SEEKING A BETTER LIFE! AWAY FROM THE MIDDLE EAST

February 5-11 2007/ 5-11 Février 2007

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L’icône et l’islam : Pamela Chrabieh

Émission Second Regard,

3 décembre 2006, Radio Canada

Un reportage de Jean-Robert Faucher

Merci Robert et à toute l'équipe de Second Regard!

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De Philippe Martin:

'Voici la onzième édition des portraits de blogueurs, avec Pamela Chrabieh Badine'.

On peut trouver l'entrevue sur Dailymotion, Cent Papiers et YULBUZZ.

Merci à Philippe et Christian Aubry!

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Je vous recommande la lecture des articles ci-dessous, rédigés par Alistair Lyon, Correspondant Spécial pour Reuters (Liban), sur le phénomène de l'émigration en Iraq et au Liban. J'ai rencontré Alistair depuis quelques temps, pour une entrevue qu'il utilisa en partie en vue de l'écriture de ces articles. Évidemment qu'Alistair met l'accent sur le départ, la fuite et l'exode face à une situation intenable. Je tiens quand même à assurer nos lecteurs-lectrices qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une réalité 'généralisable' et qu'il existe, en dépit de tout, des mouvements de retour et-ou des mouvements de résistance sur le terrain qui poursuivent leur lutte pour la paix. Seraient-ils l'exception à la règle?

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Iraqis fleeing conflict flood over borders
Wed Jan 31, 2007 8:21am ET

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Violence in Iraq and instability in Lebanon are driving hundreds of thousands of people abroad in an upheaval not matched in the Middle East since the exodus of Palestinian refugees when Israel was created in 1948.
While Lebanese usually migrate legally to countries of their choice, Iraqis are fleeing across borders in distress to escape the bombings, death squads and sectarian cleansing that have savaged their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Most of the Iraqis are ending up in countries that already host large Palestinian communities drawn from the 4.3 million Palestinian refugees registered with the United Nations.
The carnage in Iraq has also uprooted about half the 30,000 Palestinian refugees who lived there in Saddam Hussein's time, forcing them into a second exile or stranding them in limbo.
About 700 Palestinians have been stuck for months in wretched camps on the Iraqi-Syrian border after fleeing violence in Baghdad, despite U.N. appeals for Arab states to let them in.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees says up to 50,000 Iraqis abandon their homes every month. "Iraq is the big one," UNHCR's regional representative Stephane Jaquemet told Reuters.
The agency estimates that up to 2 million Iraqis have moved to neighboring countries, mainly Syria and Jordan, before and since the war, while 1.7 million are internally displaced.

Jaquemet said he feared Syria and Jordan, which each host anywhere between half a million and a million Iraqis, might eventually close their borders to the refugees -- many of whom are fast exhausting whatever resources they brought with them.

TIGHTENING CONTROLS

Jordan already interrogates and turns away some Iraqi migrants at the frontier, especially young men who fail to convince the authorities they risk persecution at home.
Syria, already home to 432,000 Palestinian refugees, has been the most welcoming host for Iraqis, despite the extra burdens they create in a struggling economy where jobs are scarce and public services are creaky.
Yet Damascus, often accused by the United States of helping Iraqi insurgents, wins little international appreciation for its contribution in shouldering the Iraqi refugee burden.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis have also sought safety in Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and Arab Gulf states. Only a tiny fraction of those who apply for formal refugee status with the UNHCR are accepted for resettlement in the West.
Even those who risk brutal punishment or death at home for working with the U.S. military as translators or in other supporting roles find it almost impossible to gain entry to the United States, which took in only 202 Iraqi refugees in 2006.
Inside Iraq, up to half a million people fled their homes to other parts of the country last year alone, the UNHCR says.

"The defining factor was the bombing of the Samarra sanctuary on February 22," said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration, which monitors the displacement throughout Iraq.
The destruction of the Shi'ite mosque in Samarra set off a wave of Sunni-Shi'ite revenge killings that has yet to wane.

DISPLACEMENT ON RISE

"People have fled because of violence or direct threats against their families. The rate has been about 1,000 a week and it is on the increase," Chauzy said. "People are moving to areas according to ethnic and religious lines."
"In many areas people pay rent to live in insalubrious conditions where there is little clean water or electricity. Fuel is also a problem. Many are living with relatives. It's a humanitarian crisis and the needs are enormous," he added.
Rampant insecurity in Iraq has hamstrung foreign aid agencies since the 2003 bombings of the Baghdad offices of the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
While Iraqis try to escape the maelstrom of bloodshed, a quieter exodus of Lebanese has gathered pace since last year's war between Israel and Shi'ite Hezbollah guerrillas led to a protracted political crisis that burst into violence in January.
Lebanese economists say tens of thousands have left to seek jobs and safe havens abroad in recent months, draining youthful talent and swelling a diaspora that may already account for a quarter of the Mediterranean country's four million people.
One recent survey showed 60 percent of young graduates and older people with families hoped to leave, either because they saw no future in Lebanon or wanted to keep their children safe.
Pamela Chrabieh, a researcher in contact with many would-be migrants, said she often advised them to think twice before grappling with the trauma of settling in countries where they might face official barriers, discrimination or unemployment.
"But those who have completely lost hope say: 'It's a permanent wait and we don't know what we are waiting for any more because the whole region is in flames'," she said.

