Help Iraqi Christian refugees in their plight
AMMAN, JORDAN – A Catholic pastor is rallying Church leaders in the Holy Land and around the world to come to the aid of Iraqi Christian refugees facing extended exile and faint hopes of finding a secure future in their own country or any other.
The refugees are running out of savings, have almost no chance of working in the asylum countries sheltering them in the Mideast, and need immediate humanitarian aid on a large scale, Father Khalil Jaar told Catholic San Francisco.
“Our Christian church is so quick to commemorate the martyrs of yesterday, and she has nothing to say or do to the martyrs of today?” Father Jaar asked in a report to a Holy Land bishops’ conference in October. “Our Christian brothers, the Iraqis, strike at our door, seeking our attention, our support, our solidarity.”
In November, Father Jaar took his message to a wider group of Church leaders at the Vatican’s 6th World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees.
In Jordan alone, an Iraqi refugee population of 450,000 includes more than 50,000 Christians. Father Jaar has extended pastoral care to some 1,600 Iraqi Christian families through his St. Mary of Nazareth Parish in West Amman, which is part of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Father Jaar, a Bethlehem-born Palestinian, is urging Catholic leaders in the region to include the refugees in their communities until the political situation improves in Iraq and the displaced people feel it is safe to go home.
Father Khalil, who is director of the non-profit organization Messengers of Peace, urged the regional bishops to recruit bishops around the world to the cause. He sees it as a pastoral initiative that would strengthen the Church in the region, which has experienced a steady drop in numbers as people migrate to escape political instability.
“They (the bishops) are sad because there is a big leaving of Christians going out, but in this case we have not people going out, we have Christians going in,” he said. “So what are you doing for them, what are you offering to assist them in the economic situation, in the psychological situation? We don’t need words, we don’t need feelings. We need something concrete.”
In a September report based in part on interviews with refugees, London-based Minority Rights Group International noted Father Khalil’s work at his parish: “A number of those interviewed said that if it were not for Father Khalil’s initiatives, they and their children would rarely leave the house.”
The majority of the refugees are educated people who were part of the Iraqi middle-class but find themselves living in the shadows in the poor parts of cities in nations poorer than their own. The United Nations estimates that a third of the exiles in Jordan have a university degree. Lacking the legal status to better their situations, they live much like the urban homeless in the United States – but with the added fear that they could be deported.
Jeff Wright, emergency response specialist for Eurasia for the Seattle-based aid group World Vision, which has been providing food aid to the refugees in Father Khalil’s parish, confirmed the pastor’s assessment of the refugees’ plight.
Some refugees enjoy relative stability in the better neighborhoods of West Amman, but typically families double up in crowded apartments in poorer neighborhoods and experience downward mobility as their savings run out, he said.
“It’s amazing how in limbo they are,” Wright said. “It’s hard to comprehend.”
Not uncommon is the plight of a family that Wright found living under a tarp in the northern Jordanian city of Zarqa. The father was a dentist in Iraq, the mother a teacher. They kept their cash in a sock and were eating restaurant bread scraps.
The loss of economic status and dignity has been psychologically devastating for many, Father Jaar said. He added that the international community is limited in what it can do to help because the Iraqi refugees, unlike typical refugee populations, are not organized into camps under international supervision.
Fearful of returning home and being victimized by the sectarian violence that drove them away in the first place, and unable to resettle in large numbers in third countries, the Iraqi refugees in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon have to make do in asylum nations that for political and economic reasons are unable to integrate them as permanent residents. The three countries’ long and difficult experience with displaced Palestinians has made them wary of any new refugee population that might become permanent.
Although the three nations have been generous in offering the Iraqis refuge, they “have made it virtually impossible for the vast majority of refugees to enter the formal labor market and to become self-reliant,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said in a July report.
Adding to the complexity, Christian refugees’ minority status can be an added source of hardship, Father Jaar said.
Another source of friction is the contrast between the high economic level many refugees enjoyed at home and the status quo in the asylum countries. “It would be like Americans going to Mexico, wanting to host us because we’re homeless,” World Vision’s Wright said. “You can imagine a bit of the tension there.”
Yet another factor is the conspicuous wealth of some Iraqi exiles. Jordan’s Prince El Hassan bin Talal referred to this in comments to Christian journalists Sept. 29 at the royal palace in Amman. He contrasted his encounters with Iraqi street children sleeping in cardboard boxes in old Amman and rich Iraqis building towers in upscale West Amman.
“The rich Iraqis who built those monuments to foolishness, towering buildings, have basically laundered their money,” he said. “As I said to one of them the other day, ‘You laundered your money but you didn’t launder your reputation.’ And either he was too ashamed to be irritated, or he didn’t understand my comment. But the fact is that war creates the nouveau riche, the parvenu, and war creates a situation of continuing insecurity.”
Still another concern is that resettlement to a third country may not better the lives of the few refugees who are offered the chance. Father Jaar said he hears from many Iraqis who resettle in the West but long to come home to the Mideast.
“If they go to America and Europe, they will find themselves in a new world – different language, different culture,” he said. “It is easier for us, and easier for the international community, to help them here in Jordan.”
Wright said the refugees suffer from the lack of a unified vision of their future. The asylum nations hope the refugees will be able to repatriate, but there seems to be little hope of that happening soon.
Jordan has taken positive steps in the past 18 months to improve the situation for Iraqis, Wright said. Iraqis are not being deported, and Iraqi children are able to attend school. Refugee advocates are hopeful that Jordan will be open to letting Iraqi professionals work on a limited basis.
“There’s a little pinprick of light,” Wright said.
This is the third installment in “Jordan: Voices of Peace,” a series in Catholic San Francisco. The first installment, reflections by two Arab Catholic leaders on the role of Christians in the majority Muslim nation, appeared in the Oct. 16 issue. The second, reflections by Jordan’s Jordan’s Prince El Hassan bin Talal on the political situation in the Mideast, appeared Nov. 6.
How to help
Cash donations through aid agencies are the most effective way to help Iraqi refugees, Father Khalil Jaar and World Vision’s Jeff Wright said. One approach is for donors to sponsor families, Father Jaar said. For more information contact Father Jaar at carlos@orange.jo, or visit the Jordan page of the Catholic aid federation Caritas Internationalis at www.caritas.org/ worldmap/mona/jordan.html
By Rick DelVecchio
