Project

Syria and Jordan: The Iraqi Exodus

An exodus of more than 2 million Iraqis is reshaping the Middle East -- with ominous implications for the region.

Driven out of Iraq and into neighboring countries by sectarian violence, a once prosperous middle class is drawing down savings -- and fueling local resentments. The newcomers are blamed for burdening public services, crowding schools and driving up housing costs, even as they struggle for survival.

Iraqi Professionals are reduced to accepting handouts. Children are going unschooled. Girls are turning to prostitution.

Iraq, meanwhile, is missing a population vital to its peaceful reconstruction.

Matthew Hay Brown travels to Syria and Jordan, the countries that have taken in the greatest number of Iraqis, to record the voices of a new diaspora -- and to explore what their dispersal means for the future of Iraq, and of the Middle East.

Matthew is the Pulitzer Center World Affairs Journalism Fellow at the International Center for Journalists.

No Place to Go

AMMAN, Jordan -- Najim Abid Hajwal thought he would be back in Baghdad by now.

The 49-year-old businessman fled Iraq after a worker in one of his factories warned that his name had appeared on a local hit list. He needed no convincing: By then, he says, two of his sons had narrowly escaped kidnappers, and a brother and a nephew had been shot to death.

Still, he expected the exile to be brief. Packing up his wife and their seven children, he imagined a sojourn lasting weeks.

That was four years ago.