Refugees Are Strangers in Strange Land

                           New Life, New Struggles Confront Kurdish Exiles

                           By Eric Lipton
                           Washington Post Staff Writer
                           Monday, December 30 1996
                           The Washington Post

                           The 13 children spend their days gazing blankly
                           out their fifth-story window into a world they
                           know nothing about. Their parents sit silently on
                           the floor, leaning against bare living room
                           walls, or pass hours pacing back and forth,
                           confused, sometimes angry and utterly lost.

                           Saddam Hussein no longer can threaten the two
                           families, 18 people packed into this two-bedroom
                           apartment on 16th Street NW in the District's
                           Mount Pleasant neighborhood. But the trauma
                           inflicted upon this group of recently settled
                           Kurdish refugees is far from over.

                           Airlifted from the Persian Gulf in the summer by
                           the U.S. government, Mohamad Arif, his brother
                           and their families are among the nearly 7,000
                           Kurds who fled a threatened slaughter by Saddam's
                           armies and allies.

                           They are being placed in communities across the
                           country, including Arlington, Fairfax and the
                           District, facing an all-but-incomprehensible
                           culture, language and way of life.

                           Yes, the Arif brothers are grateful to be alive.
                           But the shock of arriving in this new world --
                           where everyone is a stranger and every corner
                           offers a new struggle or mystery -- has terrified
                           them.

                           "What about my children? How can I care for them
                           if I have nothing?" said Hagi Arif, 46, who came
                           with his six children, wife and mother. (He, like
                           most Kurds interviewed for this story, spoke
                           through an interpreter.) "How will I do it here?
                           How can I survive?"

                           The 350 Kurds to settle so far in the District,
                           Virginia and Maryland are facing a multitude of
                           challenges: the obvious need to find work and
                           permanent housing; what relief workers say are
                           unrealistic expectations that some Kurds had of
                           an easier transition; and, in some cases, what
                           officials say may be improper care provided by
                           the agencies assigned to help them.

                           Many of the refugees are uneducated and have few
                           job skills. Others were relatively well off in
                           their Iraqi towns, with their own homes, cars,
                           VCRs and other modest luxuries.

                           "We are starting from zero. We left everything
                           behind we had," said Nawzad Muradi, 35, an
                           English-speaking Kurd, who like the Arif brothers
                           comes from Zakhu, near Iraq's northern border.
                           "Now we are calling it the past. It is gone. We
                           did not come here to beg. But it is difficult,
                           very, very difficult."

                           Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and
                           Human Services say they are committed to helping
                           the families, adding that they plan to
                           investigate crowded housing provided for some of
                           the refugees brought to the District.

                           "We are there for them," said Lenny Glickman, a
                           spokesman for the HHS Office of Refugee
                           Resettlement. "We understand that the adjustment
                           is often difficult, but this country is filled
                           with thousands of extraordinary refugee success
                           stories."

                           The Kurds, a nationless, mostly Sunni Muslim
                           ethnic group of about 22 million people, have
                           struggled for centuries to establish an
                           independent homeland. They live in a mountainous,
                           crescent-shaped area that stretches across Iraq,
                           Iran, Syria, Turkey and into Azerbaijan.

                           In 1991, at the end of the war with Iraq, a
                           U.S.-led coalition set up a "safe haven" in
                           northern Iraq for the Kurds and began a $200
                           million effort to rebuild destroyed Kurdish
                           villages and farms.

                           But that five-year-old project collapsed in
                           August when more than 30,000 of Saddam's elite
                           Republican Guard troops moved into the area at
                           the invitation of one of two rival Kurdish
                           political parties.

                           The United States responded with a barrage of
                           cruise missiles to Saddam-controlled territory on
                           the other side of Iraq, along the southern
                           border. At the same time, the small contingent of
                           American troops and relief workers stationed in
                           northern Iraq since 1991 were ordered to abandon
                           their posts and cross the border into Turkey.

                           Suddenly, the thousands of Kurds -- including the
                           Arif brothers and Muradi and his wife -- who had
                           been hired by the U.S. military and nonprofit
                           agencies to help in the relief effort, were on
                           their own. Also abandoned were several hundred
                           Kurds who had joined a CIA-backed Iraqi
                           resistance party.

                           Within days, more than 100 of these Kurds were
                           killed after Iraqi secret police went door to
                           door in the captured city of Irbil to hunt them
                           down, according to U.S. officials. The remaining
                           former U.S. employees and CIA-backed dissidents
                           went into hiding.

                           "The Iraqi troops had pulled to within 35 miles
                           from our city, and they were shelling a nearby
                           town," said Dler Snawy, 30, a Kurdish engineer
                           who had been overseeing the construction of
                           shelters in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah with
                           a U.S.-financed program. "We destroyed all the
                           files we had in the computers, and we burned any
                           paper or pictures we had that showed who we were
                           working for."

                           The United States, which no longer had personnel
                           in the area, declined to go in and rescue the
                           threatened local staff, but it notified its
                           former employees and their families that if they
                           could make it to the Turkish border, they would
                           be granted political asylum.

                           After seeing a fleet of Iraqi tanks on a nearby
                           hillside, Snawy decided it was time to get out.

                           "Some of my friends thought maybe they should try
                           to kill themselves; they were so sure they would
                           be killed by Saddam's forces if they were
                           caught," said Snawy, who has been resettled in
                           Arlington with his wife, who is also an engineer.
                           "I wanted to be there to work for my people. But
                           there was no option. I had to leave my country.
                           Everything I had done was being destroyed in a
                           single day. The game was over."

