U.S. Committee for Refugees World Refugee Survey 1997 - Iraq
The year was one of uncertainty and change for an estimated 900,000 or more displaced persons and about 114,000 refugees in Iraq. In late August, fighting between Kurdish factions provided the opportunity for government troops and agents to enter the safe haven zone in northern Iraq, which had been shielded by a protective umbrella of combined U.S., British, and French forces since 1991. The contamination of the safe zone threw Operation Provide Comfort into a tailspin - the United States withdrew from the north, and before year’s end the United States evacuated about 6,500 persons who had been associated with the assistance effort or with U.S.-supported political efforts. In the wake of the turmoil, about 75,000 people fled into Iran. Thousands of others fled their homes, but did not cross into Iran, remaining close to the Iranian border. By year’s end, all but about 1,000 had returned to Iraq. The WFP caseload for Iraq indicated the extent and complexity of the misery and displacement throughout Iraq in 1996. Of a targeted needy population of 2.15 million (nearly 1.5 million in government-controlled areas; 666,000 in the north), WFP listed 780,000 as “destitute and internally displaced persons” (distinct from another 900,000 listed simply as “destitute”), 64,000 as “refugees,” and 140,000 as “returnees and internally displaced persons who are entitled to benefits from resettlement schemes.” Completing the picture were 200,000 nursing and pregnant women and 67,000 in hospitals and social welfare institutions. The 900,000 listed as “destitute” and not specifically displaced, according to WFP, represented mostly households headed by women, and included an estimated 180,000 malnourished children under the age of five. The consolidated UN appeal of September 1996 also included an estimate from UNHCR and the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA) of 330,000 internally displaced persons “all over Iraq” who were staying in temporary shelter, such as former factories or unfinished or damaged buildings. These agencies did not include an estimate of the number of internally displaced persons who might be staying with families or otherwise sheltered, nor did they provide a regional breakdown or other demographic details. They did say, however, that there were another 250,000 “former farmers and their families” in need of permanent resettlement in their villages of origin. Although no figures are available, the Iraqi government practice of forcibly transferring populations within territory under its control to “Arabize” the predominantly Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Mosul continued in 1996. The government continued to forcibly relocate Kurdish and Turkomen residents from these cities to other locations, and to move Arabs into their former homes. International economic sanctions continued to be felt throughout Iraq. The UN appeal noted that the majority of the civilian population was living below the poverty line, and that well over half of women and children were receiving less than half of their caloric needs. In October, UNICEF reported that 4,500 children under the age of five were dying per month in Iraq as a result of hunger and disease. The international community was slow to respond to these humanitarian needs. In March, the launch of a joint UN humanitarian appeal for $340 million to cover one year was delayed in view of negotiations on an oil-for-food deal. As those negotiations reached an impasse, the UN’s DHA in May launched an emergency appeal for $80 million to meet the most urgent humanitarian needs. By September, only $12.5 million had been received as a result of that appeal. In September, a new joint UN appeal for $39.9 million to meet emergency needs in Iraq through the end of the year brought only $1.6 million. UN and Iraqi officials labored during the year to negotiate an oil-for-food deal that would allow Iraq to sell $2 billion in oil during six-month increments if the profits were devoted to food, medicine, and war reparations. Although agreement on most points was reached in May, a number of sticking points prevented the two sides from concluding the agreement. For example, the United States had insisted that relief supplies destined for the Kurds be distributed by entities not controlled by the Iraqi government, a position that hardened after the events of September. On November 25, Iraq announced that it had agreed to conditions set down by the UN for implementing the oil-for-food deal. For each $2 billion of oil profits, $1.32 billion is to be spent on humanitarian supplies, of which $260 million is earmarked for the northern, Kurdish zone. About $600 million is designated as compensation for the victims of the Gulf War, and $20 million will finance the work of UN inspectors of Iraqi weapons.
