“No Direction Home: An NGO Perspective on Iraqi Refugees and IDPs”

Gary L. Ackerman, Chairman

House Subcommittee on the Middle East & South Asia

The Subcommittees will come to order.  Last March, our two subcommittees held a hearing on the subject of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons where a panel of Bush Administration officials responsible for different aspects of the crisis assured us that the Administration was moving aggressively to assist the refugees and IDPs and would meet the President’s announced target of 12,000 Iraqi refugees resettled in the United States during the current fiscal year.  I challenged their ability and the Administration’s sincerity and they again re-assured me.  Well, as of March 31, only 2,627 Iraqis have been resettled.  With five months left in the fiscal year, that leaves only 9,373, but at the current rate the Administration won’t even meet half of the President’s goal.  Not even half.  That’s pathetic in terms of performance and embarrassing to us as a nation.

And it’s only the tip of the iceberg.  For the millions of Iraqis who are stranded in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, conditions are worsening dramatically.  By Ambassador Foley’s own admission at a press briefing last month, the 150,000 Iraqis in Syria who are fed each day by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will swell to 300,000 by summertime as more and more families run out of resources.  The situation in Jordan while of lesser magnitude is equally dire.

Current appeals for assistance through the United Nations and other international organizations total $900 million for this calendar year and while the United States has provided $208 million towards this goal, a shortfall of $400 million is still expected. 

There is report after report after report, from the United Nations and from non-governmental organizations.  There are pleas for help from the affected neighboring governments.  But while detailed descriptions of the crisis abound and the need for additional resources is clear, there are two fundamental things missing from the resolution of this crisis:   the two governments who should be most concerned, who have the most responsibility and who frankly have the most at stake are the ones who seem the least interested in helping.

I cannot understand why the Government of Iraq can’t, or won’t, do more to assist its own citizens.  The cynical view is that Prime Minister al-Maliki doesn’t want the refugees back because they’re mostly ethnic groups he doesn’t care about.  Some would site sheer incompetence: that the Government of Iraq simply doesn’t know how to take care of its own people.  Or I could cite the fact the Government of Iraq has its hands full trying to establish its own authority within its own borders, and that affairs outside of Iraq – even those directly affecting Iraqis – are beyond its capacity.  It could be all of these things in combination.  But the bottom-line is that whatever the reason, the government of Iraq’s failure to provide for its own people who have fled their country because of the violence is inexcusable.  For the refugees, all that is needed is for their incompetent but cash flush government to write a check to UNHCR.  The Iraqi government doesn’t have to worry about how to deliver services to the refugees, because there are plenty of skilled and willing organizations to step in and ameliorate their sinful failure.  And with a projected surplus of $32 Billion this year, the government of Iraq could cover the $400 million shortfall in the international appeal and then some.  But they haven’t yet and the Bush Administration has utterly failed to press aggressively for the Iraqi government to spend more than the paltry $25 million already allocated, but that remains largely unspent.  That’s $25 million of their shameless $32 Billion surplus.

So yet again we return to the Bush Administration’s own brand of incompetence.  As I noted at the outset, a mere 2, 627 Iraqis have been settled in the United States and we’re already half way through this fiscal year.  So at this rate, a paltry 5, 254 will be settled before October 1.  I guess this is progress given where we’ve come from, but I keep asking myself why the United States seems incapable of meeting its own pledged targets for resettlement?  What is it about this refugee crisis that has failed to move the Bush Administration to be more aggressive in addressing a situation that is so clearly of its own making?  And the only answer I can come up with is that President Bush simply doesn’t care about the refugees.  He doesn’t care about the internally displaced Iraqis.  He doesn’t lose sleep over the 4 million Iraqis who are now without homes and the two million of them who have sought shelter in nations that not only don’t welcome them but are openly hostile.  He cares so little, that he can’t even bring himself to utter more than a perfunctory mention of the plight of the refugees in public, much less commit himself to the heavy lifting necessary to assist them.  He cares so little that he leaves the problem to others within his Administration to solve and because he refuses to lead, the bureaucracy does what it does best: it argues about turf; it debates regulations; it disputes who will pay for what; it obfuscates when clarity is what’s necessary; it dawdles when action is what is required.  But I’m sure the refugees are in the President’s prayers.  What they need is to be in his plans.

I say to the President, there is an enormous humanitarian crisis in the Middle East and it is chiefly of your making because you decided to go to war in Iraq.  It is time for you to own up to your responsibility for this crisis.  It was you who told us people had to take responsibility for their actions.  It is time for you to step in and resolve the bureaucratic fights between the Departments of State and Homeland Security, it is time for you to reach out, personally, and urge the governments in the region to assist in this crisis.  It is time for you to speak directly and forcefully to Prime Minister al-Maliki, who also doesn’t care, to remind him that the Iraqi refugees are his people and his government is responsible for their welfare.  In short, Mr. President you broke it and it is time for you to own this problem.

But given the President’s track record of accountability so far, I have little hope that this change will take place, but in the Middle East, sometimes hope is all there is.

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