Iraqi Refugees in Egypt

“If you need help with it, just ask Abu Layla,” Amir told me.

Later, responding to a different question, he added, “Abu Layla should know where it is.”

And even later, “When you’re finished, put it in Abu Layla’s box."

All of which would have been helpful information, but I didn’t know who Abu Layla was. (By the way, names have been changed because, who knows?) I was too embarassed to ask, since everyone else seemed to know. However, by the end of the day I needed to know and approached our Iraqi office manager, Malik. "Malik, Amir keeps talking about Abu Layla. Who is that?"

The office manager is a stout, balding man who always dresses in trousers and an ironed polo shirt and sports a pair of large, gold-framed engineer-style glasses that I secretly covet. They have thick lenses and are super-retro-cool. They look like those worn by Walt in “Breaking Bad.” I thought about all of this as he grinned mischievously. “Jonathan,” he put a hand on my shoulder and laughed good-naturedly, “Abu Layla is me."

And so I had another embarassing lesson in Arabic culture. “Abu Shada” means father of Shada, and Iraqi adults are often called with reference to their first-born children.

Malik is a helpful and attentive office manager, and genial (he didn’t laugh at me too much). He is also a refugee from Iraq (most of the staff at the office are refugees). He speaks very good English, which has been common with my Iraqi clients, though with none of my African clients. And, of course, Iraqis speak Arabic, while Somalis, Ethiopians, and Eritreans do not (Sudanese do, for the most part).

Some of these Iraqi refugees government jobs and perhaps even joined the Ba’ath Party (which was often necessary to get a promotion if you worked for the government), which made them targets after Saddam Hussein’s government collapsed under the weight of U.S. bombs. Others aided or worked for American or Multi-National Forces, or translated for a U.S. media company, and were endangered because of their association with Westerners. Most are well-educated, middle-class folks, or at least they were back home. Which is to say that, for the most part, they have an easier time than other refugees in Egypt, but their lives here might be a far cry from what they had in Iraq. (This also means that Iraq is losing a lot of its educated professionals.

Well over two million Iraqis have fled their country since Hussein was deposed in 2003, and many others have been displaced internally. Of those who left, many have gone to Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. A smaller number went to Egypt, but this is a still a lot of people: there are estimates of 150,000 as of September 2008, and it’s surely increased since then. I’ve heard reports of people returning; after all, it’s not nearly as dangerous as it was a few years back. But violence continues in Iraq (28 people, including an MP, were killed at a mosque bombing on Saturday) and for many of these refugees, it is not safe to go back now.

Even for those with a middle-class background, being a foreigner is difficult in Egyt. For the most part, Iraqis are not legally permitted to work. Doctors, engineers, it makes no difference. They cannot enroll in public schools, so expensive private institutions are their only option. Many are drawing from dwindling savings accounts. Some have substantial government pensions, but Egypt does not allow these accounts to be transferred in-country, unlike the policies of Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. Many feel unwelcome in Egypt. And the revolution, by creating instability and by undermining the authority of the police, has unnerved many of the Iraqis I’ve spoken to. This may be why, according to the accounts I’ve heard, the number of Iraqis applying for resettlement is increasing.

Many apply to the quote-unquote normal refugee resettlement program of the UNHCR; others apply directly to a country’s immigration authority, for instance if they have a close relative who lives there and is willing to sponsor them. But those who fled Iraq because they worked with Americans are eligible to apply to the Direct Access Program (DAP). DAP is supposed to make it easier for these Iraqis to apply for resettlement to the US, for instance by not requiring a referral from the UNHCR or other agency. Iraqis who worked with Americans for more than one year (and were thusly endangered and had to flee, of course) can also apply for a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV).

These are very different than the UNHCR resettlement mechanism. Eligibility for the UNHCR program is based on vulnerability in the country of refuge, whereas DAP and SIV criteria don’t address that at all. They’re almost merit-based programs; the key to assembling an application is getting proof that the applicant did in fact work for the American military, or USAID, or whoever. Of course, they must have been targeted because of this association, as well, but that's not usually hard to prove. Stories of black Xs painted on doors and bullets in envelopes are all too common.