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Losing hope, Lebanese seek future abroad
Wed Jan 31, 2007 7:08pm ET

By Alistair Lyon, Special Correspondent

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Jad Haider is ready to pack his bags for Germany, fed up with Lebanon's political instability, simmering sectarian strife and economic malaise.
"I love this country so much. It's a beautiful country, but honestly I just can't take it any more," said the 32-year-old university English teacher. "The energy is so negative."
Jolted by last year's war between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas and the power struggles and Sunni-Shi'ite clashes that have followed, thousands of Lebanese -- many of them young and talented -- are leaving to seek jobs and new lives abroad.
"I'm not willing to stay in a country where one day you wake up and there's a war, the next day you wake up and everything's fine," Haider said. "This is no way to live."
The scale of the hemorrhage is hard to pin down, especially in a land with a long, fluid history of migration and return, but researcher Eugen Dabbous said a survey he had helped to run had confirmed many Lebanese are heading for the exits.
"Sixty percent of those surveyed want to leave," he said.
The project, conducted by the Lebanese Emigration Research Center, questioned about 600 residents from two groups -- students or recent graduates and middle-aged people.

"The younger people want to leave because they don't see a future in Lebanon, and the older group because they want to get their children out of harm's way," Dabbous said.
He said up to a million of Lebanon's estimated four million citizens already live abroad, mingling with a far bigger Lebanese-origin diaspora born of two centuries of migration.
Once mostly Christian, the outflow now affects Lebanon's Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim communities just as much. Many who left during the 1975-90 civil war sank permanent roots abroad.

JOB CRISIS

"This economy is oriented only toward the commercial banking system and real estate, so we don't have enough employment opportunities," former Finance Minister Georges Corm said.
"With the oil boom in the Gulf countries, it is by the tens of thousands that people are going there to find jobs."
So many Lebanese have left for the Gulf in recent months that wages there have declined, said Carole Contavelis, a recruitment consultant for Beirut's Headhunter International.
Of 19 people she interviewed for a general manager post in Beirut, 15 had left the country: "At the upper management level, it's 70-80 percent who are out of Lebanon."

Contavelis said the employment market had been "awful" since last year's war and was still getting worse, while political instability meant no one could plan their lives sensibly.
"Now with the brain drain, we don't have a middle class any more," she complained. "How can you build a country like that?"
Asked what would have to change to induce people to stay, she said: "Frankly, everything. No bribery. We need security, clean politicians. They are treating us like cows, but we don't want to follow any more. We want to be here for our country."
But for people like Assad Ghosn, 33, a manager at the Alfa mobile telephone company, hard choices are pressing in.
"All my close friends from university are living abroad now. During the war, we were close to leaving, but we decided to wait and see what happens," he said at his Beirut office.
Ghosn, who also has a Canadian passport, said his wife Gia was keener to leave than he was. "You have to think about your career and the future of our baby," he said. "We have relatives in Canada, but it's not an easy decision. Personally, if I go out for a career, I won't come back here."

FAMILY TIES

Many Lebanese hold second or third passports, acquired through family networks already overseas. Lebanese have spread all over the world, with big communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, West Africa and the Gulf.

They tend to retain strong business, family or emotional links to their homeland, and many send money home to support their relatives, but Sensenig-Dabbous said few were planning to return to Lebanon now or invest there.
Grace Harika Nasnas, who lives in Florida, spent five months in Lebanon last year looking for a house to buy so she and her family could return. The outbreak of war on July 12 forced an abrupt change of plan. She left hastily with her two sons.
"When the Israelis hit the airport, I'm like, it's gonna be just one bomb. I didn't think it was gonna go that far," the 31-year-old recalled in a telephone conversation from Orlando.
"We always had hopes to go back and live in Lebanon. But even before the war I didn't see much opportunity for my husband to work there. It was a big risk to invest our money in something that might work or might not."

They tend to retain strong business, family or emotional links to their homeland, and many send money home to support their relatives, but Sensenig-Dabbous said few were planning to return to Lebanon now or invest there.
Grace Harika Nasnas, who lives in Florida, spent five months in Lebanon last year looking for a house to buy so she and her family could return. The outbreak of war on July 12 forced an abrupt change of plan. She left hastily with her two sons.
"When the Israelis hit the airport, I'm like, it's gonna be just one bomb. I didn't think it was gonna go that far," the 31-year-old recalled in a telephone conversation from Orlando.
"We always had hopes to go back and live in Lebanon. But even before the war I didn't see much opportunity for my husband to work there. It was a big risk to invest our money in something that might work or might not."

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A LIRE ABSOLUMENT L'ARTICLE CI-DESSOUS DE ROBERT FISK!

