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Sabeans fleeing persecution in Iraq find cold refuge in reluctant Jordan

Asel recounts his story as an Iraqi refugee.

AMMAN -- Asel didn’t come to Jordan because he wanted to. Neither did his parents. They, like so many others, stole out of their native Iraq at the last minute, when word came that gangs were coming to kill their family.

Since that fateful morning in 2004, Asel, his two brothers, and his parents have been in Jordan passing time waiting for something that might enable them to end their limbo and move on. They won’t to go back to Iraq, so great was the trauma that caused them to leave.

They were targeted because they are Sabean, a small religious group in Iraq who trace their creed back to the teachings of St. John the Baptist. In the turbulent days years since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, Asel’s family and many Sabeans received death threats demanding ransom and conversion. His brother’s botched kidnapping shook his family, but not until the warnings of imminent death did they decide to flee. So sudden was their escape that the family brought no clothes and made no preparations for their arrival in Amman.

In Jordan’s capital, Asel’s family has made al-Hashemi al Shemali their home. There, in a neighborhood previously inhabited by poor Palestinians, countless Iraqi families live in what could best be described as impoverished purgatory. They fear that the simplest trouble could mean a one-way ticket back to Iraq, which for many would mean a death sentence. So they stay, silently.

Asel tried to convey the overwhelming boredom that has plagued his four-year stay in Amman. He and his other Iraqi friends described day after day of never leaving their apartments, unable to work, openly play, or even attend school. (Only last year, the Jordanian government opened public schools to Iraqi refugees, and many are unsure whether they will be able to return for the coming school year.) Books and television have been Asel’s sole sources of entertainment for four years, during which he has only been able to complete two years of schooling, one public, and one parochial.

But they do have satellite television. Holed up in their small apartment, the two eldest brothers have watched enough American movies to fill in their remaining gaps in English. Asel, with little formal English education, ably served as this reporter’s translator. Their family, though very poor, is not unique. According to a study of Iraqis in Jordan conducted in May 2007 by Fafo, a Norwegian research institute, nearly 95% of Iraqis in the country have access to satellite television in their homes. But day-to-day living expenses, exacerbated by recent inflation in food and fuel prices, are the most difficult ones for them to manage. TV, filled with hundreds more channels than the one Iraqis previously knew, has proven to be this family’s one escape.

Unlike other refugee crises of the past several decades, the plight of Iraqis in Jordan is not one characterized by starvation or widespread homelessness. Rather, it is a muffled crisis that involves political and economic insecurity of a large, previously middle class group that has been forced into the underbelly of an unwelcoming society, where they have no rights, and no guarantee that they will not be sent back to their homeland, where many of them fear death. Many watch silently as family members slowly expire, unable to obtain the medications that, lacking Jordanian citizenship, are too expensive for them to obtain.

This fear of deportation is what keeps people like Asel and his family inside, shying away from extended periods walking in the street. They do go out, but the slim chance that the police will stop them for some transgression is enough to keep them home most of the day. According to the UNHCR in Amman, there is an unspoken rule that Jordanian police ignore the status of Iraqis, but stories of forced deportation are rife among refugee communities.

Not all Iraqis in Jordan are like Asel’s family, however. One man who works in the main produce market near the King Hussein Mosque came during the first Iran-Iraq war and has stayed, unhindered, until 2003. The recent deluge of Iraqis from the new Gulf War, and the ensuing political pressures on Iraqi communities from the Jordanian government, forced him to obtain an asylum seeker certificate from the UNHCR. This man still sends money home to his two wives and family in Basra.

There is a movement to diagnose the problem of the Iraqi refugee crisis in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, with the intention of finding a silver bullet. With such a varied and unconventional refugee population, policymakers have struggled to find solutions. Their predicament is completely dependent on external factors, and few will consider returning before a significant improvement in the security situation. Others vow they will never return, because for them, Iraq will never be the same.

Their situation has been improved by some ad hoc measures, such as the Jordanian government’s decision to allow Iraqi children to attend public schools, but such changes do nothing to speed up the process of resettlement by foreign governments, or to bring increased stability to Iraq. One measure that would likely ease the strain on Iraqi families in Jordan, the provision of work permits, is met by universal condemnation by a government fearful of alienating a population facing high unemployment rates. Even the granting of official recognition is too much for the Jordanian government, who fear a repeat of the normalization of the Palestinian refugee population.

But aside from work, what most Sabeans hope most for is a way to leave Jordan, and to begin a new life in the US, Britain, Australia, or Sweden. Political forces have forced them out of Iraq, and political forces keep them in limbo, and so they continue to wait.

Published July 5, 2008 in the Daily Star, Beirut.