The Outrage O'The Day

Colin Powell's invocation of the Pottery Barn Rule in the ramp up to our Iraqui adventure comes to mind in this latest revelation of the disastrous consequences of our "nation building." We have broken Iraq and we now own it. In this AM's local fishwrap, there was a picture of an Iraqi man covering the corpse of his three-year-old nephew. The tyke was the victim of a death squad. To quote Don Imus, this war was fomented by "war criminals." In the meantime, nothing stops the madness of sectarian violence, jihadist violence, and mercenary violence. If this is (fair & balanced) despair, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Refugees? What Refugees?
By Roger Cohen

Malmo, Sweden

A 16-day overland odyssey has brought Mokaled Gamil, a former Iraqi Army officer, to this southern Swedish town, and what he fears now more than anything is resettlement north of the Arctic Circle in some snow-bound place that will ice over his Mesopotamian blood.

“Please, not far north,” he says in passable English, addressing Oskar Ekblad, an official from the Swedish Migration Board. “Too cold.”

Even by the fantastic standards of the Iraq war, the scene is bizarre: Gamil, a 45-year-old ex-colonel from an ex-army, stands outside a hostel full of stained mattresses and stunned Iraqis begging a decent Swede not to be dispatched to some remote reindeer-rich refuge.

“Iraqis are destined to begin their lives again at 45,” Gamil, a Sunni who has fled Baghdad’s Shiite militia, says with a gloomy matter-of-factness worthy of Strindberg.

Many are restarting in Sweden. Between January and August this year, Sweden took in 12,259 Iraqis fleeing their decomposing country. It expects 20,000 for all of 2007. By contrast, in the same January-August period, the United States admitted 685 refugees, according to State Department figures.

The numbers bear closer scrutiny. In January, Sweden admitted 1,500 Iraqis, compared to 15 that entered the United States. In April, the respective numbers were 1,421 and 1; in May, 1,367 and 1; and in August 1,469 and 529.

True, the Iraqis in Sweden are asylum-seekers, whereas those reaching these shores have refugee status conferred by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. But the numbers — representing the bulk of the Iraqis getting into a country of nine million and another of 300 million — are no less of an indictment for that.

When Tobias Billstrom, the migration minister, says, “Yes, of course the United States should do more,” you can feel his indignation about to erupt like milk boiling over. He notes that given the huge population difference, Sweden’s intake of Iraqis “is the equivalent of the U.S. taking in about 500,000 refugees.”

Of all the Iraq war scandals, America’s failure to do more for refugees, including thousands who put their lives at risk for the U.S., stands out for its moral bankruptcy. Last time I checked, Sweden did not invade Iraq. Its generosity shames President Bush’s fear-infused nation.

I know, the U.S. is showering aid (more than $122 million in 2007) on Iraq’s neighbors to help more than two million fleeing Iraqis. It set up a refugee task force in February and, when that faltered, appointed two refugee czars this month.

“We want people engaged in this 24/7, breaking down barriers and expeditiously helping the refugees,” Paula Dobriansky, the under secretary of state for democracy and global affairs, told me. “We have a moral obligation, and especially to those who have worked at our embassy.”

A commitment has been made to process 7,000 refugees in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. Visas for 500 Iraqis a year who worked for the U.S. have been promised. But these are velleities. Concern has been unmatched by results. Bush has never addressed the issue, an example of his Green Zone politics: shut out ugly reality and with luck it will vanish.

An aggressive American intake of refugees would suggest that their quick return to Iraq is improbable: that smacks too much of failure for Bush. Moreover, you have to scrutinize refugees from countries “infiltrated by large numbers of terrorists,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff opined recently.

The result has been “major bottlenecks,” in the words of a leaked cable from the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker. Instead of the 7,000 Iraqi refugees supposed to get here this fiscal year, perhaps 1,600 will.

“The numbers are totally embarrassing,” says Kirk Johnson, who worked for the United States Agency for International Development in Iraq. “We can’t recognize a moral imperative any more.”

Imperative is right. People who risked their lives for America are dying or being terrorized because of craven U.S. lethargy. Others are in limbo. Bush now says “Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.” That’s too glib; one may be waiting to be saved.

The I-told-you-so phase of the Iraq invasion is thankfully ending. What is needed now is consensus on American responsibility. That starts with a more open door to Iraqis in flight. Mr. President, say something.

Gamil lost his job when the army was disbanded. He worked sporadically as a translator. But when threats came — as a Sunni ex-officer he was an obvious target to Shiite militias — “I had to save my life and my wife’s.”

Sweden will give him a lawyer to argue his asylum case. Ekblad says the “overwhelming majority” are approved. Refugees then get a permanent resident permit leading to possible citizenship in five years. “Our costs are huge, and we’d like to see more burden-sharing,” he says.

Burden sharing! How about guts? Swedes are polite to a fault.

Roger Cohen, who became the The International Herald Tribune's first editor-at-large in 2006, began writing an Op-Ed column for the paper in May 2007. He had started his Globalist column on the IHT news pages in January 2004. At the same time, he became The New York Times's International Writer-at-Large. Mr. Cohen had been foreign editor for The New York Times since March 2002. He became deputy foreign editor in August 2001 and acting foreign editor on September 11, 2001.

Previously, Mr. Cohen had been bureau chief of the newspaper's Berlin bureau since September 1998. He was a correspondent in its Paris bureau from June 1995 until August 1998, The Times's Balkan bureau chief based in Zagreb from April 1994 until June 1995, and the newspaper's European economic correspondent based in Paris from January 1992 to April 1994. Before that, he was a media reporter, the position he took on joining The Times in January 1990.

Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. In 1983, he opened the Wall Street Journal/Europe office in Rome as chief correspondent, covering Italy and the East Mediterranean, and reporting from Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon. In 1987, he opened the Journal's office in Rio de Janeiro as chief correspondent/South America, covering Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and Venezuela.

From 1979 until 1983, Mr. Cohen was a foreign correspondent for Reuters. During that time he was based in London, Brussels and then Rome, reporting on the European Community, NATO, Belgium, Italy and the Vatican.

From 1977 until 1979, Mr. Cohen was a freelance journalist based in Paris. He is co-founder of Speakeasy, a newspaper for students learning English, launched in 1978 by Fernand Nathan, the French publisher.

Mr. Cohen has written "Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo," an account of the wars of Yugoslavia's destruction published by Random House (1998), and co-written a biography of General Norman Schwarzkopf, "In the Eye of the Storm," published by Farrar Straus & Giroux (1991). His third book, "Soldiers and Slaves: American POWs Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble" was published in April, 2005, by Alfred A. Knopf.

In 2001, Mr. Cohen won the Peter Weitz Prize from the German Marshall Fund for dispatches from Europe, an Overseas Press Club citation for a series on immigration, and the Arthur F. Burns Prize from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany for commentary on German-American relations. He has been awarded the Joe Alex Morris lectureship for distinguished foreign correspondence by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and served as Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. In 1999, Mr. Cohen was awarded the Overseas Press Club Citation for Excellence in the books category for "Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo," and in 1995 he won the Overseas Press Club of America Burger Human Rights Award for his investigation of torture and murder at a Serb-run Bosnian concentration camp. He received the Overseas Press Club of America Citation of Excellence for coverage of Third World Debt in 1987, and the Inter-American Press Association "Tom Wallace" Award for feature writing in 1989.

Born in London, England, on August 2, 1955, Mr. Cohen received an M.A. degree in History and French from Oxford University in 1977.

Copyright © 2007 The New York Times Company

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