Are they America’s responsibility?

Surely, it would be better if these refugees, rather than depending on others, would return home in peace.

They can indeed return home – if the U.S. “surge” strategy works, if civil order is restored in Iraq, if Congressional support for the Administration’s strategy holds firm, if the crisis within Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s coalition is resolved, if Iraq’s parliament passes vital laws to foster national unity, and if Iraq’s politicians to lead the way to reconciliation and an end to sectarian violence. 

But four years into the war, that’s a lot of “ifs.”  Meanwhile, the refugee population grows by more than 100,000 per month, and the burden on Iraq’s neighbors grows by the day.

The Bush Administration’s focus, understandably, is on pursuing military and political success inside Iraq.  It seems reluctant to focus on the fact that one in seven Iraqis – including, by the UN’s estimate, nearly half of Iraq’s professional class – has already voted with his feet.  This is a grim sign of insecurity today and economic trouble for years to come. 

But the Administration should do far more to help Iraqi refugees now – for both moral and strategic reasons – even as it continues to fight the war and mediate internal Iraqi politics.

Americans debate all aspects of the Iraq war.  But it is beyond dispute that in ousting Saddam Hussein, we destroyed Iraq’s political order, and we have so far failed – first as an occupying power and now as allies of a fledgling government – to replace it with a new one that provides minimal security.  Aid to those dislodged by the war should be as high an American priority as resolving the conflict itself.  That’s a moral responsibility that can’t be dismissed by saying that the Iraqis have not “stepped up to the plate.”

Then there’s the strategic interest.  Iraq’s refugees are scattered across the Middle East – in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, and around the Persian Gulf.  In time, they could become the region’s new Palestinians.  They are likely to create political and social tensions for host governments, their discontent could lead to violence, and they could develop ties to militias inside Iraq.  These dispossessed Iraqis, a result of a war intended to democratize the Middle East, could grow into a source of regional instability for years to come. 

The United States provided about one fourth of the UN’s budget to help these refugees last year, and the UN seeks $60 million to help them this year.  But UN documents show that this budget will reach at most one third of the Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, and one fifth of those in Syria and Jordan. 

Considering that the United States spends $2 billion per week on military operations inside Iraq, there is no reason for Washington not to fund a vast expansion of UN refugee assistance.  Such aid could help to improve local government services in neighborhoods where Iraqi refugees live in Syria and Jordan.  It could fund an urgent effort to put Iraqi refugee children in school, which would be an investment in social stability and in Iraq’s future.  Refugees International estimates that only 14,000 of the 250,000 school-age Iraqi children in Jordan are in school today.

Finally, the Administration should accept more Iraqi refugees for resettlement in America. 

We have accepted very few – 202 last year, about 130 this year – because they have been a low priority, and our homeland security bureaucracy is a huge obstacle even though refugees are the most screened immigrants in the world.  Meanwhile, Sweden has resettled 18,000. 

More than 100,000 Iraqi refugees face particular dangers because they have worked directly with the United States in Iraq as translators and embassy aides and in other capacities.  Urgent efforts to screen and resettle large numbers of these Iraqis would honor the risk they took in working with us, and would send a signal that we will stand by those who bravely stand by our forces in Iraq today.