The process itself is fairly complex, which is one reason that many have not applied. Some (by now outdated, surely) stats I read reported that only 20,000 applications had been received, though 150,000 Iraqis are eligible for either DAP or SIV. Of those 20,000, only 4,500 or so had been resettled. There is a huge backlog of SIV applications waiting on approval from the US Chief of Mission; this step alone often takes more than a year. Both DAP and SIV require the applicant to provide documentation of their employment by USG or other eligible organizations, which they may not have. (In some cases, the USG insists on copies of contracts to which it is itself a party! The idea that it doesn’t have a copy already is unsettling.) These and other bureaucratic issues seem mundane enough, but since this is a program for people who may still be in mortal danger, such delays are very important. Consider that some people are applying while still in Iraq, where simply approaching the US Embassy in the Green Zone might not be safe. NYT ran an article about delays in the SIV program earlier this month, though I don’t think this issue gets a lot of media attention on the whole.

Yes, people actually flee TO Egypt

By 10 AM it’s hot enough that my forehead is shiny with sweat after walking just a couple of blocks. Why did I come to Egypt during the summer?, I ask myself for the umpteenth time. The Cairene sun is already high in the sky, and Ramsis Street is thick with traffic. Cairo is notorious for its traffic - too many cars, too few rules - but from my pedestrian’s perspective, the more jammed the better. It’s easier to zig-zag between cars that are inching, rather than roaring, down the road.

It’s relatively quiet behind the dusty iron gates of St. Andrews Refugee Services. There’s no sign, but the church steeple is visible from the street. There’s another church building across the way, however, and that’s where I was directed my first day, when all I could do to ask for directions was to make a cross with my fingers. I can still hear the din of traffic and the shouts from the informal microbus station across the street, the drivers yelling out their destinations to passersby. But a few trees - there are too few trees in downtown Cairo - shield the courtyard somewhat from the sun and the sound. In any event, as soon as I’m inside the small office, I plop myself directly under the air conditioner, the buzz of which drowns out everything else. I wasn’t in the office during the last protest outside the High Court building, which is just across the square, Midan el-Esaaf, but if I was, I might not have heard it.

I’ve arrived just as our office officially opens. Two Iraqi staff are checking over the day’s schedule and making some tea, spooning heaps of sugar into the small glasses of Lipton. I join them, enjoying the emptiness of the office. Soon the small space will be packed: interns hunched over laptops or interviewing clients, interpreters translating documents on the table in the tiny kitchen, and computer power cables everywhere. Several times a day we play a version of musical chairs, shuffling between tables when someone has an appointment with a client.

The office has been busier than usual, I've been told. Things shut down for a while during the revolution. Even when there weren’t clouds of tear gas floating by, the unstable situation counseled against asking clients to make the trek into Downtown. Intake request forms are still piled high, and despite the pace of work we haven’t seemed make much of a dent.

It’s not clear if the flow of new refugees entering Egypt slowed down due to the revolution (even someone fleeing violence in Sudan, for instance, might think twice about going to Cairo when there are tanks in the streets). It’s not clear how many refugees there are in Egypt, for that matter; the figure changes from one report to another. The UN says 50,000, others say 200,000. Sudanese comprise a large portion, as well as Somalis, Ethiopians, Eritreans, and Iraqis. My own clients are Somali and Iraqi, as it happens. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m working at the Resettlement Legal Assistance Project (RLAP) at St. Andrew’s Refugee Services. St. Andrew’s has been around for a while and has several programs, including a school teaching a Sudanese curriculum, and a psychosocial services office. RLAP is a much younger entity. It began in 2008 as the Iraqi Information Office, and dealt specifically with the growing number of Iraqis who had fled the violence in their home country. Presently, the client base is broader and the mission is more focused. RLAP assists refugees in Egypt - from any country - to apply for resettlement to a third country (meaning, neither their country of origin nor Egypt).

“Refugee” is a term of art referring to someone who fled their country of domicile because of a well-founded fear of persecution based on their membership in at least one of five enumerated categories: race, religion, national origin, social group, and political opinion. Ideally, having fled they can enjoy a quote-unquote “durable solution,” but this is not always the case.

