The poor living conditions and lack of work opportunities in host countries also pose a threat to regional stability because they create a fertile breeding ground for more violence and extremism. Children who cannot attend school and have nothing to do are more likely to spend time hanging out on the streets and getting involved in dangerous activities.
“What we have heard is that the children, they have nothing to do; they’re out on the streets; they’re remembering the violence that they witnessed in Iraq,” says Survivors of Torture’s Anderson. “As a result, some of them are increasingly becoming more violent themselves. Just having a lot of people in a small amount of space without alternatives is a problem.”
Sandy Huffaker
Fleeing death threats in Iraq, Kamil Silewa crossed borders, worked dirty jobs, walked for days through Mexico and was greeted in the U.S. with eight
months of detention.
Sandy Huffaker
St. Peter Chaldean Cathedral has approximately 37,000 Chaldean Iraqi members.
In addition to aggressive teenagers, unemployed adults with nothing to do can lead to violence and riots. Foreign-policy experts warn that the Obama administration should pay attention to this because further instability in the Middle East would of course hurt U.S. interests in the region.
“How can you possibly have a stable Iraq, how can it possibly be good for the Middle East, if you have massive numbers of displaced people inside of Iraq, massive numbers of Iraqis displaced outside of the country, lots of vulnerable people inside the country, who may not be displaced?” Hurd asks. “That’s not good for anybody.”
It’s been 10 months since I first met Silewa, and he has now been living in El Cajon for about a year. But he is no closer to having a steady job and cannot survive without help from others. He worked as role player for the U.S. Army for a few days in the beginning of 2009. That job, which paid him about $200 a day, helped him to pay his share of the rent. But the job ended, and he has found nothing to replace it. He has filled out applications with companies in person and online, but he has not heard back from anyone.
“I want to work,” he says. “I need to work. I need the job. But nobody calls me. What can I do?”
His family remains separated, and it does not look like his wife and children, still in Germany, will join him here any time soon. His mother, brothers and sister live in Iraq. Another sister has escaped to Syria. Silewa said he does not want to return to Iraq because the country is still too dangerous. Yet life here is so hard, he sometimes wishes he had never come.
Silewa says that more Chaldean Iraqis like him have settled in El Cajon because they have a relative or friend living there. But he is worried about how they too will manage. “So much people come every day, every day,” Silewa says. “No job, no work, nothing in El Cajon. What can we do? I don’t know."
Hanna Ingber Win is the World Editor at The Huffington Post. She can be reached at hingber@huffingtonpost.com.