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Robert Fisk: Please spare me the word 'terrorist'
Lebanon is a good place to find out what tosh the 'terror' merchants talk
Published: 03 February 2007

So it was back to terror, terror, terror this week. The "terrorist" Hizbollah was trying to destroy the "democratically elected government" of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. The "terrorist" Hamas government cannot rule Palestine. Iranian "terrorists" in Iraq are going to be gunned down by US troops.
My favourite line of the week came from the "security source" - just how one becomes a "security source" remains a mystery to me -- who announced: "Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror... There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public." Well, you could have fooled me.
Lebanon is as good a place as any to find out what a load of old tosh the "terror" merchants talk. For here it is that the hydra-headed monster of Iran is supposedly stalking the streets of Beirut, staging a coup against Mr Siniora and his ministers.
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, is the man Israel spent all last summer trying - vainly, of course - to kill, his black-bearded, turbaned appearance on Hizbollah's own TV station a source of fury to both Ehud Olmert and - nowadays - to Siniora's men in government.
Now it's true that Nasrallah - an intelligent, former military commander of Hizbollah in southern Lebanon - is developing a rather odd cult of personality. His massive features tower over the Beirut airport highway, a giant hand waving at motorists in both directions. And these days, you can buy Hizbollah T-shirts and Nasrallah key chains. But somehow "terror" is not quite the word that comes to mind.
This is partly because the tens of thousands of Shia Muslims whom Hizbollah represents are staging a social revolution rather than a coup, a mass uprising of the poor who have traditionally been ignored by the great and the good of Lebanese society.
The men in their tent city downtown are a powerful symbol in Lebanon. They are smoking their hooker pipes and playing cards and sleeping rough next to the shining new city which Rafiq Hariri rebuilt from the ruins of Beirut - a city to impress foreigners but one in which the south Lebanese poor could not afford to buy a cup of coffee.
Hariri's theory - or at least this is how he explained it to me before his murder - was that if the centre of Beirut was reconstructed, the money which it generated would trickle down to the rest of Lebanon.
But it didn't trickle. The bright lights of downtown Beirut were enjoyed by the rich and purchased by the Saudis and admired by the likes of Jacques Chirac but they were not for the Shia. For them, Hizbollah provided the social services and the economic foundation of its part of Lebanon as well as the military spearhead to strike at Israel and demand the return of Shebaa Farms.
The Lebanese government may have its troops mixed in with the new UN force in the south but no one doubts that Hizbollah remain in their villages, as powerful and as influential as ever. Harirism, it seems, failed and now Hariri's old friend Siniora - who, by the way, was never elected (he was appointed to the prime minister's job although you'd never know if from watching Western television) - has returned from Paris with millions of dollars to sit once more in his little "green zone", surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers and, outside the gates of his serail, by the poor of southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut.
Hizbollah's electoral partners are also interesting. General Michel Aoun - whom the Americans have not yet got round to calling a "terrorist" - is the Christian leader who allows Nasrallah to claim that the opposition is non-sectarian. Aoun's supporters were involved in pitched battles with Samir Geagea's Phalangists last week and what was striking was how poor many of Aoun's Christian supporters also appeared to be. Indeed, Aoun was himself born in the same southern slums of Beirut which is Hizbollah's power base and his constant refrain - that the government is corrupt - is beginning to take hold among the disenfranchised Christian communities in the east of Beirut.
The fact that Aoun is also a little cracked does not change this. Even when this week he produced a doctored photograph supposedly showing an armed Phalangist on the streets - the image was of a Hizbollah gunman, originally taken during last summer's war but stuck on to a photograph of crowds on a north Beirut roadway - his loyal supporters did not desert him. Nestling beside their tents in central Beirut are canvas homes containing Lebanese communists - how friendly the old hammer and sickle seems these days - and a host of lesser groups which may or may not come under Syria's patronage.
Of course, the crisis in Lebanon is also about Iran and Syria, especially Iran's determination to damage or destroy any Middle East government which has earned America's friendship. In the growing, overheated drama being played out between Washington and Tehran (and Israel, of course), Lebanon is another board game for the two sides to use. America thus lined up to defend Lebanon's democracy - though it didn't care a damn about it when Israel bombarded the country last summer - while Iran continues to support Hizbollah whose government ministers resigned last year, provoking the current crisis.
Nasrallah is said to have been personally shocked by the extent of the violence and hatred manifested in last week's miniature civil war in which both Sunni and Shia Muslims used guns against each other for the first time.
But they too emerged from the slums to do battle with their co-religionists and I rather suspect that - when this latest conflict is over - there will have to be a serious evaluation of the explosive nature of Lebanon's poverty belts, a re-examination of a country whose super-wealthy launder the money which never reaches the poor, whose French restaurants and Italian designer shops are for the princes of the Gulf, whose government - however democratically elected (and Washington still doesn't seem to understand that sectarian politics mean that Lebanon cannot have a normal democracy) - seems so out of touch with its largest religious community.

But as the story of Lebanon continues, please spare me the word "terrorist".