What an odd exercise you propose. I have no idea who was allegedly making the 500k troop claim in the first place, and it would be a difficult exercise to find people who didn't think we should start a war arguing for doing it with a lot of troops.
As for refugees, that was one contingency that was actually prepared for. I imagine if the Fallujah solution had been applied to Baghdad, it would have been more of a problem. Remember Fallujah, the second last "tipping point"?
Oddly, checking things out, I found this strange, unnoticed story from a month or so back. Maybe these refugees are off hunting for the missing WMDs that the true believers keep claiming are in Syria, or maybe it's all part of the liberal media conspiracy, who can say?
Iraqi Refugees Overwhelm Syria washingtonpost.com
Migrants Who Fled Violence Put Stress on Housing Market, Schools
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, February 3, 2005; Page A18
ALEPPO, Syria -- Sabbah Zaker had a small, sturdy construction company in the Iraqi city of Mosul, and although he did not agree with the U.S. invasion, he accepted a $10,000 contract last summer to renovate schools and health clinics across his ethnically mixed home town. A few months later, his name began appearing on the walls of his neighborhood as a warning from insurgents not to cooperate with the Americans.
Zaker, a Christian, had been agonizing over whether to leave Iraq since August, when a series of church bombings shook Mosul and Baghdad. The graffiti made the decision for him, and last September he sent one of his four sons to this city in northern Syria to find a place for the family to settle. Zaker, his wife and their sons now sleep on the floors of a cramped apartment across from a church.
"Our people hated me, and I didn't even know what was in their hearts," said Zaker, 52, who wore a tightly knotted tie on a recent morning despite having no place to go. "If the situation continues like it is in Iraq, more of us will come. And the money is running out."
Although regional and global concerns about Syria's 450-mile border with Iraq have focused mostly on foreign Arabs slipping across to join the insurgency, a growing number of Iraqis like the Zakers are moving in the opposite direction. U.N. officials say they are witnessing the exodus they had expected 22 months ago, when the United States and its allies invaded, and the Syrian government and international aid agencies say they are seeing the first worrisome social effects of the migration.
Syrian officials say 700,000 Iraqis from various ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds have arrived since the U.S.-led invasion, far more than in any other country in the region. The flow has spiked in the past four months.
The first trickle of wealthy Iraqis, who U.S. officials say may now be helping finance the insurgency, has been followed by a larger wave of mostly Shiite Muslims and Christians -- groups targeted by the daily violence. U.N. officials say many are doctors, professors, business owners and recent college graduates, the intellectual core that officials in Washington hoped would rebuild Iraq. As they settle in the old stone buildings of the Christian quarter here and in the southern slums of Damascus 185 miles to the south, the enclaves are experiencing soaring rents, overcrowded schools, rising crime and health problems.
"We cannot continue like this," said Abdelhamid Ouali, the representative for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Syria. "The situation is terrible, and we are obliged to do something."
Hoping to help the fleeing Iraqis without encouraging their flight, the U.N. agency arranged "temporary protection status" that prevented the Iraqis from being deported but did not trigger the financial aid and relocation assistance that goes to official refugees. Almost two years ago, the agency set up large tent cities and health clinics for thousands of people. The facilities were mothballed when the mass exodus did not immediately materialize.
"What happened? People have started coming now, and we can do nothing for them. It is a disaster," said Ouali, who is designing a $700,000 program to help the Syrian government assist the Iraqis.
Not far from the Circle of the Iraqis, a traffic roundabout in the teeming Damascus neighborhood of Sitti Zeinab, a boy called out in the twilight the other day for passengers to fill the evening bus to Baghdad. Tables at the Baghdadi Restaurant, a kebab and shwarma joint, are nearly always full.
"We thank God that under the dictatorship, the conditions for us were harsh, and are even harsher now that the Americans are there," said Abu Jaffar Khazimi, 35, who fled the southern Iraqi city of Najaf with his family in September. "So we have grown used to not needing a lot of luxury."
