ΦBK Member Witnesses the Plight of Iraqi Refugees

By Laura Sheahen


Issa and his wife peruse their family’s modest collection of books and
other educational resources in their apartment in Beirut, Lebanon. The
family asked that their faces not be shown. Photo: Laura Sheahen/
Catholic Relief Services
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“When the militants put a bomb in front of my house in Iraq, I asked them to think about my children,” said Issa, an Iraqi refugee now living in Lebanon. “They told me, ‘The nation is more important than the children.’”
 
I blinked, trying to process this. “But the nation is the children . . . right?”

Apparently not. Issa, a father of five, had already paid a ransom in spring 2006, when his college-age son was kidnapped. Then the same Mehdi Army — militants terrorizing his war-torn country — started pressuring Issa’s teenage sons to join their movement.
 
Issa decided that the only way to escape the violence was to leave. In August 2007, he took his family to Beirut. The couple and four of their children now spend their days in a bare two-room apartment in the slums, waiting for something to change. 
 
I was visiting Issa’s family as part of my work with Catholic Relief Services’ (CRS) programs in the Middle East. There are close to two million Iraqi refugees scattered throughout the Middle East in countries like Lebanon and Syria. They’re not your stereotypical refugees, if any such exist. They tend to be well-educated — some have enviable resumes. When I visit their damp, crumbling, near-empty apartments, they pull out ragged report cards and diplomas to show me. 
 
As a ΦBK member, I respond to their enthusiasm. Iraqis place a high value on education, for themselves and for their children. My own background in the liberal arts — I was a Russian language major — was what led me to international work in the first place. Like them, I know that a well-rounded education doesn’t just bring in a much-needed paycheck — it expands your world. 
 
But the more Iraqi refugee parents I meet, the more I see that their dreams for their kids’ education are shrinking. Like most immigrants in the Middle East, Issa isn’t allowed a work permit in his host country. Neither is his wife, who used to be the director of a school. His 22-year-old daughter Marwa has a college degree in biology and shows me her university class’s graduation photo proudly. In Iraq, she was planning on a career. In Beirut, she stays home. “My degree is wasted,” she told me. 
 
It’s not as life-threatening a complaint as lacking food or shelter. But seeing your years at a university go to waste, and not fulfilling your intellectual potential, is yet another emotional wrench for Iraqis who have lived through atrocities. How many honor-society students from Iraq are now huddled in slum apartments, wistfully looking at their old report cards? How many Iraqi doctors and teachers are sitting at home, idle, because they can’t work? 
 
It’s painful to think of the thousands of Iraqi refugees with advanced degrees who have run through their savings and have trouble putting food on the table. Issa is just one of them. In grammatically correct, only slightly accented English, he described his fears for the future.
 
Despite the lack of money and jobs, I’ve seen Iraqis make tremendous sacrifices to educate their children. Because they’re not citizens, refugee kids aren’t usually allowed to go to public schools in the Middle East. Families have to come up with money for private schools.
 
Though Issa’s apartment has no chairs and beds — only thin mattresses on a concrete floor — the family managed to send their three youngest children to school; CRS was able to help with some of the fees. The family also studies English through programs for refugees. During my visit, they crowded around an old desk piled with books; it’s one of the few pieces of furniture in the room.
 
At school, their 13-year-old daughter Haneen faced another barrier: prejudice. Her Lebanese classmates made fun of her Iraqi accent, and even her teacher wasn’t sympathetic. She tried to drop out, but her sister Marwa convinced her to return. 
 
I hope Issa and his children will make it, but I understand how desperate he feels about their chances. Charities like mine are scrambling to provide tuition or catch-up classes for Iraqi kids who have missed a year of school. A big goal is to get them back in the classroom before too much time goes by.
 
Education, especially an open and  liberal one, has another benefit — it promotes tolerance and a worldview that accepts that different beliefs exist, even if it you don’t share them. It’s an education that helps graduates consider the views of others and be open to dialogue. Missing out on that is a great loss for any society or country.
 
What I’ve seen is a huge backslide for an entire population — Iraqi children growing up with less schooling than their parents. Whether they resettle abroad or return someday to their homeland, they’re going to need an education. Because whatever the Mehdi Army might say, children are the nation.  
 
Laura Sheahen (ΦBK, University of Maryland, 1993) is regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. She lives in Cairo.