Escape into insecurity: Iraqi refugees find a precarious home in Jordan

National Catholic Reporter, August 3, 2007 by Noah Merrill

In February, journalist Noah Merrill went to Amman, Jordan and spent six weeks interviewing Iraqi refugees there. Most of the 750,000 to a million refugees now living in Jordan have come in the last four years, but the number includes refugees who arrived prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Iraqi diaspora must be seen within the perspective of 30 years of Iraqi suffering, beginning with the Iran-Iraq war that killed more than a million, Merrill said.

The following are stories of five refugees now living in Amman.

Moustafa Samir Hassan

Moustafa Samir Hassan was born in Baghdad in 1981. "In the beginning," he said, "I was a normal man."

The event that changed his life came on April 1, 2003, eight days before the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Moustafa had climbed up to the roof of his house in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad--close to some former regime ministers' houses that were being bombed by the United States and its allies--to adjust his TV antenna so he could find out what was happening.

Cluster bombs caused shaking like an earthquake, and Moustafa was thrown two stories to the garden below.

At the hospital, he discovered his spine had been broken in two places. Moustafa had three operations in Baghdad before he regained feeling in the top half of his body. A surgeon implanted a platinum brace on his spine to hold the broken pieces together.

After experiencing intense pain, Moustafa found another doctor, who told Moustafa that his body was rejecting the brace, which needed to be repaired. But all of the good doctors had fled or been killed.

Moustafa went to the American forces and the government of Iraq seeking support and access to medical care, but only got letters from the Department of Defense taking no responsibility for his injury or offering any financial restitution.

Moustafa took many risks as he rolled himself around Baghdad in his wheelchair. "I went to anyone who might listen. I want you to believe that I left no door un-knocked in Baghdad." He even wrote to Oprah, he said, but she didn't respond.

Going in and out of areas controlled by U.S. forces put Moustafa in danger: People in his neighborhood began to warn him that resistance fighters might consider him a spy or a collaborator. On his last visit to one of the offices of the American forces, Moustafa was nearly kidnapped by a taxi driver affiliated with an insurgent group.

With the help of his extended family, Moustafa came to Jordan in 2005. A doctor at a hospital in Amman said he could do the operation at a cost of 2,000 Jordanian dinar, or about $2,800. Moustafa went back to Baghdad, where for months he tried to borrow money from friends and relatives. Finally, he raised the money and came back to Amman with his mother and brother.

When the doctor learned more about his case, the doctor offered to do the operation for only 1,000 Jordanian dinar, or about $1,400. In July 2006, Moustafa had the operation.

The doctor discovered that the surgeon who had installed the brace used an iron screw instead of a platinum one, probably due to the shortage of medical equipment in Iraq. Unlike platinum, iron is prone to rejection by the body. Because of one screw, Moustafa had spent a year of his life in pain and danger. He kept the screw.

Moustafa still needs intensive physical therapy and regular medication. His family's funds have been exhausted, and the treatments he needs are available in South Korea, Portugal and the United States. Even if he had money for the operations, his passport has been invalidated along with millions of others, a result of security restrictions by the United States and the United Kingdom.

His mother and sister fled to Syria, which is less expensive than Jordan. Back in Baghdad, a cousin was recently killed by unidentified armed men, who have continued to ask where Moustafa is and what he is doing for the Americans. The fact that he left for Amman seems to have further convinced them that Moustafa was a collaborator.

Dumore

Married with three children, Dumore was living in Baghdad during the American invasion. She and her husband, both Sunnis, decided to go back to Fallujah, where Dumore has family. Dumore and her children were in Fallujah when the first American offensive against the city began and they were forced to flee on foot with hundreds of thousands of others. Dumore's husband, who works as a driver on the dangerous BaghdadAmman route, was in Baghdad at the time.

Dumore and the children went as far as they could, constantly afraid of being swept up by U.S. military forces or other armed elements, looking for a vehicle to help them get to Baghdad. The fear and strain of that trip, the desperate hope to avoid American checkpoints and indiscriminate violence, is difficult for Dumore to speak about.

Dumore returned to her old house in Baghdad's Al Jihad district, which had a Shiah majority. She had no furniture, but trusted that her relatives would give her family enough to live. Neighbors in Baghdad had heard about the suffering of the people in Fallujah and helped Dumore, giving her blankets, food, rice, milk and bottles of gas for cooking. They baked bread and brought it to Dumore's family.