Northern Iraq The safe haven zone in northern Iraq, created and maintained by the United States, Britain, and France since 1991 through Operation Provide Comfort, showed signs of collapse throughout the year. The feud between the two major Kurdish factions, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), escalated throughout the year. As the two sides fought, the governments of Turkey, Iran, and Iraq each appeared ready and willing to intervene overtly or covertly in an attempt to take advantage of the situation. The guarantors of the safe haven - the United States, Britain, and France - applied the principles of the protected zone selectively. Despite the “no-fly zone” in northern Iraq, Turkey has periodically mounted air raids and cross-border incursions into northern Iraq. In June 1996, thousands of Turkish troops supported by helicopter gunships crossed into northern Iraq seeking to root out guerrillas from the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) from suspected bases in the area. Turkey announced its intention to establish a six-mile wide security zone along its border in northern Iraq. Although it did not implement the plan, it mounted another military operation in early September, at a time when northern Iraq was reeling, sending its planes to bombard suspected PKK bases in northern Iraq. Other Turkish incursions were reported in November and December, including troop movements and air strikes. Turkey was not alone in violating the safe haven zone. In late July, Iranian troops entered northern Iraq seeking to attack Iranian Kurdish dissidents. About 2,000 Iranian Kurdish refugees were displaced. The Western countries maintaining Operation Provide Comfort remained silent in the face of these incursions. On August 31, government forces entered the city of Erbil, located within the Kurdish safe haven zone, after being invited in by the KDP, which hoped that an alliance with the government would tip the balance of power in the north against the PUK. After surrounding Erbil with tanks, Iraqi troops and government agents entered the town, searching house to house for suspected opponents of President Saddam Hussein, killing some immediately, arresting others and taking them back to Baghdad. Iraqi troops reportedly looted and vandalized the areas they entered, completely looting 500 schools, according to UNICEF, and ransacking hospitals and municipal buildings.
U.S. Evacuation After Iraqi government forces entered northern Iraq, the United States sent two salvos of cruise missiles into southern Iraq, a response that seems to have sent a mixed message within Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. government also suspended its relief operation in the north and immediately withdrew American citizen personnel working for the U.S. government and military in northern Iraq. It took another two weeks, until September 16, before the United States began evacuating the Iraqis, mostly Kurds, who had worked directly for the U.S. government or military in northern Iraq, either with the Military Coordination Center or the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA). The 2,133 employees were evacuated by bus from the towns of Dohuk and Zakho to the Turkish border. Turkey permitted them to enter briefly in order to transit by plane to the U.S. territory of Guam, where they were processed as asylum seekers according to U.S. law. Other groups associated with the U.S. presence in northern Iraq, but not directly employed by the U.S. government, expressed fears of persecution if Iraqi government forces reentered the area. As the days passed, and incidents of harassment and threat escalated, the U.S. government relented and evacuated another group of 606 persons, most of whom were associated with U.S.-supported political opposition groups, such as the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord. They, too, were transported to Guam. A third, larger group still did not appear on the U.S. government’s list of evacuees. These were local Kurds who had worked for private humanitarian organizations that were either U.S.-based or funded through OFDA contracts. USCR and a number of other NGOs advocated for their evacuation. In an op-ed piece in the
New York Times, USCR wrote, “We owe it to those who trusted us, who worked with us, who are identified with us, and who have no place else to go, to get them out.” Finally, between December 4 and December 16, the third group, numbering 3,780, was evacuated to Guam. The Iraqi incursion into the safe zone also ended the U.S. involvement in delivering humanitarian assistance to the Kurds. The amount of U.S. relief aid, though still substantial, had fallen in recent years. From about $600 million when Operation Provide Comfort started in 1991, the U.S. contribution to humanitarian aid fell to $71 million in 1992. In 1996, U.S. aid to the north stood at about $22 million at the time of the suspension of Operation Provide Comfort in September. The United States pledged its continuing commitment to donate humanitarian assistance in northern Iraq, but said that international humanitarian relief agencies would have to deliver the aid. The penetration of the safe zone by Kurdish troops and fighting between the Kurdish factions created widespread hardship and displacement. In Erbil, electricity was cut, causing problems with water pumping and sanitation. The lack of electricity also ruined perishable medical supplies, such as vaccines and blood stocks. Initial estimates of the displacement from Erbil and Suleymaniyah varied widely. ICRC said that about 80,000 were displaced. UNHCR initially provided a lower estimate, saying that 20,000 were internally displaced, and 39,000 had crossed into Iran. The highest initial figures came from the PUK and the Iranian Red Crescent, which claimed that 150,000 displaced persons were massed along the Iranian border and another 75,308 had crossed into Iran. Ironically, in some respects the collapse of the safe zone had its benefits for many of the other residents of the north. In addition to international sanctions, northern Iraq had been subjected to an internal blockade from Baghdad. Starting in September, that blockade was eased, and Kurds from the north were able to engage in trade with government-controlled Iraq. Kurds who had not been able to travel into government-controlled areas for the past five years were able to visit family and friends in the rest of the country, as well as engage in commerce. However, the opening of bridges linking the north and government-controlled Iraq meant the movement of people in both directions, raising fears that Iraqi intelligence agents were infiltrating the north.
