Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees announced on Monday that it had referred its 50,000th Iraqi for resettlement. Buried in the press release is the story of another refugee facing a horrible dilemma.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Baltimore, MD
I was invited to dinner last night by a family that in some ways typifies the Iraqi resettlement experience.
Abu Rawan is a 62-year-old engineer who served as an interpreter and adviser to U.S. commanders and diplomats after the 2003 invasion. His wife is a pediatrician; they have two sons, aged 13 and 14.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
After admitting record numbers of Iraqi refugees in the final months of fiscal 2008, the United States is off to a slow start in the first months of the fiscal '09.
The country admitted 705 Iraqis as refugees in October and 738 in November, according to numbers released last week by the State Department. That's a steep decline from the more than 2,000 per month who landed here in July, August and September.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
Iraqi lawmakers are seeking $4 billion in next year's national budget to assist the more than 4 million Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
There is broad agreement that the arrival of more than 1 million Iraqis has taxed the water supply in Syria, burdened the public education and health care systems and driven up housing prices.
Imad Moustapha worries that their presence is exacting another cost.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
The United States has met its goal of resettling 12,000 Iraqi refugees for the fiscal year, with a thousand more due to arrive by the end of the month, officials announced this morning.
With the system for processing Iraqis now "robust," Ambassador James Foley told reporters, the United States expects to admit at least 17,000 more refugees in 2009.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
Last week, Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group became the latest in a series of refugee advocates to tell me that the United States owed a special obligation to the Iraqis that have fled the country since the 2003 invasion.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC
While the Iraqi refugee populations in Syria, Jordan and other neighbors appear to have stabilized, one analyst in the region says conditions in Iraq suggest the possibility of another exodus.
Imran Riza, the representative in Amman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, discusses in an interview with Matthew Brown the challenges facing Iraqis in Jordan, and the ways in which they differ from more traditional refugees.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Damascus, Syria
Adnan Al Sharify sees a few obstacles holding up the return of Iraqi refugees to their home country.
Sharify, an official at the Iraqi Embassy here in Syria, helped to organize government-sponsored bus trips at the end of last year that he says carried 420 Iraqi families back to Baghdad. The Syrian government estimates the Iraqi populaton here at 1.5 million.
More free rides home are planned, Sharify told me this morning. But finding takes is likely to remain a challenge.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Damascus, Syria
The relationship between Iraqi refugees and their hosts in Syria and Jordan is complicated.
On the one hand, I have heard much talk of Arab brotherhood among both officials and ordinary people in the two countries. On the other, Iraqis in both countries are blamed for rising prices and housing costs.
Salaam Marougi says he understands the negative reactions he occasionally encounters.
Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Damascus, Syria
As a Sunni Muslim married to a Shia, Hamid Al Dulayme was threatened by both sides in Baghdad. When militia members broke into his house in 2005, he fled Iraq.
In Syria, he says, he has left sectarian conflict behind. "The best thing here is there is no problem between different groups," Dulayme told me this morning in Saida Zeinab, a suburb of Damascus now dominated by refugees.
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