wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Iraqi Christians in Jordan can't stay, can't leave

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8710 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05199
April 12, 2005

No exit

Iraqi Christians in Jordan can't stay, can't leave

by Alexa Smith

AMMAN, Jordan - Wafa Goussous takes a long, slow drag on her cigarette and
says, "It's exhausting." She's talking about trying to raise money to help
Christians who have left Iraq and are living - legally or not - in Jordan.

	They have no work permits. No chance to emigrate. No official refugee
status, which would make them eligible for international aid.

	Goussous, a coordinator for Action By Churches Together (ACT), the
relief arm of the World Council of Churches, watches warily as the Iraqi
population grows, becoming an ever-greater burden on the local church.

	Some Christians here have been waiting for immigrant visas for 10
years.

	Going back to Iraq isn't an option. Going abroad isn't as easy as it
sounds, even for those who have relatives in other countries who would
welcome them.

Goussous is wracking her brain about how to deal with the flood of Christians
who began leaving Iraq during the first Gulf War and are still crossing the
Jordanian border.

      Often they get stuck in Jordan, where they dream of beginning new lives
in Australia, Canada, Sweden or the United States, applying for visas over
and over.

	Many such families are desperate. They have no visas, no money, no
jobs, no medical care, no protection against being deported back to Iraq.
Often they have no rent money or food. 

	Yet the Iraqis are still arriving. The pace has picked up, in fact,
since last summer, when car bombs exploded near several Christian churches.

	No agency is specifically helping Christians, who want to stay "under
the radar" lest Jordanian authorities question their legal status. Many
receive small sums from relatives abroad and have no other income.

	"As local churches, we cannot afford this," Goussous says, noting
that most Christian Iraqis turn to local congregations for emotional and
financial suppor

	"People need their daily bread," she says, and a faithful Christian
cannot but try to provide it.

	"Because I am a Christian and she is a Christian, we feel for each
other," she says. "Say that a woman comes with a child. I take out whatever
money I have on hand. ...

	"Families may come asking to sleep in the church. What are church
leaders to do - say, 'Go sleep in the street'?"

	Individual congregations are feeling the strain.

	The Jordanian government can't say how many Iraqis live in Jordan.
Estimates vary from 300,000 to 500,000. Most relief workers say the higher
numbers are closer to reality. 

	The United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) says that only
about 14,000 Iraqis have temporary legal protection against being sent back
to Iraq. And only 850 are officially registered as refugees, to be resettled
elsewhere - and all were classified before the current U.S. invasion.

	Jordan has absorbed large refugee populations in the past, notably in
1948 and 1967. Another Palestinian diaspora came in 1991, when the Saudi and
Kuwaiti governments began evicting Palestinians after the Palestinian
Authority sided with the Saddam Hussein regime in the Gulf War.

	Jordan offered citizenship to Palestinian refugees in the 1960s, but
that is no longer the case. Interior Ministry officials told the Presbyterian
News Service that the government is relatively hospitable now because Iraq is
plagued by violence. The assumption is that, when the country stabilizes,
most Iraqis who haven't emigrated overseas will go back home.

	The director of the Jordan Office of the International Catholic
Migration Commission, Susan Bakler, throws up her hands at the discrepancies
in numbers. "Three hundred thousand. Five hundred thousand. Nobody knows. And
that 200,000 difference is a big one."

	Congregations do keep tabs on families asking for blankets, heaters,
food and money for rent, medical care or tuition.

	About 800 families - 4,000 people - come regularly for help and for a
sense of community to St. Ephraim's Syrian Orthodox Church, which is
virtually carved into the rocky hillside of Amman's Ashrafieh District. At
St. Ephraim's they can listen to the ancient liturgy in Assyrian, an old
language derived from Aramaic. Locals claim Assyrian is the language closest
to that spoken by Jesus.

	"It's exhausting; and sometimes frustrating," says George Hazou, a
layman involved in outreach at St. Ephraim's who is raising money so that the
church may build a community center for the Iraqi diaspora. "You feel like
there is this big need, this big demand."

	Hazou turns to wealthy Jordanian businessmen for monthly
contributions of $1,000 to 2,000 to help 800 Iraqi families get by. He's also
networking with non-governmental organizations that sometimes can do what the
church cannot.

	Father Ibrahim Dabbor figures that 200 to 230 families regularly turn
to the Presentation of the Lord Greek Orthodox Church in an affluent Amman
suburb. The women's group solicits money and groceries amounting to about $50
per family per month.

	"The situation of these people is very critical," Dabbor says. "And
we support as much as we can. Is it a strain? Yes. But what to do?"

	Margaret Khbithyo, 43, asks herself that question every day.

	She has lived in Jordan with her elderly parents for almost 10 years.
They couldn't make it without the money sent by Margaret's brothers and
sisters in Australia and New Zealand. They cannot join them there because
they can't get immigrant visas.

	Khbithyo says she applied five years ago and completed the required
medical checkup in 2000. 

	"I ask. They say, 'Wait. Wait,'" she says, eyes pooling with tears.
"I get no details."

	She worked as a secretary in Iraq, but left during the Gulf War.
Since then, she hasn't worked, because she isn't eligible for a Jordanian
work permit. "From 1990 I've done nothing," she says.

	Hazou says her story is all too familiar.

	"Ultimately home is not in Iraq and it's not in Jordan," he says.
"Even if things settle down in Iraq, they've sold their houses and their
personal belongings. Even if it is a peaceful situation, they have to start
from scratch, start a new way of life."

	Many of the displaced Christians want to get out, not go back.

	"These people are good Christians. Even with all the hardships, they
still have their Christian faith, the belief that one day things will clear
up," Hazou says. "They depend on that faith more than anything else, that
sooner or later God will take care of them."

	In the meantime, they're knocking on church doors - and coming to
Goussous at the ACT office. She's trying to address the problem
programmatically, and says she seldom intervenes in individual cases.

	"If once I make an exception, then the news spreads," she says. "I
have to be very careful. If I help one individual, there will be 100 people
at the door. ...

	"Our heart here is seriously desiring to assist."

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