Access Denied

The U.S. has taken in few Iraqi refugees, and that's no accident. To do more means admitting the catastrophe

AP Photo / Bassem Tellawi

Thousands of Iraqi refugees gather in front of the offices of the U.N. Higher Commission for Refugees in Damascus, on Sunday, February 11, 2007.

The numbers are so staggering that they are hard to process mentally and impossible to process logistically: each month some 60,000 Iraqis are voting with their feet against the surge of U.S. forces by fleeing their homes. Since the invasion, more than 2.5 million Iraqis have left for neighboring countries, while 2.2 million have been forcibly displaced within Iraq—too poor to escape the country or blocked from transitioning through more peaceful provinces, which in recent months have erected checkpoints to keep them out. To put it in stark historical terms: The war has created the largest refugee crisis in the Middle...

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