Donate Now 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.
Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to the United States, speaks of a Syrian tradition of welcoming refugees, from the Armenians who fled genocide in 1915 through the Lebanese who sought refuge from the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
"I know Syria has got a very bad image here in the United States," he told me this week during an interview at the Syrian Embassy in Washington. "So at least this is something as a Syrian, not an ambassador or a politician, I can be proud about."
But now, Moustapha says, that tradition is threatened.
"Syrians who are not very sophisticated are starting to loudly say we are paying a dear price because of those Iraqi refugees," he said. "Which is not really fair. But it's happening, and it's new."