1 Million War Refugees Expected as Jordan Reopens Its Border With Iraq

The Jordanian government reopened its border with Iraq on Friday, inviting a refugee exodus fraught with danger in the middle of a war.

Nine days after closing the crossing for lack of international financial support, Jordan announced that it would take in refugees of all nationalities fleeing Iraq and Kuwait.

Jordanian officials estimated that more than a million people might make the run for the border. In the first months of the Persian Gulf crisis last summer, 860,000 Arabs, Asians and Africans poured into hastily prepared camps inside Jordan after Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait. Such numbers overwhelmed Jordanian and international efforts to provide food, water and housing.

“As of today, we will allow any evacuee from Iraq and Kuwait to come in because we don’t want any human suffering on the border,” said Salameh Hammad, who heads the government’s refugee committee. He said the decision was reached after the U.N. Disaster Relief Organization and the resident U.N. refugee coordinator agreed to underwrite the costs of handling the anticipated flood.

Since the outbreak of war early Thursday, several hundred refugees have braved the tumult of the air war over Iraq and made their way to the Iraqi side of the border, about 210 miles northeast of Amman along the Jordanian panhandle.

Those crossing into Jordan on Friday included a large group of Egyptian workers and about 20 American, Spanish and Italian journalists who left Baghdad on Thursday and described their flight across the western Iraqi desert.

Larry Doyle, a CBS Television producer, said a convoy of journalists got no further than a parking area at the Iraqi border post by Thursday night, completing the crossing Friday.

“It was wild,” said Doyle of their trek. “There were fleets of cars piled high with everything they (the refugees) could carry: refrigerators, couches, carpets.”

From their night camp on the desert, the journalists looking backward along the route they had traveled could see white crescents of explosions they believed were allied bombs.

“It was bitterly cold out there,” said Nick Fallows, another CBS reporter. “I can’t imagine how those refugees are going to handle it.”

But the cold might be bearable compared to the risks of war in Baghdad and along the escape route.

The American journalists said they were more than two-thirds of the way to the border when Iraqi antiaircraft batteries on both sides of the road opened up on an overhead target.

“They lit up like candles,” Doyle said. “We were driving right in the middle of it and could see they were firing straight up. That meant two things, both of them bad.”

If they stayed on the road, he said, shrapnel from the ack-ack might fall on their car and disable it. They could drive under a nearby bridge, but it could be the target of planes overhead. They chose the bridge.

For the Egyptian, Yemeni, Sudanese and Bangladeshi refugees already at the Iraqi border, the chance of safety was worth the risk, and as the air war continues, hundreds of thousands more are expected to take their chances.

Awaiting across Jordan’s border, about 50 miles away across a kind of no man’s land are the newly refurbished and restocked camps set up by Jordan and international relief agencies. In no man’s land itself, two transit camps can handle about 15,000 refugees while they wait to cross into Jordan.

Hans Einhaus, a U.N. Disaster Relief official, said the coordinated Jordanian-international plan is to establish a balanced flow, with 10,000 refugees a day entering the country and the same number being evacuated to their home countries by plane or ship.

“The agreement covers refugees’ transport and shelter,” said Hammad, the Jordanian refugee official, “but we are still worried about their repatriation (flights), although UNDRO (Disaster Relief) and the International Organization for Migration are working on schedules.”

He said that the World Food Organization and other international agencies have pledged to supply meals for the refugees. During the exodus that followed Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, Jordan had to cut into its own emergency food stocks to feed the refugees.

The border was closed last week, Hammad said at that time, because foreign countries had failed to make good on financial pledges to compensate Jordan for its expenses in handling the August and September refugees. The flood had diminished to a relative stream in intervening months.

Besides Jordan, Iran and Syria are anticipating refugees at their border posts. Turkey, another neighbor of Iraq, has taken a number of refugees since the crisis began, but earlier this week the Ankara government reported that the Iraqis had closed and mined the border crossing, apparently fearful of a Turkish military attack.