The UN had only received three per cent of around $58 million it needed for what it calls ‘early recovery’ projects – the provision of food as well as the restoration of schools, hospitals and water supply systems, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Pakistan Martin Mogwanja told a press conference. The United Nations estimated more than two-thirds of the 2.7 million displaced by the conflict had gone home. The estimate is the highest yet, and based on data provided by the government.
(...) ‘Eighty per cent of the people surveyed ... are of the opinion they would not be able to survive without any assistance in the return areas for more than two weeks,’ said Mr Mogwanja.

So the effects of Obama's drone war are not limited to the few houses destroyed here and there. The attacks have spawned, or greatly added to, a humanitarian catastrophe that remains largely hidden from the world -- and certainly from the well-wadded Western "liberals" who cheer Obama's savvy toughness in the "good war" on the Af-Pak front. As The Times reports, almost a million people have been driven from their homes in Pakistan's Tribal Areas to escape the American drones, and the bombs of Washington's Pakistani proxies:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is expanding its relief operation to assist those fleeing fighting, which the world body estimates currently stands at 450,000 people, but could climb to 600,000 shortly, in north west Pakistan, the UN agency said.

fisk in lebanon:
The Lebanese soldiers claim they try never to hurt civilians (I can think of another army which says that!), but did so many Palestinians have to be killed or wounded for the crimes of a few, some - we do not know how many - not even from "Palestine" but from Syria or Yemen or Saudi Arabia? Just behind me was the checkpoint where the gunmen of Chaker el-Absi (born Jericho 1955, later a MiG pilot in Libya, according to his brother in Jordan) butchered four soldiers at the weekend, slitting their throats and leaving their severed heads on the road.
(...) But victimhood - and let us not doubt the integrity or the dignity of that victimhood - has become almost a pit for the Palestinians, into which they have fallen. The catastrophe of their eviction and flight from Palestine in 1948, their near-destruction in the Lebanese civil war, their cruel suffering at the hands of Israeli invaders - the massacre of Sabra and Chatila in 1982 where 1,700 were slaughtered - and now this, have sealed these people into a permanent prison of suffering.

fisk on clashes in lebanon's refugee camps:
And then comes the crackle-crackle of rifle fire and a shoal of bullets drifts out of the camp. A Lebanese army tank fires a shell in return and we feel the faint shock wave from the camp. How many are dead? We don’t know. How many are wounded? The Red Cross cannot yet enter to find out. We are back at another of those tragic Lebanese stage shows: the siege of Palestinians.
(...) Only this time, of course, we have Sunni Muslim fighters in the camp, in many cases shooting at Sunni Muslim soldiers who are standing in a Sunni Muslim village. It was a Lebanese colleague who seemed to put his finger on it all. “Syria is showing that Lebanon doesn’t have to be Christians versus Muslims or Shia versus Sunnis,” he said. “It can be Sunnis versus Sunnis. And the Lebanese army can’t storm into Nahr el-Bared. That would be a step far greater than this government can take.”
(...) And there is the rub. To get at the Sunni Fatah al-Islam, the army has to enter the camp. So the group remains, as potent as it was on Sunday when it staged its mini-revolution in Tripoli and ended up with its dead fighters burning in blazing apartment blocks and 23 dead soldiers and policemen on the streets.

a clown in iraq:
There, with no anaesthetic and where bags of blood were kept in a fridge and warmed up under the hot tap in a bathroom, a young boy was brought in. "He had been shot in the head. His family had been trying to get into the car to flee and they [US soldiers] shot him. I think they had just been told to shoot at anyone. Certainly they had been told that ambulances had been carrying weapons and I know from my own experience that they were shooting at ambulances." Wilding says she was in an ambulance on their way to get to a pregnant woman who had gone into labour too soon, when marines shot at the ambulance, through the windscreen. A tyre was shot out and the ambulance driver screeched back in reverse to the hospital. With the ambulance out of action, they never reached the woman.
(...) "I had read a lot about it but it can't prepare you for the reality. There were consumer goods on the street, but there were things you just couldn't get, such as medicine. You could buy fresh fruit but it was way beyond most people's income. A lot of people were completely dependent on the food ration, and they would sell part of their food ration to buy medicines or to pay for bus fares. Going into the hospitals, I knew I was going to see a lot of children who were desperately ill, but I don't think you can prepare for what it feels like when you're there. A child went into a coma in front of us. He had leukaemia and the doctor said they just didn't have enough platelet bags to treat him. His mother was pinching his cheek and slapping his face, trying to wake him up and howling with grief. There was this stick-thin nine-month-old baby and her body was just the shape of her skeleton. You could hear her rattling breathing."
(...) She decided to return there because she felt it was important that the voices of ordinary Iraqis were heard above the din of cruise missiles, cluster bombs and army and political rhetoric. "The mainstream news focused primarily on what was being said by military and political figures and not on what Iraqi people were saying, partly because it was so difficult for journalists to hear them. I was just writing about what happened day to day and putting it out on the internet." Her blog started out quite small, but soon thousands of people all over the world were reading it.
(...) I think that's important. You can't talk about democracy and 'Do you agree with the war or not, did we do the right thing?' if you don't know what we actually did and what actually happened to people. I was just in one city and I talked to a fraction of the people who were affected but still, I think I was able to hear and then tell a lot of people's stories. The number of people who read the blog and responded to it backed that up."
(...) The schools were in an appalling state, but nothing could prepare her for the squatter camps, crammed full of displaced families. They weren't classed as refugees because they were still in their own country and they did not receive aid. In one camp, 125 families were living without adequate food and water, shelter and medical care. There was no sewerage system. A two-month-old girl died because of the cold and a four-year-old boy had his legs badly burned from the open paraffin stove his family used in their shack built of breezeblocks and canvas; with no medical care, he lay there with his legs oozing pus and blood and riddled with infections. A young man had his fingers blown off because he would take bullets apart to sell the tiny bits of scrap metal.
(...) "I was angry that there was all this money - the planes, bombs, guns, the contracts that were given to Halliburton - going to people who didn't need it. There were these children dying for lack of blankets and basic medicine and shelter," says Wilding, her voice rising with fury. "They were living around open sewers, without anything. How could you not be angry? They was always so much need and so little you could do that I was never thinking, 'I'm so clever, look what I've done.' It was always, 'Is that all you did?' People were always asking me to help on a more material level, for cooling fans, money for operations, all sorts of things. A woman at the camp asked for clean knickers and sanitary towels." Even with the £10,000 Wilding had raised for the trip, she could not meet every need, although she did help pay for the installation of drains and pipes in the camp.
(...) Wilding realised she was putting herself and the people around her - drivers, translators, the groups of children that would gather round her wherever she went - in danger. She decided to come home. "There didn't seem anything more I could usefully do, let alone justify the risk that I was putting other people in."
(...) What was it like to be back? "The overwhelming thing I felt was incredibly lucky. I would cycle to university, essentially in complete safety. I would come home to my safe house, turn on the light switch and know I'd got electricity, or turn on my taps and know clean water was going to come out. "At the same time I was incredibly angry that that had been taken away from millions of people who had no control over what was happening. When I gave birth to my son [at home], I knew that an ambulance would be with me in minutes if I needed it. I should be able to take that for granted and so should women over there. I met one woman who told her daughters not to get pregnant because what happens if they went into labour at night and they couldn't get to hospital? There are refugees who are just living in this limbo where the best they can hope for is to stay alive. It's the most appalling disaster."

refugee narratives:
The setting is the southern Swedish coastal city of Malmo, up to 25 per cent of whose population is Muslim. In the past year, Sweden has received 20,000 Iraqi refugees -- the highest number in any industrialised country. The US, by contrast, has promised to receive 7,000 in addition to the current 2,000 residing in its territory. Sweden which is reputed for its relatively liberal policy towards refugees and asylum-seekers, has called for other European countries to take their share. It remains unclear, however, just how far the EU will respond, or whether the refugees will bear the brunt of even tighter border controls.
(...) For those Iraqis who manage to enter Sweden, the immediate sense of safety and relief is overwhelming. "On one level, I feel lucky that I have found safety at last," says Bassem, an Iraqi economist from Baghdad who has been living in Malmo for five months. "The situation in Baghdad was terrible, insurmountable, when I left. I knew I would not survive if I remained there, particularly as the educated classes are among the most heavily targeted by the occupation and those Iraqis who are supporting it."
(...) this euphoria is soon replaced by a sense of dislocation and sadness. "I find it incredibly difficult not to be working. I am a professional. Now, I am being told that until my papers come through, I cannot work. I do not live a dignified life; and I know that I never will, unless the occupation ends and I can return to Iraq -- which is my home after all," said Bassem.
(...) I am happy to be here; I am happy to be learning a new language, and to be safe from the constant worry of being arrested, jailed or killed by the Israelis," he said. "On the other hand, it is painful for me to think that what I thought might just be an exciting journey to safety and dignity has also essentially turned into exile."
(...) "Maybe if Palestine were free, I would still choose to live here, which is, after all, where I have grown up. But I would be a free person, and it would be a consequence of a free choice. As things stand, however, the fact that I am a refugee kills me inside."

dahr jamail on iraqi doctors:
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Health and UN statistics, Khattab is one of 18,000 Iraqi doctors and health care professionals who have fled the war-torn country since the US-led invasion began in March 2003. In 2003, there were 34,000 registered health care workers in Iraq.
(...) He told Al Jazeera that doctors are targeted in Iraq because they treat people who are sometimes fighters, militia men, or security personnel. Treating one group may anger another. "Dr X" said: "We receive dead bodies, blood, and innocent people, and sometimes people who are killers. "I remember I was sitting in my room in the outpatient clinic at my hospital south of Baghdad when all of a sudden two men arrived with machine guns looking for someone. They went into the patients ward and shot a man dead."

