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The collapse of Iraq into sectarian violence, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, drove more than four million Iraqis from their homes. Many of the country’s middle class are now refugees in Syria and Jordan. If these engineers, teachers, doctors, and shop owners are not helped to survive in exile and eventually return to their homes, Iraq may never recover.
[Out There News' new] film follows three refugee families.
Ahlam was kidnapped in Baghdad and cannot go home. She does whatever she can to help other refugees in Syria but sees an entire future generation at risk.
Fayez has to take his family back to Baghdad because he is bankrupt, but finds a divided city where he cannot work.
Afrah is a Shia married to a Sunni; they cannot live together in Baghdad and have run out of money in Damascus. Their only hope of an income is rent from their flats in Baghdad, but that means Afrah risking a trip back to confront the militias which confiscated them.
Ahlam, a stocky woman dressed in heavy black [because she is] mourning for her young son, lives on her nerves, chain smoking and drinking endless cups of strong tea. She runs a one-woman aid organization from her cramped and barely furnished flat in the Damascus slum area of Sayyida Zeinab, giving away money and food to a stream of women who pour out to her terrible stories of death and terror.
Her biggest concern is that most of the refugee children are not going to school in Syria. So, she's been running extra English classes in her living room, and is now trying to get official permission to teach many more children in the flat downstairs.
"Who is going to rebuild Iraq?" she says. "I'm now 42 years old. Those my age who have degrees have now either emigrated or they are in exile waiting for Iraq to settle down, which could take 10 or 15 years. All the skills will have gone. Who will we rely on to rebuild the country?"
The most urgent problem for the refugees is simply money. They can’t legally work in Syria, and a survey by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in late 2007 said more than a third of them expected to run out of money within three months.
The UNHCR has been offering food rations to all registered refugees. But the UNHCR has registered only a fraction of the Iraqis, so most don't qualify. The UN High Commissioner, himself, Antonio Guterres, admits to Ahlam and other volunteers that international aid is inadequate.
For Faiz, this is all too late. He takes the long bus journey back to Baghdad with his wife and two small daughters. They have no choice: once he made a good living running an import-export business with his brothers, but now they are bankrupt.
Back in Damascus, Ahlam takes boxes of food to a poor family living in one unheated room on a roof. By chance, the television news is showing the UN High Commissioner in Baghdad with the Iraqi Foreign Minister talking about plans for an orderly return of the refugees. To Ahlam, it seems a sick joke.
Not surprisingly, most refugees dream of resettlement in other countries. But the world has shut its doors to the Iraqis. Out of two million refugees in Syria, just 833 left for resettlement in 2007.
Ahlam may be one of the lucky ones. She is being considered for resettlement in America. She doesn’t want to leave her aid work, and fears her children will find it hard to adapt to a strange society. But there is nothing for them in Baghdad.
Ahlam’s one hope is that with proper international aid, at least her children's generation may one day be able to go back.
She says, "I pray to God Almighty that they will return to their country and rebuild it, because if this generation does not rebuild, nobody will. Iraq will remain destroyed as it is today."
Watch the film HERE.
Credits
Camera - Baghdad
Abdulrahman Hamza
Producer - Baghdad
Hareth Abdullah
Dubbing Mixer
Farrell Lennon at Audio Monkey
Editor and Producer
Simon Ardizzone
Camera and Executive Producer
Ken Kirby
Filmed, produced and directed by
Paul Eedle |
