Fact Check: State Dept. Response to Crocker Cable on Iraqi Refugees

On September 17, The Washington Post ran an article on this memo that HRF brought to their attention.

More than anything else, I have to commend Ambassador Crocker for taking a strong stance on this issue. I have been told by some of the Iraqi employees who work at the embassy in Baghdad that he is the first person to take their concerns seriously.

Later in the day, reporters questioned State Department Spokesperson Sean McCormack about the memo and the refugee program.

Below is a quick “fact check” of the spokesperson’s answers.

QUESTION: About the refugees, did you get any details on the number of refugees? Were you able to --

MR. MCCORMACK: Well, since -- in this fiscal year, meaning to date, and we still have a couple more weeks, we have processed 900, I believe -- let me verify that for you -- 900. Nine hundred Iraqi refugees have been admitted to the U.S. thus far, and that's as of the end of August. And we expect to have more before end of the fiscal year, so --

According to BPRM, the State Department branch in charge of processing refugees, the U.S. admitted 719, not 900, as of the end of August. Various sources suggest that as of Sept 25th, the number is somewhere between 900 and 1,000.

QUESTION: And of those 900 refugees, how many worked for the U.S. Government?

MR. MCCORMACK: I don't have a further breakdown for you, Sue. We'll try and -- you know, as we move through here and these are rolling numbers, we're going to try to get you more of a breakdown. It's probably easiest to be able to do that at the end of the fiscal year, at some point after September 30th, to get you a full breakdown of who came in.

Nobody has a precise answer to this one, but Sabrina Tavernise and David Rohde did some excellent reporting on this question in the Times article “Few Iraqis Reach US Safe Havens Despite Program.”

They found less than 5% of the cases the UN. Refugee agency had submitted to the U.S. for resettlement were Iraqis who had been working with the United States. The Times argued that closed borders and dangerous, costly travel made it impossible for many Iraqis working for us to make it to Jordan or Syria.

On this question, Crocker says:

"we have already asked the department for the authority to do in-country processing for Iraqis who work for the Embassy and are requesting refugee status. This would at least speed up the process for those Iraqis who have put themselves and their families at risk by working with us."

McCormack was asked why the U.S. has yet to do what Crocker has requested, and make in country processing an option for Iraqis working for us. He said “there are real legal restrictions, legal obligations and legal considerations that come in to play when you're talking about that decision."

First, there is a clear precedent for doing in country processing of refugees. The United States has done this in many different places, including Russia and Cuba. We need to make it an option in Iraq.

Second, while it is true that there are some legal considerations that come in to play that is no excuse for inaction. The Administration has had plenty of time to make a decision. It’s time to act urgently. Too many have already lost their lives.

Finally, McCormack was asked to comment on Syria’s recent decision to require Iraqi travelers to obtain visas first.

MR. MCCORMACK: Yeah.

QUESTION: Do you have any reaction to the Syrian Government's decision to delay until after Ramadan the requirement for Iraqis to have visas? Or were you aware of that?

MR. MCCORMACK: That they -- I had not heard that. I knew that they had imposed a new visa requirement on Iraqi citizens and that's -- that raised real questions about whether or not they were meeting their obligations under international law.

Syria is hosting 1.5 million Iraqi refugees. The US has resettled 719. I don’t think the U.S. government is in a position to criticize them for failing to meet their obligations.

The Missing

On Monday, I traveled to Beirut for a quick assessment of the situation of Iraqi refugees in Lebanon. I met up with Habib, who had gone one day early to see his parents, and we had a wonderful dinner with Stephane Jaquemet, the UN High Comissioner for Refugees Representative for the region, and his wife.

On our way to dinner, we skirted along the border of the deserted tent camp Hezbollah and other opposition groups have set up in front of parliament, ringed by concertina wire and Lebanese army tanks.

Habib pointed out a smaller ring of tents to off to one side of the main protest. "Those people I don't mind" he said "Those are the families of the missing. They've been there for years." In the middle of the tents there was a board full of portraits.