iraqi refugee crisis (jamail):
Let's start with the numbers, inadequate as they are. The latest UN figures concerning the refugee crisis in Iraq indicate that between 1-1.2 million Iraqis have fled across the border into Syria; about 750,000 have crossed into Jordan (increasing its modest population of 5.5 million by 14%); at least another 150,000 have made it to Lebanon; over 150,000 have emigrated to Egypt; and -- these figures are the trickiest of all -- over 1.9 million are now estimated to have been internally displaced by civil war and sectarian cleansing within Iraq. These numbers are staggering in a population estimated in the pre-invasion years at only 26 million. At a bare minimum, in other words, at least one out of every seven Iraqis has had to flee his or her home due to the violence and chaos set off by the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq.
(...) Yet, as even the UN officials on the scene admit, these are undoubtedly low-end estimates. "We rely heavily on the official numbers given to us by the Syrian government concerning the Iraqi refugees coming here,"
(...) UNHCR's budget for Iraqis in Syria in 2006 was a bare $700,000, less than one dollar per refugee crossing the border. UNHCR needs far greater financial resources even to begin to help the mass of Iraqi refugees in the country, as well as food, medicine, and aid from other UN agencies. At the moment, it is essentially the only UN agency assisting Iraqis in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. UNICEF and other UN agencies have voiced interest, but as yet have provided little support in Syria, according to Kalkan.
(...) Adham Mardini, the public information assistant for UNHCR in Damascus, told me their budget in Syria has risen precipitously to $16 million for 2007, although that, too, remains far below what would be necessary simply to fulfill the most basic needs of the most desperate of the refugees. It adds up to a little over $13 per Iraqi refugee per year -- if you don't include the refugees in Syria from Somalia, Palestine, Afghanistan, and other war-torn areas for whom UNHCR is also responsible (along with UNHCR overhead). Iraqi refugees receive food supplements from UNICEF, but only in the most severe cases of need, and cash is simply unavailable for distribution.
(...) Because Jordan's pro-U.S. King Abdullah had long since clamped down on Iraqi entry to his country, for Salim and countless others, Syria has been the only available destination. Yarmouk, with electricity and running water, is, in fact, one of the better areas for refugees. The two other main refugee camps into which Iraqis are now flooding, Jaramana and Sayada Zainab, present far grimmer living conditions, including more than 10 people sleeping in rooms without beds, lacking potable drinking water and in some cases heat, and with intermittent electricity.
(...) UNHCR recently offered the following staggering projection: According to its best estimates about 12% of Iraq's population, now assumed to be about 24 million people, will be displaced by the end of 2007. We're talking about nearly 3 million ever more destitute Salim Hamads by the New Year. (Add to that Iraq's growing population of internal refugees and its spiraling civilian death tolls and you have the kind of decimation of a nation rarely seen -- with, undoubtedly, more to come.)
(...) The primary trigger for this crisis was the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, and yet President Bush and his top officials have taken no significant steps whatsoever to share in the resulting refugee burden. To date, the administration has issued only 466 visas to Iraqis. Under recent pressure from the UN, it has said that it would offer an additional 7,000 visas -- but without either announcing the criteria for accepting such refugees or even when the visas might be issued. Upon hearing this paltry number, an Iraqi refugee said to me in disbelief: "Seven thousand out of over four million Iraqis who have either fled their country or are internally displaced?... I don't know if he could insult us more if he tried."
(...) "Since the U.S. government caused all of this, shouldn't they also be responsible for helping us now?"
(...) Despite the fact that Sadr recently ordered his militia to focus all its attacks on occupation forces, scores of dead bodies turning up on Baghdad's streets each day prove otherwise.
(...) Sa'ad Hussein, who arrived in Damascus only three months ago, described the Baghdad he left as a "city of ghosts" where the black banners of death announcements hang on most streets. There is, he claimed (and this was verified by others we spoke to among the more recent refugees), normally only one hour of electricity a day and no jobs to be found.
(...) It is generally agreed that the delivery of security, electricity, potable water, health care, and jobs -- that is, the essentials of modern urban life -- are all significantly worse than during the last years of the reign of Saddam Hussein.

refugees from Iraq in Lebanon:
Officials in the Lebanese Ministry of Internal Affairs' General Security branch dealing with non-Palestinian migrants say that although technically they can hold illegal migrants for up to three years, they are more lenient with Iraqis. "Once their period of detention hits a month, we give them the option to be voluntarily repatriated. Otherwise they remain in detention," said Pierre Ephrem, an official at the Beirut General Security headquarters.
(..) Like Syria and Jordan, Lebanon is not party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. All three countries have strained relations with their Iraqi migrant communities because of this. "We cannot sustain the influx of Iraqis. We have to work within the margins of our laws, and we have enough problems as it is," said Ephrem. "In any case, the occupation of Iraq was not of our making, but of America's," he added. "The West is not only better equipped to deal with the refugees; it is their responsibility."
(...)Iraqis are estimated to be leaving their country at a staggering rate of 50,000 a month.
(...) Regulations of the US-backed Iraqi regime stipulate that Iraqis whose passports have expired can only have them renewed in Baghdad.
(...) . "We want to move to Europe, where we can find stability," said Maryam. "Here we are nobody. There is enough poverty and unemployment in Lebanon as it is. Public sector services cannot deal with the Lebanese. Our brothers here have been good to us, and we thank them, but we cannot settle here forever."