Dahr Jamail: Into the Iraqi Diaspora

By Dahr Jamail, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 3, 2007.

This introductory note is by Tom Engelhardt, editor of TomDispatch.

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new figures on the disintegrating health situation in Iraq where, according to the group, 100 people a day die, on average, and countless more are wounded. Of the injured who manage to make it to an emergency room, 70% face a chance of dying there. Many don't reach clinics or emergency rooms at all, given the horrendous security conditions in the country. (Most knowledgeable observers believe that all death counts are low-ball numbers, given the increasing problem of gathering accurate figures amid the mayhem.)

In Iraqi hospitals, drugs and equipment are increasingly scarce, while ever more health professionals have joined the general exodus from the country. "The daily violence coupled with the difficult living and working conditions," reports WHO, "are pushing hundreds of experienced health staff to leave."

Here are a few other bits of information from the WHO report, according to Elisabeth Rosenthal of the New York Times:

"80% of Iraqis lack access to sanitation, 70% lack regular access to clean water and 60% lack access to the public food distribution system… As a result of these multiple public health failings, diarrhea and respiratory infections now account for two-thirds of the deaths of children under 5… According to a 2006 national survey conducted by UNICEF, 21% of Iraqi children are chronically malnourished."

And then there's the poorly covered refugee crisis -- probably the worst on the planet at this moment -- gripping the country. Almost 4 million Iraqis have had to leave their homes, according to Refugees International. But don't just rely on some impartial NGO for your information. Here's a ball-park estimate quoted recently in an interview with David Petraeus, the general in charge of the President's "surge plan" in Iraq:

"'It's a big competition right now among a variety of groups; and, again in an environment, in Baghdad in particular, [that is] very heavily colored by an influence of the sectarian violence.' Neighborhoods have been depopulated and General Petraeus believes that 'hundreds of thousands, maybe millions' of Iraqis have been displaced."

Recently, Tomdispatch regular Dahr Jamail, who covered the war in Iraq from Baghdad for a while, visited some of the beleaguered refugee camps and centers in Syria that are trying to cope with the tens of thousands of desperate Iraqi refugees arriving each month. Jamail is a remarkable figure. A young man who originally went to the region on his own to cover the war, he gives "independent" journalism a name to be proud of. Our premier investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh, said this of him recently, in offering criticism of American mainstream journalism's attribution practices at an al-Jazeera media conference:

"There is a young journalist here, Dahr Jamail, whose stuff has been very prescient, and I've four or five times included the brave accounts of some of his work in my stories… It's not just at the New Yorker, it's [also] at the New York Times where I worked very happily for a decade -- the first thing you [editors] cut out is any mention of anybody else. That's such a disagreeable aspect of our profession, the competition. Rather than credit a competitor we'll ignore the story. This is general. You all know what I'm talking about."

Now, consider the view from Syria through Dahr Jamail's eyes and click to accompanying photos by photojournalist Jeff Pflueger. Tom

"I Am Now a Refugee"
The Iraqi Crisis That Has No Name
By Dahr Jamail

Since the shock-and-awe invasion of Iraq began in March 2003, that country's explosive unraveling has never left the news or long been off the front page. Yet the fallout beyond its borders from the destruction, disintegration, and ethnic mayhem in Iraq has almost avoided notice. And yet with -- according to United Nations estimates -- approximately 50,000 Iraqis fleeing their country each month (and untold numbers of others being displaced internally), Iraq is producing one of the -- if not the -- most severe refugee crisis on the planet, a crisis without a name and without significant attention.

For the last two weeks, I've been in Syria, visiting refugee centers and camps, the offices and employees of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and poor neighborhoods in Damascus that are filling up with desperate, almost penniless Iraqi refugees, sometimes living 15 to a room. In statistical and human terms, these few days offered a small window into the magnitude of a catastrophe that is still unfolding and shows no sign of abating in any immediately imaginable future.

See more stories tagged with: iraq, refugees

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who reports from Iraq.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »