This is a blog entry I wrote in April for a blog Max was writing for (I ghostwrote a few entries) about Iraqi refugees in Cairo. I'm posting it here in solidarity with the work of Bloggers Unite and Refugees United (click on the image their site). I met the guys who started Refugees United while I was in Cairo, and they do really great work.
"Oh, I don't plan on staying for long..."
“In Iraq, I was a pharmacist,” the middle-aged Iraqi woman sitting before me said in perfect English. “I had a good job, a good home. Here I have nothing. Its difficult to even find work cleaning houses.”
She isn’t exaggerating, and her story is, unfortunately, not exceptional. Life is hard for a refugee in Egypt. On an official level, there are laws that restrict refugees and asylum seekers of all nationalities from obtaining work permits, and make school enrollment for children and continuing education for adults extremely difficult. On top of this, refugees and Egyptians alike struggle with a host of problems connected to development, including everything from access to adequate medical care to police protection to coherent and consistent governmental policies regarding many aspects of daily life (not the least of which is asylum and refugee rights).
Most of the approximately 150,000 Iraqis in Egypt did not arrive with the intention of seeking asylum and becoming refugees. In fact, only about 10,000 families have registered with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Many will tell you that they came to Cairo to wait out the war, hoping to be able to return home soon. Others know that they will never return home and came to Cairo as a pit stop on the road to resettlement in the West. While their reasons vary, most choose Egypt over other countries in the region because their Iraqi dinars will stretch farther here due to the relatively low cost of living. They sold their material possessions – businesses, cars, homes – before leaving Iraq in order to bring their savings with them. Yet, as funds dwindle, they are forced to rely more and more heavily on remittances sent from relatives still in Iraq or abroad. To make matters worse, most families underestimate how long they’ll be in Egypt and quickly blow through their funds.
But what is one to do once all of the money in the bank has been spent? Find a job?
This, regrettably, is not an option. “WORK IS NOT PERMITTED” is prominently stamped on every refugee’s permanent residency visa. Thus, refugees are forced to work in the informal market, most often as laborers and domestic workers. For the predominantly highly educated, highly skilled, middle-class Iraqis who previously held professional jobs, this is anathema. But even for the scores of Iraqis who have spent all of their savings and have no choice but to settle for working as menial labor, jobs are hard to come by in a country where unemployment is officially recorded as 10%, but estimated as 20% by academic and non-governmental studies.
Many Iraqis also come to Egypt hoping that as fellow Arabs, they will be welcomed here and feel somewhat at home. The reality is quite different. Iraqis face a large degree of hostility from their Egyptian neighbors, who believe them to be wealthy trespassers, here to take their jobs and drive up the prices of rent. In Cairo specifically, a city with the infrastructure to accommodate only a few million people but with a population of 18 million, resources are scarce. Egyptians have a hard enough time competing with each other in the job and housing market, let alone with Iraqis and other refugees.
Iraqis also are often disheartened when they realize how culturally dissimilar Egypt is from Iraq. An Iraqi man I met told me of an incident when four bearded men from his neighborhood knocked on his door and told his wife that she must start wearing the hijab. “In Iraq, women choose whether they want to wear the veil or not,” the man said, visibly confounded. “My wife has never had troubles such as this back home. We never thought it would be like this here. Customs here are so different.”
To make matters worse, the Egyptian government has imposed several restrictions specifically against Iraqis. For one, Iraqi children aren’t allowed to attend public schools. Unlike Sudanese, Libyans, and Jordanians who are permitted to enroll in Egyptian public schools (if they can jump through all the bureaucratic hoops), and some Somalis who have managed to enroll themselves despite the challenges, Iraqis have been completely prohibited from public education. Iraqi parents who want to enroll their children in school only have private schooling as an option. This recourse, however, often proves to be prohibitively expensive.
The Egyptian government also works to unofficially prohibit Iraqis from convening and creating community organizations. This prohibition on convening and organizing greatly hinders the Iraqi community, which has been divided and scattered since its relatively recent arrival in Egypt. Iraqis have been prevented from creating informal schools for their children and community associations to act as centers for information, resources, services, and social events. In addition, as predominantly Shiite Muslims, Iraqis are not allowed to organize their own mosques in this largely Sunni nation. This lack of community organization and leadership is also a barrier for aid workers and international organizations that often get to know the refugee population through their community leadership. With no community organization and leadership among the Iraqis, these international organizations have difficulty assessing the resources and needs of the Iraqi population.
In contrast, other refugee populations in Cairo have formed community organizations to help overcome the challenges of daily life. These organizations reflect the community’s cultural values and social structures back home. The Sudanese in particular, who have been a well established community in Egypt for years, have an extensive network of community support, with organizations in several parts of the city. The Ethiopian community convenes at certain churches in Cairo, while the Somalis tend to gather at certain mosques. These community support systems provide vital lifelines for refugees who have no other forms of support.
It is not only outside constraints that have limited the development of the Iraqi refugee community; the degree of distrust and suspicion between community members is also a divisive force. While they have all fled Iraq, they have done so for different reasons: some worked with the US, the occupation forces, and the current Iraqi government, others were employees of the former Iraqi regime, and others caught in the complicated mess of militias, criminal gangs, and other groups vying for control of Iraqi cities. And aside from political allegiances, the slew of ethno-religious tensions – fed by ongoing news of violence from home -- also run high. Even if the Egyptian government permitted Iraqis to organize, their intense internal divisions could very well keep them apart.
In the coming months, the number of Iraqis in Egypt is sure to increase, given that Jordan and Syria have effectively closed their borders to Iraqi refugees last year despite the fact that an estimated 50,000 to 70,000 Iraqis continue to be displaced each month. Many Iraqis – bitterly disappointed by life in Egypt and convinced that the situation back home will not improve in the near future -- ardently hope to be resettled to third countries such as the US, Canada, and Sweden. This hope is, at best, a long shot. The UNHCR estimates that 5 million Iraqis have been displaced thus far, and in comparison, the number of Iraqis that are actually resettled is miniscule. In 2007, the US committed to accepting 7,000 Iraqi refugees by the end of the fiscal year, but only 1,608 have actually been admitted. Similarly, the US has committed to accepting 12,000 Iraqis in 2008, but its implementation continues to fall short of its projections. Sweden has thus far been the most generous in accepting Iraqi refugees, their numbers figuring in the thousands for 2007. However, compared to the millions of Iraqis displaced, this is still a mere drop in the bucket.
As a result, the overwhelming majority of Iraqis are left in limbo, trapped in Egypt without real possibilities for work and integration, unable to return home to Iraq, and with little chance of being resettled to a Western country where they can build a new life. This aspect of the war, while lacking the drama of roadside bombs and armed militias, has enormous consequences not only for the tenuous stability of Egypt and other host countries, but also for the future of Iraq.
