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Abstract
This essay attempts to disentangle a debate within the study of refugee crises and their security implications involving ‘refugee warriors’. It situates the debate in the context of the Iraqi refugee crisis and its purported and real manifestations in three main host countries: Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The research's findings show a serious divergence between theorizing on refugee warriors and the important case of Iraq's war refugees. In the light of this and given the comparative literature's own contradictory evidence, the essay argues that the generalized application of the refugee warrior label and the overstated prominence given to it by some scholars and by practitioners within the international refugee regime need to be critically examined. In reference to Iraqi refugees' abandonment in terms of protection and given strenuous efforts to contain them to the region, it is suggested that the label appears to have gained currency with the effect of helping to impose an ‘in-region solution’ for refugees and drastically curbing refugees' access to direct asylum procedures in North America and Western Europe.
Notes
1 Interviewees for this article, particularly Iraqi refugees, were typically contacted following recommendations by other refugees or because they were suggested by foreign or international aid agencies and/or colleague researchers working on similar themes. Although certainly no claim is made that the people consulted for this article constitute a statistically representative or robust sample, an attempt was made to talk to as many sides as possible: Iraqi refugees, Iraqi politicians and officials, members of the host communities, third-country nationals, state officials and non-state individuals. Questions raised in the interviews were mostly phrased in an open-ended fashion yet were loosely pitched on the main hypotheses of the ‘refugee warrior’ thesis and the security dimensions of refugee crises generally. Generalizing claims and observations made by interviewees were cross-verified by presenting them to as many as possible other interviewees.
2 For more details see Stedman and Tanner (Citation2003) and Adelman (Citation1998).
3 Author's interview in Damascus, 30–31 Oct. 2007).
4 Author's interviews with Jordanian officials in Amman, Oct. 2008.
5 Author's interviews with Jordanian officials in Amman, Oct. 2008
6 Author's interview with Jordanian official in Amman, 18 Oct. 2007.
7 Ibid. More than an estimated 50 per cent of Iraqis in Lebanon are believed to be Shiites (Danish Refugee Council, Citation2007: 29).
8 Author's interviews in Damascus, Oct. 2007, and telephone interview with senior UN official, 8 Oct. 2007.
9 Author's interviews in Damascus, Oct. 2007, and telephone interview with senior UN official, 8 Oct. 2007. For similar observations on rising crime rates in Syria see Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2005; Joshua Landis, ‘Syria Shuts Out Iraqi Refugees. Is Arabism over?’, 4 Feb. 2007, available at http://joshualandis.com/blog/?p = 152.
10 Author's interviews with Iraqi refugees and Syrian residents in Sayyida Zeinab and Damascus, Oct.–Nov. 2007.
11 Author's interview with Syrian lawyer and women's activist in Damascus, 21 Sept. 2007; Phillips, Citation2007.
12 Author's interviews in Damascus, Oct. 2007, and telephone interview with senior UN official, 8 Oct. 2007.
13 Shiites are estimated to constitute 17 per cent of Iraqis in Jordan (Fafo, Citation2007). They constitute 24 per cent of those Iraqis who registered at UNHCR in Jordan (UNHCR, Citation18 Oct. 2007).
14 Author's interview with Syrian official in Damascus, 25 Oct. 2007).
15 Accordingly, a majority of Iraqi refugees said they had not received any assistance from international aid agencies. (IPSOS, Citation2007; Danish Refugee Council, Citation2007).
16 Author's interview in Amman, 21 Oct. 2007.
17 Author's interviews with Iraqi refugees, relief workers and local journalists in Beirut, Amman and Damascus, Oct.–Nov. 2007.
18 Author's interviews with Jordanian officials, Amman, Oct. 2007.
19 For relevant data on Iraqi refugee finances in Syria and Jordan, see IPSOS (Citation2007), Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (Citation2007) and Fafo (Citation2007). No data on income transfers from Iraq are available for Iraqis in Lebanon.
20 Author's interviews in Amman, Sept. 2007.
21 Iraqis in Lebanon are mainly young single males (Danish Refugee Council, Citation2007: 31, 58).
22 However, some local Christian churches in northern Iraq have been organizing their own ‘security forces’: Kenyon, Citation2008.
23 For more details see Al-Khalidi et al. (Citation2007); Oxfam and NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq (Citation2007: 12); IPSOS (Citation2007); and Fafo (Citation2007).
24 Author's interviews with Iraqi activists in Amman, Oct. 2007.
25 Author's interviews in Amman, Damascus and Beirut, Oct.–Nov. 2007.
26 This is an argument made in the context of protracted refugee crises generally. See Loescher et al. (2007: 2–3).
27 Author's interviews with Iraqi political elites and activists in Amman, Beirut and Damascus, Oct.–Nov. 2007.
28 Author's interviews with Iraqi politicians in Amman, Oct. 2007.
29 As if to underscore the latter point, Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashimi reportedly said during a state visit to Jordan that he was ‘relieved over the Jordanian stand not to describe Iraqis in Jordan as refugees’: Cited by PETRA Jordanian News Agency, 11 Dec. 2007.
30 If Lischer had not lumped together both violence by and against refugees, her counted incidences of ‘refugee involvement in political violence’ would have been even less.
31 By December 2007, only a total of 2,199 Iraqis had actually left for resettlement to countries other than the US (UNHCR, 12 Dec. 2007).
32 The UNHCR still considers all of Iraq except the Kurdish north to be unsafe and unsuitable for returns (UNHCR, Citation2006).
33 The US government only belatedly activated its first permanent office within Iraq to process asylum requests. See Washington Post, 4 June 2008. On European obstacles raised against Iraqi asylum seekers, see Sperl (Citation2007).
34 On pejorative labelling of refugees eroding their rights under the 1951 convention, see Pickering (Citation2005) and Pupavac (Citation2006).
35 The DHS only asked for five visas for its officials operating in Damascus while only four to six of them are operating in Amman, none of whom on a permanent basis (US Department of State, 4 Feb. 2008).
36 Developing countries are estimated to host nearly two-thirds of the world's refugee population (UNHCR, Citation2007: 31, 149).
37 For examples see Weiner (Citation1993: 3), Jacobsen (Citation2001), Stepputat (Citation2004) and Milner (Citation2000).