The “G nightmare:” Iraqi refugees seeking entry into U.S. must first return to Baghdad

 

February 25, 2007 -- According to the United Nations, as many as 2 million Iraqis have fled Iraq since the beginning of the Iraq War, many of them to surrounding countries like Syria and Jordan.  So far, the United States has only taken in 466 of them, and so the recent news that the Bush administration will admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees into the United States this year came as something of a welcome surprise to the international community, which has criticized the U.S. in the past for not shouldering its share of the burden.  “The United States and the international community can best help displaced Iraqis by quelling the violence in Iraq," said Paula Dobriansky, U.S. Undersecretary of State.  “At the same time, we have a responsibility to respond to the immediate needs of Iraqis who have fled violence and persecution.”

     

All of which sounds very cheerful, except for one thing.  On January 8, 2007, the U.S. State Department invalidated the older “S-series” Iraqi passport for travel to the U.S. because, according to the State Department’s website, it failed to meet “international security standards.”  Now any Iraqi refugee who wants to gain entrance into the United States – including those 7,000 whose visas the U.S. has just approved – has to obtain a new passport, called the “G-series.”  So how does your average war-weary Iraqi refugee stranded in Jordan or Syria who’s just been given the good news that his visa has been approved for entry into the United States obtain this brand-new “G-series” passport, you might ask? 

 

All he’s got to do is go back to Baghdad.

 

That’s right, it seems the people fleeing the war in Iraq are being asked to make just one last little trip back into the middle of the war-zone in order to obtain the means to flee the war.  Recently a reader of the Muckraker Report forwarded us an e-mail from a health and human rights worker in Amman named Cathy Breen, who knows several of the affected Iraqis personally.  Known locally as the “G nightmare,” the situation Breen describes is dire: Iraqis who have been waiting for up to a year to get into the United States are told in one breath that even though their visas to the U.S. have been approved, the Iraqi embassy in Jordan isn’t issuing the new passport and it can only be gotten in Baghdad.

 

“I heard that the passport from Baghdad can be obtained in just a few days if someone is able to pay $500, $750, or even $1,000,” writes Breen in her e-mail.  “Those who cannot pay, and go through the “normal” process, should count on a month's time to get the new “G” passport. The long lines at the Baghdad office are prime targets for bombs. It is no longer possible, someone said here the other day, to cross the city of Baghdad let alone travel the road from Baghdad to Amman. As if that weren't bad enough, if one is fortunate enough to survive the deadly road from Baghdad to Amman and have the “G” passport in hand, there is no guarantee whatsoever that they will be allowed to reenter Amman at the Jordan border. With no monitoring presence at the border, it depends entirely on the mood of the border authorities and arbitrary regulations.”

 

As Breen explains in her e-mail, asking people to return to Baghdad is like asking them to go back into a burning building.  The reports she receives from Baghdad, she says, are of ever increasing violence and bloodshed: car bombs, explosions, dead bodies in the streets.  And it’s not soldiers, or “insurgents,” that are being asked to return into this nightmare, but civilians, everyday normal Iraqi people.                  

 

This is a total outrage.  The Muckraker Report urges you to contact your elected officials immediately and demand that the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi government together figure out a way to issue these new passports at all Iraqi embassies worldwide.