buildup is focused, had increased
by as much as a factor of 20, although part of that rise could have stemmed
from improved monitoring of displaced Iraqis by the government in Baghdad,
the capital. The new findings suggest
that while sectarian attacks have declined in some neighborhoods, the influx of
troops and the intense fighting they have brought are at least partly
responsible for what a report by the United Nations migration office calls
the worst human displacement in Iraq’s modern history. The findings also indicate
that the sectarian tension the troops were meant to defuse is still intense
in many places in Iraq. Sixty-three percent of the Iraqis surveyed by the
United Nations said they had fled their neighborhoods because of direct
threats to their lives, and more than 25 percent because they had been
forcibly removed from their homes. The demographic shifts could
favor those who would like to see Iraq partitioned into three semi-autonomous
regions: a Shiite south and a Kurdish north sandwiching a Sunni territory. Over all, the scale of this
migration has put so much strain on Iraqi governmental and relief offices
that some provinces have refused to register any more displaced people, or
will accept only those whose families are originally from the area. But Rafiq
Tschannen, chief of the Iraq mission for the migration office, said that in
many cases, the ability of extended families to absorb displaced relatives
was also stretched to the breaking point. “It’s a bleak picture,” Mr.
Tschannen said. “It is just steadily continuing in a bad direction, from bad
to worse.” He also cautioned that
reports of people going back to their homes were overstated. As the buildup
began, the Iraqi government said that it would take measures to evict
squatters from houses that were not theirs and make special efforts to bring
the rightful owners back. “They were reporting that
people went back, but they didn’t report that people left again,” Mr.
Tschannen said. He added that Iraqis “hear things are better, go back to
collect remuneration and pick up an additional suitcase and leave again. It
is not a permanent return in most cases.” American officials in
Baghdad did not respond to a request for comment, but the national
intelligence estimate released Thursday confirmed that Iraq continues to
become more segregated through internal migration. “Population displacement
resulting from sectarian violence continues,” it found, “imposing burdens on
provincial governments and some neighboring states.” Dr. Said Hakki, director of
the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, said that he had been surprised when his
figures revealed that roughly 100,000 people a month were fleeing their homes
during the buildup. Dr. Hakki said that he did not know why the rates were so
high but added that some factors were obvious. “It’s fear,” he said. “Lack
of services. You see, if you have a security problem, you don’t need a lot to
frighten people.” It is clear that military
operations, both by American troops and the Iraqi forces working with them as
part of the buildup, have something to do with the rise in displacement, said
Dana Graber Ladek, Iraq displacement specialist for the migration
organization’s Iraq office. “If a surge means that
soldiers are on the streets patrolling to make sure there is no violence,
that is one thing,” Ms. Ladek said. “If a surge means military operations
where there are attacks and bombings, then obviously that is going to create
displacement.” But Ms. Ladek added that, in
contrast to the first years of the conflict, when major American offensives
were a main cause of displacement, the primary driving force had changed. “Sectarian violence is the
biggest driving factor - militias coming into a neighborhood and kicking all
the Sunnis out, or insurgents driving all the Shias away,” Ms. Ladek said. Her conclusions mirrored the
experiences of Iraqis who had fled their homes. Aswaidi and her family were
driven out of the Dora section of Baghdad five months ago when Shiite snipers
opened fire on their Sunni neighborhood from nearby tower blocks, shooting
through their windows “at all hours of day and night.” Returning covertly to check
on the property in mid-August, she found Sunni insurgents occupying the
building and neighboring homes, walking unchallenged through the deserted
streets. Nearby, she claims, the same insurgents captured one of the Shiite
snipers who drove the residents away, and claimed that he was a 16-year-old
Iranian. She now fears that her
entire neighborhood will be taken over by Shiite militias like the Mahdi
Army, which is loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. “I don’t want them to take
my town, but I think they will,” Aswaidi said. “It will change from Sunni to
Shia. The Americans can’t stop it.” Shiites face similarly
overwhelming odds. In Shualah, on the northern outskirts of Baghdad, 400
Shiite families now live in a makeshift refugee camp on wasteland
commandeered by Mr. Sadr’s followers. In a sprawl of cinder block
hovels and tin and bamboo-roofed shacks, families have stories of being
expelled from their homes by Sunni insurgents. Ali Edan fled Yusifiya, a
Sunni insurgent haven south of Baghdad, when his uncle was killed. He has no
intention of returning, even though American commanders claim Sunni sheiks
there have begun cooperating with them. “It is still an unsafe area,” said
Mr. Edan. Both humanitarian groups
based their conclusions on information collected from the displaced Iraqis
inside the country. The Red Crescent counted only displaced Iraqis who
receive relief supplies, and the United Nations relied on data from an Iraqi
ministry that closely tracks Iraqis who leave their homes and register for
government services elsewhere. Before the troop buildup, by
far the most significant event causing the displacement of Iraqis was the
bombing of a revered Shiite mosque in Samarra in February 2006. The bombing
set off a spasm of sectarian killing, but the rate at which Iraqis left their
homes leveled off toward the end of that year before accelerating again as
the buildup began, the Red Crescent figures show. The United Nations figures
also include a little over a million people it says were displaced in the
decades before the Samarra bombing, including the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
The Red Crescent data does not include them. In Baghdad, the latest migration
involves an enormously complex landscape in which some people flee one
district even as others return to it. In Ghazaliya, a mixed but
Sunni-majority district of north Baghdad, one 30-year-old Shiite said his
family was driven out by Sunni insurgents a year ago with just two hours
notice to leave their home. Five months ago, the troop
buildup brought American soldiers and the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Army onto
his street and his family returned. But even as it did, Sunni neighbors fled,
knowing that the army had been infiltrated by Shiite militias. “They are afraid, because
the army has good relations with the Mahdi Army,” said the 30-year-old man,
who said he was too afraid to give his name. “My area used to have a lot of
Sunni. Now most are Shia, because Shias expelled from other places have moved
into the empty Sunni homes.” Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/24/world/middleeast/24displaced.html |