The US should pay Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan

Firas Al-Atraqchi, Daily Star Egypt

There is a refugee crisis in the Middle East that is unprecedented and far supersedes the Palestinian Diaspora of 1948. Millions of Iraqis — some educated and as well off as one would expect of a peoples fleeing genocide, others impoverished and forced to live off the kindness of strangers — have streamed across their borders into Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and by extension the UAE and Qatar. They have for months and years — since March 2003 — relied on the hospitality of the Jordanian, Syrian and Egyptian governments as they sought refuge from a calamity that no one seems to be able to shoulder. Everyone who can is getting out of Iraq. It does not matter what their creed or sect is — Shia, Sunni, Yazidi, Turkmen, Mandean (Sabeaen), Christian — because violence knows no boundaries, no ethnicity. No God...

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Iraq’s refugee crisis is nearing catastrophe

Financial Times

Nobody in the world with access to a television can be in any doubt that the US-led invasion of Iraq four years ago has been a disaster. What they, and we, are much less aware of is that it has already produced the worst refugee crisis in the Middle East since the mass exodus of Palestinians that was part of the violent birth of the state of Israel in 1948. And what we should all be scandalised by is how little the two countries most responsible for the Iraq misadventure – the US and the UK – are doing to alleviate this crisis. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, about 2m Iraqis have fled the country and 1.8m have been displaced within Iraq since the invasion of March 2003...

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