Cairo is a big, crowded city - the "greater metropolitan area" holds over 15 million - with high unemployment and poverty rates. I don’t want to imagine what would happen were the government to discontinue its long-standing subsidies on staple products - rice, cooking oil, petrol, and so forth. Being poor in Cairo, and most refugees in Cairo - excluding the Iraqis, who I’ll discuss more in another post - are poor, is tough. It’s even tougher if you’re seen and treated as an outsider, don’t have many legal rights, and don’t speak Arabic (while Sudanese speak Arabic, many Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans do not).

In general, refugees in Egypt cannot work legally (and given the unemployment figures, it would be hard to find a job anyway), so are dependent on disbursements from Caritas and other organizations to pay for rent and groceries. They can’t go to public school (Egypt is signatory to the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, but exempted itself from the requirement to provide elementary education same as nationals), and neither do most have the means to pay for private education. Couple this with the antipathy many refugees face on the streets of Cairo, and it’s no mystery why many hope to live in the U.S. or Canada or Sweden, or whichever country will have them.

Most are not resettled. Applications go to the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees), which evaluates them and calls in some applicants for interviews, a number of which may eventually be referred for resettlement. The UN's criteria require that an applicant's situation be particularly bad (viz, not a "durable solution") in certain defined ways: a need for legal or physical protection, suffering from the lingering effects of violence or torture in your country of origin, a serious medical condition that cannot be treated in the present location, and so forth. The list seemed fairly comprehensive to my eyes when I first read it in preparation for this summer. I hadn't worked on refugee issues before, so I didn’t know what the list doesn’t cover, nor how large the gap is between the words in the UNHCR resettlement handbook and the reality. If you’re a Somali woman who is verbally, even physically harassed by men on the street every time you leave your apartment, you’re probably not eligible. If you come home late one night and are raped, you might have a chance, but the odds aren't good. If you decide to report that rape to the police and they refuse to help you, tell you it was your own fault, and throw you out of the station, you’ll have an even better shot. Before that, the resettlement door is closed to you.

The bar is set pretty high. Only 17 countries allow refugees to be resettled within their borders, though a large proportion - somewhere around 75%, though it varies year to year - go to a single nation: the United States. Resettling refugees who are often destitute (having fled their homes and possessions) and in need of significant assistance to acclimate to a different culture and language, is a financial burden as well as a political one, and there’s little pressure to accept more. The UNHCR estimates that this year it will only consider 3,600 refugees in Egypt for resettlement, and will probably only provide a resettlement referral for 900.

In this situation, a vital part of my job has been to quickly assess the strength of a potential client’s case and, sadly, to turn them away if they don’t have a shot. The office is small and more intake requests are added to the pile every day. Meanwhile, the violence that drove people from their homes in the first place continues. War did not end with the birth of South Sudan, and people are still hiding out in caves in the Nuba Mountains to avoid the northern government’s bombing sorties. Somalia’s officially recognized government controls only a few square blocks of Mogadishu, while militias hold sway in the rest of the country. The conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains unresolved. Iraq is shaken by more bombings all too often. For most refugees in Egypt, it will not be safe to return in the foreseeable future. Given the odds for resettlement, the vast majority must make Cairo their home for a long time to come.

Those whose story might fit into the categories recognized by the UN are taken on as clients. My job has been to interview those clients, teasing out their histories, and then write them up in a way that will persuade the UN of their eligibility. This is easier said than done, especially given the cultural and linguistic differences between myself and the clients. I must interview all of my African clients through an interpreter, and if the testimony differs from what the client says if they're called in for an interview, they could be deemed unbelievable by UN interviewers trained to sniff out fraudulent applicants. A lot of details are needed to write a compelling application, so experiences and events are rehashed several times, and sometimes new information is gleaned each time. Sometimes the story is revised in the retelling, which makes me nervous even if the new information strengthens the client's case.


Several more staff have arrived by now, and I’ve moved my computer once already to cede my prime real estate under the aircon to someone with a client. Soon one of my own clients will be here to review her testimony and verify the timeline of atrocities that makes her case viable, and I’ll need to shoo away my fellow interns, whose laptops now share the small table with mine. Back to work.