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The Flight from Iraq

It has been written about before....the constant stream of Iraqis leaving their country. Not only has it caused real issues for neighbouring countries "hosting" these Iraqi immigrants [look out for the SBS Dateline program last week] but the figures now suggest 50,000 people, per month. leaving war-torn Iraq.

The NY Times reports on this humanitarian tragedy - that is the people leaving their homeland - but also the effect on a country losing vital personnel on all levels:

"At a meeting in mid-April in Geneva, held by António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the numbers presented confirmed what had long been suspected: the collapse of Iraq had created a refugee crisis, and that crisis was threatening to precipitate the collapse of the region. The numbers dwarfed anything that the Middle East had seen since the dislocations brought on by the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Syria, there were estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. There were another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The overall estimate for the number of Iraqis who had fled Iraq was put at two million by Guterres. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside Iraq’s borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean about 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes.

Most of this movement has occurred in the last two years. An outflow began after the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. But since the upsurge of violence following the bombing of a Shiite holy site in Samarra 14 months ago, the flight has been large and constant. It now reaches a rate of up to 50,000 people per month."

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