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.

August 19, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

Jordan: Refugee stories

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Amman, Jordan

Marwan Abdullah misses Iraq. But he has no plans to go back.

"I would be killed for sure," the 18-year-old told me yesterday.

August 17, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

Jordan: An urban phenomenon

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Amman, Jordan

These refugees don't live in camps. And that's making it more difficult for aid workers to address their growing needs.

The great majority of Iraqis who have come to Jordan have settled here in the capital. Most have disappeared into the cosmopolitan population of this Middle Eastern hub; many are intentionally keeping their profiles low, for fear of being caught, detained, and sent back to Iraq.

August 16, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

Iraq: Getting ready to report

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center

In a sense, I've been preparing for this trip since the spring of 2000. That's when I first traveled to Iraq, to write about life for Iraqis then caught between sanctions and Saddam.

I journeyed from Baghdad to Basra, visiting hospitals, schools and the homes of ordinary Iraqis. By then, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq was estimating that the widest-ranging embargo in history, then more than nine years old, had been responsible for the deaths of one million Iraqis, most of them children.

August 15, 2008 | Pulitzer Center

Iraq: Following the refugee trail

Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Washington, DC

In the two and a half years since the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara inspired whole new levels of sectarian violence across Iraq, hundreds of thousands have fled their homeland. More than 2 million now have settled in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and other countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. That's nearly one in 10 Iraqis.