50,000 Losing Hope at Desert Refugee Camps

More than 50,000 Asian refugees from Kuwait are trapped in desperation on a scorched patch of desert near the Iraqi border here, short of food, water and hope. Awaiting elusive repatriation, their companions are fear, boredom, asphyxiating red tape and the specter of epidemic.

There is no shade. By day, thirsty refugees from a half dozen countries bake under a merciless sun and 100-degree temperatures.

There are few tents. By night, white- and blue-collar Asians who staffed Kuwait’s luxury hotels and ran its shops and offices sleep in the rough on the cold and rocky desert floor. The scorpions are relentless.

“For God sake’s, man, get word to the Indians still in Kuwait. Tell them to stay where they are; it’s 100 times worse here,” begged John Seraoo, a merchant from Kuwait city. Red-eyed and unshaven, he joined an angry and articulate mob of Indian and Bangladeshi refugees jammed around a handful of reporters who reached the Shaalon 2 refugee camp near the Iraqi border Monday.

On what, just two weeks ago, was desolation marked only by a radio tower 26 miles east of the border checkpoint of Ruweished, about 42,000 souls were confined Monday in pain and boredom at Shaalon 2.

By Jordanian government count, another 16,000 refugees were at the Shaalon 1 camp 4 1/2 miles from Ruweished on the road to Baghdad. In all, the government said Monday night, there are 105,000 refugees in Jordan waiting to return to Third World countries that they had left to earn petrodollars.

By every indication, there are more hundreds of thousands of Asians still to come, fleeing from the expatriate communities in Kuwait and Iraq that totaled 2 million people before Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait.

With thousands of new arrivals in Jordan on Monday came reports of tens of thousands of refugees waiting to cross Iraq’s borders with Iran and Turkey.

In Turkey, Pakistanis described to the Associated Press similar desperate conditions at a refugee camp on the Iraqi side of the frontier. They said at least three Pakistanis, including a woman giving birth, have died at the camp.

Iran offered to receive 100,000 mostly Asian refugees across its border with Iraq but said people of any nationality, including Americans and Britons, would also be welcomed, the AP reported.

The Amman government, overwhelmed by 307,549 refugees in the first month of Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, is pleading for international help to confront what Jordanian Crown Prince Hassan, King Hussein’s brother, calls “a human disaster.”

Much--around $150 million worth--is promised by individual countries and international relief agencies. Too little has so far arrived to make any impact on the suffering in the desert, and relief officials begged the international community to provide more.

With shelter and supplies short, sanitary facilities almost non-existent and tempers raw among rival ethnic groups, the overnight desert camps are disasters waiting to happen, relief workers warned Monday.

“The situation is now very critical,” said Khaled abu Halimeh, the Jordanian doctor who heads a 20-member Red Crescent volunteer medical team at Shaalon 2. “We have dehydration and diarrhea, but it is not yet an epidemic. There are many scorpion bites; they are difficult to treat.

“We are sharing our food and water, but there is not enough; there are so many pregnant women and children. They should be getting 20 liters (of water) a day per person--there is nothing like that.”

The Jordanian government is accepting the refugees with the understanding that, except for Palestinians, they cannot stay.

“We have problems enough of our own. We simply cannot cope with all those people,” said a senior Jordanian official. New arrivals are being processed as quickly as their predecessors leave. On Sunday, around 7,000 left, but almost twice that number arrived. With facilities in Amman jammed, the new arrivals are parked in the desert at the Shaalon camps, forbidden to leave.

At mid-morning Monday in Shaalon 2, a Sri Lankan refugee identified by his friends as R. A. Sirisena died of a stomach disorder after a night of agony. Ten other Sri Lankans are badly ill, said S. D. Preniatalike, a self-appointed spokesman for them.

Wind devils flirted with makeshift shelters where refugees crouched in the lee of sand-stained suitcases. In the suffocating medical tent, an Egyptian woman raised the morale of doctors who had not slept for too long by delivering a healthy baby.