Habib - who is an expert on this issue - told me 17,000 people went missing during the Lebanese Civil war. As in Iraq, abduction and kidnapping were common tactics. In the end, a handful of the missing were found in Syrian prisons. Of course, most were probably just murdered.

So now I am wondering how many Iraqis will be missing when this conflict calms down enough for somebody to make a count. Yesterday, I met with an Iraqi mother I had interviewed last winter, when I was in Jordan working as a freelance journalist. In 2006, her husband had been picked up by the Jordanian authorities and deported back to Iraq. The mother, who I will call Noor, had been struggling to support five children on her own. She didn't know if her husband would ever be able to rejoin them in Jordan.

When I saw her again yesterday, Noor told me that her husband disappeared on August 25th. She heard from a relative that he was on a bus traveling through Salah ah Din province in north central Iraq. Armed men stopped the bus, singled out 11 Shia men, and let the rest of the passengers go. That was two weeks ago, and Noor knows nothing more about what happened to her husband. That's probably all she will ever know.

The Resettlement Lottery

Last week was both busy and tough, and I have fallen behind somewhat in my writing. Habib and I met with more than twenty families. I’m just going to share two of their stories.

Wednesday morning we drove to a place in Amman where many Iraqi Christians live. It’s actually a part of the city I love, a narrow quiet street on the edge of a hill with a sweeping view. We met with two Iraqi Christian sisters who fled Iraq in 2002. Their uncle, his wife, and seven children were killed in Hussein’s Anfal campaign. The entire family was placed under travel restriction and interrogated by the muhabarat.

Now, most of the family has been successfully resettled in various countries. They have a mother and brother in Germany, aunts in the US, other family in other parts of the world. These two sisters are the only ones still trapped in Amman.

They do not understand why they are still here. Neither is permitted to work, and they rely on the charity of their relatives abroad to survive. Rents have gone up in Amman with the arrival of new refugees. Going back to Iraq was never a good option for them- even in 2003 and 2004. In addition to the danger, they no longer had family there. The younger sister had supported the two of them with a hairdressing business, and it was confiscated by the regime.

Like most people we meet, they presented us with a file of rumpled papers. Photos of the seven children who had been killed. Their asylum-seeker letters from the UNHCR, which they faithfully renewed every five months, for the past five years.

One of the women was in tears through most of the interview. The other was stoic but her eyes looked hurt. She had applied for a visa to Australia six times. There was basically nothing helpful I could do. I told them honestly that UNHCR was only going to be able to resettle 20,000 people this year (if that) from Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon and that many people in need would be left behind.

Next, we drove to a store in an upscale neighborhood, where an Iraqi man told us the following story:

I was working in the Ministry of Industry and Minerals. One of my colleagues
asked me why I had named my daughter Aisha. It’s a Sunni name. We got into a
fight over this. Two days later, Iraqi police came to my house, accompanied by
two men wearing black masks. They took my brothers and I to the seventh floor of
the ministry of interior. They tortured us for two months. We were shocked with
electricity. Eventually, we were moved to the headquarters of the ministry’s
special forces. They held us there for four months. The beating and torture
continued. Although an American committee inspected the prison, we were
prevented from speaking to them. Eventually we were transferred again. I was
supposed to go before the court. One of the lawyers told my father they would
need some money in order to get me released. My father had to pay them $21,000
US in cash.

After my release, I left my home. I tried to go back to
work. After a few days, I was followed by a car and shot at. Eventually, we fled
to Jordan. That was in July 2006. They let my wife, child and I come across the
border. But my wife’s brother was turned back, and he was killed. He was 26
years old.

In the middle of the story, someone walked into the store. Habib and I stashed our notebooks and pretended to be customers. He picked out a farm animal set for some kids we know, and I checked out Fulla, the Arabic Barbie.

This man’s story, amazingly enough, might have a good end. He, his wife, and their young daughter have been offered resettlement in the United States.