Nearly five years of violent occupation by U.S. imperialist forces has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle East since the Palestinian Nakba in 1948.
Two million people have been forced to leave Iraq because of the occupation. Many have flooded neighboring states
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And nearly 2,000 Palestinian refugees living in Iraq are now stranded at the Iraq-Syria border, living in tents. Some have been made refugees for a second or third time since 1948.
Contrary to the recent report by Gen. David Petreaus report, which praised the “growing safety” in Iraq, the reality is that the occupation has created an enormous humanitarian crisis for all Iraqis. Iraq has the fastest growing refugee population in the world.
According to Kritele Younes, of the Washington-based organizations Refugees International, “100,000 [Iraqis] are being displaced every month. In Syria alone, there are estimates that there’s about 40,000 Iraqis that are coming every month.”
In addition to over 4 million refugees, the occupation is responsible for the death of over 1 million people since 2003.
The U.S. government and its allies have done nothing to address the intensifying refugee crisis—a crisis caused by them. Washington’s focus remains avoiding a “catastrophic defeat” in Iraq. Most recently, the government has advanced plans to dismantle Iraq to maintain regional hegemony.
Since the 2003 invasion, the U.S. State Department has allowed fewer than 800 Iraq refugees into the country. Those who have been permitted have passed the Department of Homeland Security’s “enhanced screening measures aimed at weeding out potential terrorists.” This means that most Iraqi refugees in the United States have collaborated with the occupation forces as agents of imperialism.
Meanwhile, the heroic resistance of the Iraqi people continues to grow.
The solution to the growing refugee crisis is nothing short of an immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces and full reparations to the Iraqi people with no strings attached.
This sentiment is being echoed in streets all around the world. Only mass mobilization of the people in the U.S. and across the world to support the Iraqi people’s struggle for self-determination can stop the war.