Scope of Displacement It was almost impossible to calculate the number of internally displaced people in northern Iraq. Many people had been displaced multiple times, many also for brief interludes during sporadic fighting. Persons also fled or continued to be displaced as a result of various conflicts and threats, including displacement in some cases from government-controlled Iraq into the north as well as displacement within the north. During the year, displaced persons fled incursions by Turkish and Iranian military forces. Refugees from Turkey and Iran also fled from camps that came under attack or threat. Although the incursion of government forces into Erbil caused additional displacement, the most significant cause of internal displacement in 1996 was fighting between the KDP and the PUK, as well as fighting between the KDP and the PKK. WFP was targeting assistance to 666,000 persons in the north, although this number was based on an assessment of need, not on displacement per se.
Iraqi Refugees in Iran In response to the same events in northern Iraq, about 75,000 Iraqi refugees entered Iran in September. They were sheltered in six camps in three provinces, West Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Kermanshah. Another surge in fighting in October displaced thousands more persons, including some who briefly entered Iran, as several towns changed hands back and forth between the KDP and the PUK. By the time the two sides agreed to a cease-fire on October 23, the PUK regained most of its lost territory, except Erbil, and large numbers of Iraqi Kurdish refugees began returning from Iran. By year’s end, all but about 1,000 had repatriated. UNHCR estimated that about 8,000 Iraqi Kurds who had fled Iraq in 1991 as a result of the conflicts and persecution related to the Persian Gulf War repatriated from Iran during the year.
Shi’ites in Southern Iraq The Iraqi government has long been openly hostile to the Marsh Arabs, or Maadan, people living in the marshlands between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In the wake of the suppression of the 1991 Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq, many opponents of the Baghdad regime fled to the marshes, and the Iraqi government intensified a pacification campaign that it had been directing toward the marsh population since 1989. It conducted widespread burning and shelling of villages, and built dams to divert water from the marshes to depopulate the area. During 1996, government forces continued to attack civilians in the marshlands, causing additional new displacement. Military tactics included indiscriminate shelling of populated areas, scorched-earth burnings of land and stocks, as well as diversion of water from the marshes. However, determining the number of persons newly displaced or remaining displaced in the south, including to, from, and within the marshlands, is nearly impossible because the Iraqi regime denies the UN and other relief agencies access to the area. Estimates of the number of displaced and at-risk
Maadan range from 40,000 to 1,000,000. In attempting to “Arabize” Kurdish areas under government control, Baghdad sought to kill two birds with one stone by forcibly transferring displaced Shi’ites from the marshlands to the predominantly Kurdish cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.
Refugees from Turkey On December 13, 1996, UNHCR announced that it would end assistance to the Atrush camp, a controversial camp in northern Iraq about 40 miles from the Turkish border, which had housed about 14,000 Kurdish refugees from southeast Turkey since March 1994. From the beginning, Turkey charged that Atrush, whose population in the early days numbered about 17,500, sheltered members of the PKK, which is waging a violent separatist struggle in Turkey’s southeast. Problems reached a crisis in September 1995, when camp residents took 13 international humanitarian aid workers hostage. After suspending aid to Atrush entirely in October 1995, UNHCR tried to segregate genuine refugees from armed elements by splitting its recognition, telling refugees they would only be assisted in Atrush camp “A,” but not in Atrush camp “B.” That failed, however, and in December 1996, UNHCR announced that “the humanitarian and nonpolitical nature of the camp has been compromised to such an extent that UNHCR is no longer in a position to provide services at this location.” UNHCR alleged that the PKK controlled the camp and was blocking camp residents from voluntarily repatriating. “We can no longer assist a camp where people are deprived of their basic freedoms and which has become politicized to an unacceptable extent.” UNHCR announced that it would continue to assist those individual refugees, most of whom were women, children, and old men, who were unwilling to return to Turkey. However, UNHCR called upon local authorities in northern Iraq to transport the refugees from Atrush to transit sites at Muqibla and Balqus, where they would be given assistance for one month “while they make their decisions.” UNHCR said that the Turkish government had given assurances that repatriating refugees would be welcomed back. “The High Commissioner expects the safety of the refugees to be fully respected by all parties during this transfer operation,” the UNHCR announcement said. In protest, about 200 Atrush residents went on a hunger strike. By year’s end, the UN flag was still flying over the camp, and UNHCR officials were saying that there were still refugees in the camp of concern to the agency. However, UNHCR officials charged that there was still some kind of “coercive force” operating in the camp, preventing refugees from choosing to leave.
(In January 1997, in response to criticism that it was abandoning the refugees at Atrush and coercing them to repatriate to Turkey, UNHCR clarified its earlier statements, saying that those refugees who leave the camp but decide to remain in northern Iraq rather than return to Turkey would be provided assistance on an individual basis. All UNHCR assistance inside Atrush ended in December.) Iranian Refugees In 1996, government-controlled Iraq hosted 35,472 recognized Iranian refugees. Of that number, 20,080 were Iranian Kurds living in the Al-Tash refugee camp in western Iraq, about 100 miles from Baghdad. In Al-Tash, described as a slum, refugees were not permitted to work, and their movement was also restricted. Several thousand of them reportedly petitioned the Iranian embassy in Baghdad for permission to repatriate. By year’s end, however, none of them had repatriated. There were also about 13,000 Iranian refugees, mostly of Arab background (Ahwazis), dispersed in the Wasit and Misan region to the south of Baghdad. They were reportedly integrated with the local community, where many were engaged in farming. UNHCR said that another 3,682 Iranian Kurdish refugees living in northern Iraq were registered with UNHCR, although estimates of the total number of Iranian refugees in northern Iraq often double that number. Most of the Iranian Kurdish refugees lived in and around Erbil and Suleymaniyah. In late July, Iranian forces shelled a camp in northern Iraq, causing about 2,000 Iranian Kurdish refugees to flee to Erbil. Iran said it was shelling Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) bases inside Iraq. Although information was sketchy, a number of politically active Iranian Kurdish exiles in northern Iraq were assassinated during the year. Observers attributed the murders to Iranian agents operating in northern Iraq. KDPI members were the primary targets.
Other Groups Although estimates of their current numbers vary greatly, it appears that more than 100,000 stateless Arabs from Kuwait, called Bidoon, were expelled from Kuwait into Iraq after the Gulf War. Little is known about how this population has fared inside Iraq. There were also 62,635 Palestinian refugees living in Iraq in 1996. Only 800 of them received UNHCR assistance. None received UNRWA assistance since Iraq is outside the UNRWA mandate area. UNHCR assisted another 580 Eritreans and 683 refugees of other nationalities in Iraq during the year. A total of 543 refugees were resettled from Iraq in 1996. Most went to the Scandinavian countries.
Iraqis outside Iraq Approximately four million Iraqis were living abroad in 1996. Most appear to have left Iraq for a combination of economic and political reasons. About one quarter of that number have left the country since the Gulf War. The bulk of Iraqis recognized as refugees, nearly 580,000, were in Iran. Another nearly 10,000 Iraqi refugees remained in camps in Saudi Arabia at the end of 1996, representing the remainder of the 35,000 or more who fled to that country in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War and Shi’ite uprising. In Syria, UNHCR assisted more than 3,000 Iraqi refugees during the year. Turkey officially hosted about 1,000 Iraqi asylum seekers and refugees, but an undetermined number of Iraqis in refugee-like circumstances were also residing in Turkey. About 2,000 Iraqis in Kuwait and more than 1,100 in Pakistan were registered with UNHCR in 1996. As in previous years, many Iraqis sought asylum in Europe during 1996, particularly in the Netherlands and Sweden. Many Iraqis are known to slip across the border into Jordan, where they remain without status or seek to move on to other countries. As a result, the Iraqi government has imposed an exit fee and forbidden doctors and persons working in sensitive jobs from leaving at all. The Jordanian government reportedly requested Baghdad to instruct its border guards not to fire on fleeing Iraqi citizens, particularly deserting Iraqi soldiers, after they had crossed into Jordanian territory. In February, two prominent defectors, Hussein Kamel Hassan Majeed and his brother, Saddam Kamel, both sons-in-law of Saddam Hussein, were gunned down shortly after returning to Iraq after a seven-month Jordanian exile. Hussein Kamel had been chief of Baghdad’s secret military programs, and had been widely regarded as the architect of the chemical attacks on Halabjah and other Kurdish villages in 1988 and the crushing of the Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq in 1991. His brother, Saddam Kamel, had been the deputy head of Saddam Hussein’s palace guard. The shootings were carried out by relatives of the men shortly after the government radio announced that Saddam’s daughters had divorced the “failed traitors.” Their father and another brother were also killed. The killings were believed to have had the blessing of Saddam Hussein. Lebanon and Iraq continued to wrangle during the year over three Iraqi diplomats accused of involvement in the 1994 murder of a prominent Iraqi opposition leader in Beirut. In August, Ra’id Ahmad, an Olympic weight lifter who carried Iraq’s flag in the opening ceremonies in Atlanta, defected and applied for political asylum in the United States. Iraq and Iran continue to accuse each other of holding prisoners of war (POWs) from the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. On December 28, 1996, Iran reportedly handed over 724 Iraqi POWs to Iraq. Iraq has accused Iran of holding another 20,000 Iraqi POWs. Iraq denies that it holds any Iranian POWs, although Iran alleges that they are being held in a secret camp. For its part, Iran claimed not to hold any more Iraqi POWs, and said that 10,000 former POWs had sought and been granted asylum in Iran.
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