Iraq refugees strain Damascus, Beirut, Cairo

Nir Rosen in the NYT magazine  (via t/o) writes an article well worth reading in full:

At a meeting in mid-April in Geneva, held by António Guterres, the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, the numbers presented confirmed what had long been suspected: the collapse of Iraq had created a refugee crisis, and that crisis was threatening to precipitate the collapse of the region. The numbers dwarfed anything that the Middle East had seen since the dislocations brought on by the establishment of Israel in 1948. In Syria, there were estimated to be 1.2 million Iraqi refugees. There were another 750,000 in Jordan, 100,000 in Egypt, 54,000 in Iran, 40,000 in Lebanon and 10,000 in Turkey. The overall estimate for the number of Iraqis who had fled Iraq was put at two million by Guterres. The number of displaced Iraqis still inside Iraq’s borders was given as 1.9 million. This would mean about 15 percent of Iraqis have left their homes.

Chaos is the plan.
 

Happy Mothers’ Peace Day!

 

In honor of Mother’s Day, here are some Mothers for Peace.

Why?  Because this day was intended to be a peace holiday, not as a way to enrich florists and greeting-card companies.