                           Three waves of Kurds have since been granted
                           asylum: 2,150 who worked for the U.S. military or
                           the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance
                           and their relatives; 600 members of CIA-financed
                           Iraqi opposition parties; and 3,780 who worked
                           for U.S.-based nonprofit agencies, according to
                           the State Department.

                           In each case, they have been flown from Turkey to
                           a U.S. military base in Guam and then, after
                           about two months of processing, sent to the U.S.
                           mainland. So far, more than 2,200 have been
                           placed in new homes.

                           When they land, they are turned over to one of 11
                           nonprofit agencies the U.S. government pays to
                           help resettle refugees. The agencies are given
                           $1,000 per person to cover the first month's
                           worth of housing, food and other expenses.

                           After that, most families are eligible for up to
                           five years of Medicaid, food stamps and cash
                           assistance, although some will be cut off in as
                           little as eight months.

                           The amount of help families get appears to vary
                           greatly, depending on which agency assists them.

                           One group, for example, was set up in spacious
                           housing a month ago on Route 1 in Fairfax by the
                           Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital
                           Area. Members already are enrolled in English
                           classes, have been signed up for Medicaid and
                           food stamps and get about $20 per person a month
                           in spending money.

                           "I want to work to live better," said Shivan
                           Nagim, 32, from Zakhu, a former physical
                           education teacher who said he worked for the CIA.
                           "It will be hard, but I am a strong man. I can do
                           it, and I will."

                           But a second group of Kurdish refugees, under the
                           care of the New York-based International Rescue
                           Committee, hasn't been as lucky.

                           The 18 members of the two Arif families are so
                           crowded in their two-bedroom apartment in Mount
                           Pleasant that nine of them sleep side by side on
                           mattresses lined up in one bedroom, and six sleep
                           on the living room floor.

                           The two families each have been given about $200
                           a week for food and other expenses, the brothers
                           said, which doesn't go far enough. They also said
                           they have not been able to get medical treatment
                           for their sick mother or to enroll in English
                           classes. "There is no milk for the children, no
                           shampoo to wash," Mohamad Arif said. "We have
                           been left here like we are in a jail."

                           Nearby, on Adams Mill Road, three other families
                           with a total of 35 people live in a house so
                           cramped that several sleep on porches and in the
                           basement. "If you want to destroy me, keep me
                           right here," said Ahmad Hussein, 50, whose
                           12-person family lives there.

                           Beth Rutledge, director of refugee processing and
                           placement for IRC, said that the staff members
                           assigned to Washington cases were away last week
                           and that she could not immediately respond to
                           residents' complaints or comment on their
                           situation. "IRC is always concerned about its
                           clients," she said. "If either of these groups
                           has concerns, we really want to address them."

                           HHS officials said they would investigate the
                           crowding. "It is obviously something we want to
                           look into," Glickman said.

                           But even members of those families set up in more
                           comfortable housing say the transition has been
                           traumatic. A small number of them were forced to
                           leave husbands or wives behind after finding at
                           the last minute their spouses were not on U.S.
                           evacuation lists.

                           For most, everything about the United States is
                           foreign. They find it strange that they don't
                           know their neighbors and that Muslims are in the
                           minority here. They're boggled by the cost of
                           housing and other necessities and by the reliance
                           on computers and other technology.

                           "I ran into someone in the apartment building's
                           laundry room and I said, `Hello, hi,' " said
                           Snawy, who speaks English. "He looked at me and
                           said, `So what?' It is really strange."

                           Something as simple as taking a bus can turn into
                           a day-long nightmare for the exiles, as there is
                           no one to provide directions in their native
                           language. In many of these traditional families,
                           women who have never considered working are
                           realizing that they will need to find employment
                           to pull their families out of poverty.

                           The change has left some feeling cheated.

                           "They lied to us. They told us everything would
                           be ready," said Salim Abdullah, 29, a former
                           security guard for a U.S. military compound who
                           arrived with his wife and child in Arlington last
                           month. "How can they leave us like this? We would
                           have been better off back home."

                           Relief workers say part of adapting to life here
                           is a realization of what it takes to survive in a
                           competitive economy. And they say refugees
                           sometimes have unrealistic expectations about how
                           much help they'll get here. "People come to this
                           country with a set of expectations, justified or
                           not," Glickman said. "There is an adjustment
                           period."

                           Still, many of the refugees are quick to express
                           gratitude and hope for a better future.

                           "It is a miracle that we are living right now. It
                           really is," said Muradi, a former translator for
                           U.S. military forces. "All of us, we are
                           grateful. We will not forget this, forever."

                           @CAPTION: Two Kurdish families who fled the
                           threat of Saddam Hussein prepare to eat dinner in
                           the two-bedroom apartment they share in Northwest
                           Washington. They have almost no furniture.

                           @CAPTION: Sleeping arrangements are simple in the
                           Mount Pleasant apartment: mattresses lined up on
                           the floor.

                           @CAPTION: Turning her back on the television,
                           Amina Hagi prays in the afternoon.

                           @CAPTION: For two Kurdish families who share an
                           apartment in the District, the window and a
                           television provide glimpses of an unsettling new
                           life in the United States.

                           @CAPTION: Shema Hagi, 15, distracts her
                           11-month-old nephew, Henderin Hagi, while her
                           aunt Layla Hagi cooks -- for 18 people.

                             © Copyright 1996 The Washington Post Company