Iraq exodus brought boom, but Jordan stems flow
Source: Reuters
(This is part of a special report on the exodus from Iraq) By Suleiman al-Khalidi AMMAN, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Abdul-Razzak al-Zobai strolls with his two daughters in Amman's glitzy Mecca Mall, enjoying the normality long absent from his native Baghdad. For three years the Iraqi dentist resisted leaving his country, but relentless sectarian fighting changed his mind. "Once you reach a level where it becomes impossible to go to work safely and or get food for your family, what's left?" asked the 43-year-old newcomer to the Jordanian capital. Zobai is from Iraq's once-dominant Sunni Arab minority, now the largest group among around 700,000 Iraqis who have fled to Jordan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. "I can breathe in Amman. In Baghdad I would go to sleep worrying that they will come after me," he said of Shi'ite Muslims bent on revenge for Sunni insurgent attacks. He recalled the daily gauntlet of police checkpoints in Shi'ite districts that lay between his work in Baghdad's Sunni neighbourhood of Adhamiya and his home in Amriya to the north. "I would commit my soul to Allah every time I went to work." Zobai is part of an Iraqi refugee exodus swelled by the cycle of sectarian killings set in motion after the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Earlier waves of Iraqis fled battles between U.S. troops and insurgents in western Sunni cities like Falluja, Haditha and Ramadi, joining wealthier compatriots already in Jordan. The first arrivals brought in billions of dollars, fuelling a business boom not seen since the 1991 Gulf War, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled Kuwait for safety in Jordan. Iraqi-driven demand for housing has driven up rents and real estate prices, sparking some resentment among Jordanians. FRIENDLY RECEPTION But the mostly Sunni Iraqis who have flooded into fellow Sunni Jordan have generally found a congenial sanctuary. Jordan's parliament hailed Saddam Hussein as a hero after his execution on Dec. 30. Some of the toppled Iraqi leader's family members had moved to Amman even before the invasion. Many middle-class Iraqis, as well as Shi'ite victims of persecution under Saddam, took refuge in Jordan in the 1990s when their country faced crippling U.N. sanctions and hardship. Saddam-era bureaucrats, secular Shi'ites and Iraqis who fear reprisals for working with the U.S. occupation have now created their own ambience in the newly cosmopolitan Jordanian capital. The U.N. agency for refugees says anywhere between half a million and one million Iraqis have fled to Jordan, the main destination along with Syria for those uprooted by the conflict. Few see prospects of any early return to the once-mixed quarters of Baghdad, now fractured on sectarian lines by Shi'ite and Sunni gunmen in a process that Sunnis say hits them hardest. "The Shi'ites can move to safe havens inside Baghdad protected by the (Shi'ite-dominated) government, but the Sunnis have no safe havens. This is why many are leaving Iraq in greater numbers," said Bashar al-Faidi, spokesman of the Muslim Clerics Association, an umbrella grouping of Sunni religious leaders, who has himself taken up temporary residence in Amman. Walid Jabouri, a foodstuffs trader, said Shi'ite militias had turned even hospitals into death traps for Sunnis. "Baghdad is no longer the city we belonged to," he said. "The religious fanatics running the Shi'ite death squads rule the streets and kill on a sectarian basis. I feel much safer here, until one day my city is liberated." TIGHTER CONTROLS Many Iraqi Sunnis find it easy to integrate in Jordan, where many people sympathise with the anti-U.S. insurgency and are hostile to a perceived rise of Shi'ite power across the region. But the increasingly anxious Jordanian authorities are now trying to stem the flow of new migrants. Many are turned back at the border and airports or cannot get residency permits. "The inability of many to get residency makes them feel immobile and insecure," said Rafiq Tschannen, Iraq chief of mission for the International Organisation for Migration. Iraq's highly skilled professionals have proved a boon for Jordanian universities and hospitals, but poorer and less qualified Iraqis find it hard to get jobs or residency rights. As their savings dwindle, many of the more deprived migrants live in fear of deportation. "I cannot go back to Baghdad. It's impossible because I fear for my life. The situation is very bad. We see no light at the end of the tunnel," said Salem Koubaisi, a mechanic.
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