Out in the sun, listless sentinels sprawled in the dust with empty bottles around an empty water tank whose side bore the inscription “Water for Filipinos.”

“When the water truck comes, what little it leaves is gone almost in the same moment,” said one weary Filipina.

A wheezing bus delivering apprehensive new residents turned past the Jordanian police jeep with a mounted machine gun that is signpost for the camp.

Since last week, Jordan has restricted entries to 20,000 per day, but more people still arrive every day than a fledgling airlift is able to carry away. Jordan’s refugee population is rising as inexorably as the desert sun--and with it, human misery as an indicator of trauma in the Persian Gulf.

“It is one thing to lose a business, but it is not until you have to slept on the desert floor for five nights with five young children, not even a tent, that you realize you have lost everything,” said Abdul Rehman, 32, an Indian who had lived 15 years in Kuwait.

Near noon at Shaalon 2 on Monday, a packed line of refugees a quarter of a mile long stretched out from a tractor-trailer where Jordanian relief workers distributed the day’s rations: thin rounds of pita bread and three overripe tomatoes per person.

“They feed us like dogs,” said Indian refugee George Rajan, denouncing administrative chaos at the camp. “We have money but we cannot buy. We have cars but we cannot drive. Some of us have airplane tickets but we cannot fly. Where is the Indian government?”

“We are not white, we are not Arabs and we are not rich. So we are ignored. Should we expect anything different?” demanded a Sikh who said he has a cousin in New York and a looted electronic shop in Kuwait city he reckons is gone for good.

In the melee, Saifee Surti, a 27-year-old currency trader, cast about for someone with permission to leave the camp who would call his family in India to help arrange passage. A Jordanian soldier ran off engineers Mohammed Rana and Ali Farouki as they explained how they had buried their British passports and disguised themselves as Pakistanis to avoid “being held hostage at some chemical plant or another.”

Among the nations with the largest expatriate populations in Kuwait and Iraq, it is Egypt, the largest, that has moved most firmly to aid its distressed citizens. So far, about 150,000 refugees have gone home on an air and sea lift based at the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

India for its part is flying nearly 1,000 a day home, and the Philippines has repatriated about one-third of an estimated 9,000 of its citizens who have fled to Jordan so far.

The International Organization for Repatriation, working with the U.N. Disaster Relief Organization and relying mainly on funds from the European Community, sent about 200 Sri Lankans home aboard a chartered Royal Jordanian Airlines flight.

Dirt-poor Bangladesh, by contrast, has moved only about 1,000 of about 30,000 refugees in the past month and says it is unable to care for the rest without international help. Residents say nearly half of the refugees at Shaalon 2 are Bangladeshis.

“We’ve been here more than a week and nobody from our embassy in Amman has even bothered to come to see us,” charged one young mechanic in a clutch of gesticulating and incensed Bangladeshis.

A spokesman said the International Organization for Repatriation has funds to repatriate about 9,000 Sri Lankans and Bangladeshis on eight Royal Jordanian flights and 10 trips by a cargo plane provided by the Soviet Union. But, he said, the group required $50 million more in donations to keep the air bridge operating.

Relief supplies, including tents, blankets, food and money, arrive in Jordan daily now, but even if--impossibly--the influx were to stop tomorrow, it would take months to repatriate refugees already here.

And that, it was stunningly clear to everyone at Shaalon 2 on Monday, would be tragically too long for the thousands adrift and imperiled in the cruel desert.

ASIANS IN KUWAIT AND IRAQ

Hundreds of thousands of Asian workers were stranded Aug. 2 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. Here are estimates of selected Asian nationals; precise figures and how many have left are unknown.

Country In Kuwait In Iraq Total Bangladesh 70,000 15,000 85,000 India 172,000 10,000 182,000 Pakistan 90,000 10,000 100,000 Philippines 45,000 5,000 50,000 Sri Lanka 100,000 Unknown Unknown

Source: Reuters news service