Khazimi is the representative in Syria of Moqtada Sadr, the rebellious Shiite cleric from Najaf. Like many Iraqi Shiites here, Khazimi fled Najaf and his ruined home soon after Sadr's militia reached a cease-fire agreement with U.S. forces in the fall that ended weeks of fighting.
Since arriving, he has been unable to find places in the public schools for his children. A year ago, a two-room apartment cost $110 a month; now the going rate is twice that. Some of Iraq's rising sectarian tensions are also being felt here. While some loyalists of Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party have been targeting Shiite clerics and political leaders in Iraq, others have found refuge in Damascus, Khazimi said.
"They avoid many Iraqi gatherings," Khazimi said. "We know them. And we would fight them."
After pushing the Syrian government for more than a year to tighten security on the border, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said during a visit to Damascus last month that the situation had improved. New rules make it harder for young men to enter Iraq through Syria, but the border remains open to those leaving Iraq.
U.S. criticism has shifted to the Iraqis already here, especially the wealthy early arrivals whom the diplomatic community labeled "Mercedes refugees." U.N. officials and Western diplomats say the group, less than 10 percent of the overall Iraqi population here, consists mainly of senior Baath Party officials and other Hussein supporters. With passports and political connections, they come and go with relative ease.
But Western diplomats say the Syrian government has an interest in making sure Iraqis are not aiding the insurgency. Peter Ford, the British ambassador to Syria, said the issue is "if anything, a more pressing problem than the threat posed by jihadis," the foot soldiers of the insurgency. Their money and organizational skills, he said, create more violence in Iraq, which drives more Iraqis to Syria.
"They are risking going too far and making matters worse for themselves here," Ford said. "When you import a people, you import their problems."
The Syrian government denies harboring former Hussein supporters, and officials point out that the Iraqi and Syrian governments, ruled by rival Baath parties for decades, were frequently at odds when Hussein was in power. Syria supported Iran against Iraq in their long war in the 1980s, and Iraqi Baathists worked with Islamic militants here around that time to undermine the government.
"The United States is finding it quite difficult right now to establish law and order in Iraq, so the easiest thing to do is to blame foreign intervention," Information Minister Mehdi Dakhlallah said. "Anyone who knows the relationship between the Iraqi Baath and the Syrian Baath knows that could never happen. Mostly Iraqi Baathists are sentenced here, not protected."
Many Syrians are starting to complain about the effects of the Iraqi arrivals, mostly over the crowded schools and rising rents. The wealthiest Iraqis have been buying up land in the western suburbs of Damascus, building huge homes and pushing up real estate prices 50 percent over the past year. A lawyer who works in government circles said President Bashar Assad will soon sign an order barring Iraqis from purchasing property.
"If they are allowed to continue," said a Syrian used-car dealer looking for property to buy in Damascus, "they will buy up half of Syria."
This ancient city, which had churches before the mosques that outnumber them today, has become a sanctuary for about 15,000 Iraqi Christians. Syrian Orthodox and Chaldean churches, which dispense small amounts of aid and tap a Christian business network to find arriving men jobs, are usually the first stop for Iraqi families.
"They may have been rich," the Rev. Joseph Shabo, a Syrian Orthodox priest, said, adding, "When they arrive, soon they have nothing."
Despite their qualifications, Zaker and his two working-age sons have been unable to find jobs. Samir, 27, arrived this month with a chemistry degree from the University of Mosul. Ghaith, 22, who arrived last year, is midway through a computer sciences degree program. They have knocked on doors and placed ads in newspapers seeking work. No one has responded.
There is nothing to go back to, even if the family wanted. News has arrived that their house has been looted. For now, life is the two-room apartment, which costs $500 a month, and concerns about what happens when the savings run out.
"We're not poor," Samir said. "But when you're spending all you have every day, it gets expensive."
© 2005 The Washington Post Company |
