Bush administration denies any responsibility for Iraqi refugees

In my discussion of Nir Rosen’s May 13 cover article in the New York Times Magazine about the Iraq refugees (no longer free online), I suggested that the logic of the situation and of U.S. ideology will lead inevitably to the admission of vast numbers of the refugees into America. I failed to make it clear that that is emphatically not the present policy of Bush administration. John Bolton, who recently stepped down as acting UN ambassador and is now at the American Enterprise Institute, told Rosen that the refugees have “absolutely nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam. Our obligation was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war.”

Reflecting that view, the U.S. has accepted only 701 Iraqi refugees since 2003. In the first four months it took in just 69 Iraqi refugees.

Rosen continues:

The United States is really just beginning to grapple with the question of Iraqi refugees, in part because the flight from Iraq is so entwined with the vexed question of blame. When I read John Bolton’s comments to Paula Dobriansky—the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs—and her colleague Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, they mainly agreed with him. Sauerbrey maintained that “refugees are created by repressive regimes and failed states. The sectarian violence has driven large numbers out. During the Saddam regime, large numbers of Iraqis were displaced, and the U.S. resettled 38,000 Iraqis. We would take 5,000 a year at given points in time. After 2003, there was great hope, and people were returning in large numbers. The sectarian violence after the mosque bombing in February 2006 is what turned things around. The problem is one caused by the repressive regime” of Saddam Hussein. She did add, “We take the responsibility of being a compassionate nation seriously.”

What that has mostly meant is that the Bush administration has left the task of dealing with Iraqi refugees to Iraq’s neighbors. On a recent trip to the region, Sauerbrey pressed the Syrian government to keep its borders open. “That was a major part of my visit,” she told me. “Not only to keep borders open but not forcibly return them”—that is, the refugees. Dobriansky told me, “What we have asked for Iraq’s neighbors to do is maintain secure but open borders, allow Iraqis access to vital services and facilitate assistance.” The United States is helping to provide some of this assistance. Sauerbrey mentioned a program involving schools in Jordan, where, she said, there were as many as 200,000 Iraqi children of school age but only 14,000 attending school: “The parents are afraid to send their children to school because if they are noticed, there is a danger they might be sent back,” she told me. “Jordan has made it very clear they don’t want a separate school system for Iraqi children. We have to make sure that the Jordanian government is creating conditions where Iraqi families feel safe.”

There was only one category of Iraqis toward whom both Dobriansky and Sauerbrey did acknowledge a specific American responsibility: interpreters and facilitators. “We are committed to honoring our moral debt to those Iraqis who have provided assistance to the U.S. military and embassy,” Dobriansky said.

That will leave everyone else to fend pretty much for themselves and depend on the kindness of Iraq’s neighbors. Barbara Bodine, a longtime U.S. diplomat in the region who was brought in to be the temporary “mayor” of Baghdad in 2003, told me there was a simple reason for the White House’s denial of a refugee crisis: “When you affirm you have refugees and I.D.P.’s”—internally displaced persons—“you are admitting that the average Iraqi has little or no expectation that Bush’s surge can reverse a security situation that has spun utterly out of control. This is not a loss of faith in Iraq, per se, but in the current governments of Iraq and Washington.”

If by facilitators, Dobriansky means all Iraqis who have helped or cooperated with the occupation and nation-building efforts, that number must run into the tens of thousands. In any case, how long will the present Bush policy of denying any U.S. responsibility for the refugees last? What will happen if a Democrat becomes president in 2009 and Iraq collapses?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 26, 2007 10:55 AM | Send