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Iraqis struggle to eke out a living in Syria

"The Syrian people bear with us and we know we have become a burden on them."

a 61-year old Iraqi refugee in Syria

For residents of the suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus, it has become a familiar scene to find vehicles with Iraqi license plates in the streets. Many of Iraqi refugees in Syria live in the districts of Sayyida or Sit Zeinab, where rents are relatively affordable.

The refugees are both Sunni Muslims who once belonged to the Baath party of ousted former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and Shiites seeking baraka (blessing) by living close to a local Shiite shrine and mosque.

It is quite hard for homesick Iraqis to make a living in Syria where, according to Syrian analysts, prices were already high before Iraqi refugees flooded the country en masse.

Abdul-Khaliq, 47, a Shiite Kurd, arrived in Syria last October with his wife and two children.

"I used to live in Diyala Province, which has become a hotbed for violence," Abdul-Khaliq said. "Many of my friends and relatives died in the ongoing sectarian violence."

Abdul-Khaliq used to have a stationery shop in his hometown. Now he is a street hawker sitting on the pavement selling cheap merchandise for pennies that are not enough to make ends meet. To pay his bills, he depends on money transferred to him by relatives in Canada and the Gulf states.

Mohamed, 49, once owned a garage in Baghdad. He was not able to find a job in Syria.

"I depend on the little money my relatives send me from Iraq," he said.

Mohamed fled Iraq to Syria because his life was at risk, he said. He had belonged to Saddam's Baath party. He left his wife and child in Baghdad.

"I wish I could see them, but if I go back, I will be killed," he said. "My two nephews were killed in Iraq."

Another Iraqi, a 61-year-old Sunni Muslim, runs an office that transports Iraqis across the border to renew their residency, a business that has become quite lucrative for many Iraqis as well as Syrians.

The Syrian government issued a decree limiting any one uninterrupted stay in the country to three months. Thus, any Iraqi who wants to stay longer has to leave and come back, a move that has led to accusations by the Iraqi government that Damascus was making it difficult for refugees to remain in Syria.

The Sunni businessman, however, accused the international community of doing nothing to help Iraqis inside Iraq.

"Neither did they do anything to help displaced Iraqis," he said. "The Syrian people bear with us and we know we have become a burden on them."

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said about 10,000 Iraqis cross into Syria every month. Fees to move into Syria from Damascus range from US$16 to US$25.

Escalating violence in Iraq has created the biggest refugee crisis in the Middle East. The UNHCR estimates that 50,000 Iraqis are fleeing the violence in their country every month and warns that the crisis could have grave humanitarian consequences for the region.

As Iraq makes up a significant proportion of the UNHCR's work in the Middle East, a recent cut in funds for Iraq has roughly halved a region-wide budget that is already "totally insufficient to provide tangible results," the UNHCR said.

"Iraq has seen the largest and most recent displacement of any UNHCR project in the world, yet even as more Iraqis are displaced and as their needs increase, the funds to help them are decreasing," said Andrew Harper, coordinator for the Iraq unit at UNHCR in Geneva.

Harper adds that this reduction of funds has led to the suspension of a number of priority UNHCR projects. These include work to identify and aid the most vulnerable Iraqi refugees, including single mothers, the sick and the elderly.

While some Syrian politicians consider Iraqis their fellow brothers and welcome their presence, some analysts believe the new arrivals have negatively affected the country on more than one level.

The Syrian government estimates that 1.4 million Iraqis have taken refuge in Syria in the last three years, raising the population by at least 7 percent.

"It's true that Iraqis represent a burden to the Syrian economy. But the United States should be held responsible for such a situation," Member of Parliament George Jabour said. "The US spends billions of dollars on the war and very little on humanitarian action."

Syrian Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Abdullah al-Dardari had earlier claimed that power consumption was increasing at such a rate that a new power station costing US$1 billion could be built every year.

On the social level, the head of the Data and Strategic Studies Center in Syria, Emad Shoaibi said that "Iraqis have brought along with them crimes that Syria has never encountered before, like kidnapping and blackmail, rape and prostitution."

Shoaibi believes the refugees have created a gap between supply and demand in basic needs, leading to hikes in the value of real estate, with a threefold increase in rents.

"A poor Iraqi is richer than an average Syrian," he said. "

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