BY SARAH STEPHEN
A war on Iraq would create an unparalleled humanitarian crisis and generate a massive outflow of refugees, according to a confidential United Nations High Commission for Refugees document leaked in January.
The UNHCR document predicts 500,000 civilian injuries, an extension of the existing nutritional crisis and "the outbreak of diseases in epidemic if not pandemic proportions". It estimates that a war will generate one million Iraqi refugees.
The document notes the extreme vulnerability of the Iraqi population, a product of a decade of strictly enforced economic sanctions, which has left 16 million Iraqis (60% of the country's population) with "no other means with which to provide for essential requirements" than monthly government food rations.
Facing a massive 25% reduction in donor funds in 2002, the UNHCR fears it will not be able to provide relief for the humanitarian disaster that will result from a new war.
Many of the anticipated one million refugees will be forced to seek safety outside the countries bordering Iraq, a number of which are hostile to the presence of refugees. Jordan, Turkey and Kuwait have all indicated that they are not prepared to accept an influx of Iraqi refugees, and will close their borders.
As a result, many Iraqis will seek refuge further from home. Some of them will make the journey to Australia. Prime Minister John Howard's smug satisfaction at stopping the trickle of refugees to Australia last year, a result of increasingly brutal policies, will come to nothing.
As an active participant in the war, the Australian government will be helping to create the refugee crisis. Those of us who oppose a war on Iraq should also oppose the government's hypocrisy of condemning the victims of this war at the same time as it helps wage it.
It's not a coincidence that the majority of asylum seekers arriving on Australia's shores since 1998 have been from Iraq and Afghanistan, two of the most war-ravaged countries on the planet.
There are currently 4000 Iraqi refugees in Australia on temporary protection visas. That means they can't bring their families here, some of whom could be killed in the war. The government sent 674 Iraqi refugees to Nauru and PNG, in order to deny them access to the Australian legal system.
In his statement on Iraq to parliament on February 4, John Howard said: "Australia is home to several hundred thousand people of Middle Eastern background. We welcomed them, some of them refugees from Saddam Hussein's brutal regime, and we appreciate their contribution to our nation."
In reality, Howard and his minister for racism, Philip Ruddock, have spent the past three years consciously dehumanising Iraqi refugees. They have done this with a particular aim in mind. Determined to be part of the United States' efforts to reimpose Western domination of Iraq, Howard and his ministers are keenly aware that human solidarity is their enemy; that our ability to identify with and empathise with those suffering hardship and oppression in another part of the world limits the government's ability to win broad support for a war in which those same people will be injured and killed.
The "war on refugees" has played an indispensable role in conditioning ordinary Australians to accept the oppression and slaughter of Iraqi civilians as a regrettable but necessary consequence of war, because it has stereotyped refugees from the Middle East as "greedy", as "undeserving", as "queue-jumpers"; therefore not like us at all.
The war on refugees has relied heavily on lies — that refugees care nothing for their children and would throw them overboard to get to Australia; that refugees would sew their children's lips together to gain sympathy; that refugees would falsify their nationality, that refugees would appeal to the courts simply to stay longer in the "luxury" of detention.
These outrageous lies, and the media's persistent unwillingness to challenge the government on its allegations or give space to dissenting points of view, have helped shape the views of many Australians. If we are to win more people to the movement against the war, we must continue to challenge those views.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, February 12, 2003.
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