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_Peregrinus expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis_ [The Cole Patrol] 7 June 2005 " ... IRIN ... UNHCR ... InterSOS ... DoDM ... [UNDP] ... IRCS ... MoDI [?] ... AlertNet ... [BGKB]" --Vide Infra The following article is not what I expected from Prof. Cole's link to it, << http://www.juancole.com/ >> [Juan @ 6/8/2005 06:30] but there is some good bleedin'-heart OB here for Neocomrade D. Horowitz to sic one of his rabid puppies on. _IRIN go bragh_! Did you know that in NGO World they distinguish "internally displaced persons" from (presumably) _externally_ displaced ones? The former is a lovely phrase that sounds to me ignorant like it ought to mean schizophrenia or autism or thereabouts. == IRAQ: Growing frustration among returnees 07 Jun 2005 14:46:17 GMT // Source: IRIN << http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/0b795966b29db9d146afbb6406e16147.htm >> Basra, 7 June (IRIN) - The initial euphoria of returning to their homeland has turned into frustration for many Iraqi refugees who are still struggling to eek out a living in the midst of deteriorating social conditions. "We left Iraq because of the injustice of Saddam and we came back to find ourselves homeless. My sons are jobless and we don't have money to buy a house, so we decided to live in the old naval academy," 60-year-old Um[m] Hassan told IRIN. The naval academy compound, situated on the outskirts of the southern city of Basra, shelters more than 250 families, most of whom have returned from neighbouring Iran since May 2003. The compound is considered to be relatively comfortable when compared with living conditions in other abandoned government buildings, many of which are being used to house scores of returnees. Thirty-five-year-old Basri Hannon, who originally fled to Iran in 1992, says he expected to find at least a job to support his family when he returned to Iraq. Now he's not sure he did the right thing when he came home. "I wish to return to Iran because at least there I had a job and means to support my family," Hannon said. There were over 202,000 Iraqi refugees in Iran in September 2003, numbering over half the total of Iraqi refugees in the world. Local aid agencies now estimate that around 110,000 have returned to Iraq. Although most fled in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, thousands more were forced to leave the country in the last 10 years when the former government drained marshlands in the south of the country, destroying their livelihoods. "We came back to Iraq believing that we were going to find a country with democracy and freedom but what we found was just misery and displacement," Hannon said. But in spite of overwhelmingly adverse conditions, thousands of Iraqis are still making their way home from Iran each month, some spontaneously, others with the assistance of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Rupert Coleville, a UNHCR spokesman, told IRIN that repatriation was "strictly voluntary" and the agency had so far helped an estimated 16,000 Iraqis return home from Iran. "With the cooperation of InterSOS (an Italian NGO) we have been distributing monthly food parcels and other necessary items such as blankets, tents, mattresses, kerosene and water containers. Many local aid organisations have been supporting us. But with the daily influx of refugees, the situation is getting complicated," a local UNHCR official told IRIN. Hussein al-Saeedi, head of the Basra Directorate of Displacement and Migration (DoDM) noted that efforts were underway to assist displaced families obtain identification documents in order for them to access aid programmes. "We are also trying to involve local IDP's (Internally Displaced Persons) in training courses to help them learn job skills. The UN Development Programme has promised the construction of 1,000 houses for the displaced in coming months," al-Saeedi added. But some refugees have raised concerns over cumbersome bureaucratic procedures which, they claim, hamper access to much-needed assistance. "We went to the DoDM and they asked us about our displacement documents. We didn't have [any] and so they refused to help us. We have suffered a lot from the last regime and it's time for the new government to facilitate our lives and not make it more complicated," returnee Mohsen Jabbar, commented. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society's (IRCS) southern-branch office has called for an urgent solution to address the abysmal living conditions of communities in the south. "Health problems have increased among the displaced, especially those living in old abandoned buildings or in improvised tents on the outskirts of the city. Many children are suffering from malnutrition and diarrhoea," Hassan Jabbar, an IRCS official, told IRIN. Jabbar also drew attention to the many returnees crossing the Iran-Iraq border who have fallen victim to the heavily land-mined areas in the region. Meanwhile, MoDI is expected to push ahead with the establishment of an office in Iran which would encourage Iraqi exiles to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. "We wish that all Iraqis who fled Iraq during the last regime can come back to their true land and help in the reconstruction of Iraq," Mira Sulayman, senior MoDI official said. [ENDS] === "The Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) is a humanitarian news agency covering sub-Saharan Africa, eight countries in central Asia and Iraq." << http://www.irinnews.org/ >> = Not at all to the the neocomradely taste, these Italian << http://www.intersos.org/ >> << http://www.intersos.org/whoweare.htm >> guys: "INTERSOS activities are based on the principles of solidarity, justice, human dignity, equality of rights and opportunities, and respect for diversity and coexistence, paying special attention to the most vulnerable and unprotected people." = Evidently DoDM is a United Nations agency, rather than one run from New Baghdad or East Crawford, to judge from the quotation in the next paragraph, but it really should have been spelled out, unless this IRIN is written _exclusively_ for insiders who already know such things. = A grave misunderstanding, Mr. Jabbar! It is not to be imagined that the GOP geniuses went to the trouble of invasionizin' your country in order to set up a neo-regime that would facilitate anybody's lives but their own. Here _im Heimatlande_, dubyapologists systematically sneer at any such old-fashioned notions as you seem to cherish. "Reactionary liberalism," some of the tank-think señoritos like to call it. (Of course if by "facilitation," you mean a reduction of income and estate taxes and a deregulation of the sacred private sector, why that's quite different, sir, and I retract my criticism at once.) = I _think_ "MoDI" must be the same as "DoDM," perhaps being the acronym for a different translation from the Arabic or the Turtlebayese --but God knows best. = Not an economist, I take it, this Ms. Sulayman. A shortage of labour is scarcely the problem in the stumblebums' neo-Iraq. To wish that all those who ought by birth to be neo-Iraqi subjects should return to their native turf is ethically above reproach, but as a practical matter, if such "returnees" would in fact find no jobs and no houses and no peace and no freedom, perhaps it will be better for nearly everybody immediately concerned if they procrastinate for a while. ALMOST everybody concerned: are the Iranians in a hurry to get rid of their refugees, perhaps? I suppose UN and international NGO people would not want to talk to reporters about straight high politics of that sort, and in this case, the reporters are of the UN/NGO tribe themselves. EXCURSUS: "Returnee" is unfortunate, philologically, since the known English words formed that way are in effect passive participles. Such a coinage gives the impression that people like Mr. Jabbar are getting shipped back home in crates involuntarily. Now, if _I_ was playing Wingnut City's agitprop cards, I might suggest that that is exactly how fiendish international bureaucrats really do think of their patients. They are not like bold AEI/Heritage/Cato dilbertarians, who only want everybody to be what they like to call "free." "Let Ambassador Bolton put a stop to such degradin' terminology AT ONCE!," one might limbloviate . . . . BGKB. Happy days. --JHM JC only wrote "Reuters reports on the discontents of returnees to Iraq from among former exiles," and linked to the above, which is not really from "Reuters" at all, for this "AlertNet" website, << http://www.alertnet.org/aboutus/ >> which merely reposted the IRIN dispatch, is clearly not the news service proper: "Reuters AlertNet is a humanitarian news network based around a popular website. It aims to keep relief professionals and the wider public up-to-date on humanitarian crises around the globe." Over on the linguistic front, Prof. Cole's word "exiles" led me to expect a story about Ivy League OnePercenters like Dr. Chalabi or Dr. Allawi or Dr. Ja`fari, gentry who are unhappy about the state of the l*b*rated provinces that they have now returned from London or Kennebunkport to be the "sovereign" lords and masters of. Instead of them, however, what we read about is poor Mr. Jabbar. It isn't the case that "exile" is completely the wrong word for him, whereas "refugee" would be the right one, yet the passive participle angle about "-ee" does seem to apply. The high uppers with foreign educations and foreign languages (and especially foreign bank accounts) could get out of Saddam's Iraq before they were positively _chased_ out. Proles and seminary students and suchlike were in a different situation. (My header is what the proto-KiddieKrusaders sing in Prokofiev's Alexander Nevsky cantata or the Eisenstein film. It's admittedly more suited to Dr. Chalabi than to Mr. Jabbar.)