Iraqi refugees report torture in Syria

A U.N. survey also asks how violence has affected the war’s survivors.

MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS

CAIRO, Egypt — One in five Iraqi refugees in Syria has been tortured or suffered from other violence, and more than a third fled their homeland between July and October, at the height of the U.S. troop buildup that was intended to quell sectarian violence in Baghdad, preliminary data from a new United Nations study show.

The survey also found that the refugee population is highly educated — nearly a third have university degrees, including master’s and doctorates — and that many refugees are only weeks away from exhausting their savings.

The survey, which the IPSOS market research firm conducted in October and November, is the most comprehensive study to date of the 1.5 million Iraqis who’ve sought safety in Syria from the sectarian violence at home.

The results are based on interviews with 754 refugees, who were asked detailed questions that ranged from whether they’d been hit by grenades to how they treat their children’s illnesses.

Full results are expected in early January.

The U.N. survey includes special questions about trauma that researchers from Harvard University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hope will help them determine for the first time the extent to which the violence in Iraq has damaged the mental health and stability of the war’s survivors.

The survey may provide some insight into the impact of U.S. actions.

The preliminary results suggest that as American forces moved into Baghdad’s neighborhoods to establish security, large numbers of Iraqis moved out.

Of the refugees polled, 78 percent said they’d come from Baghdad, which has been the focus of military operations since the U.S. troop buildup began last February. Thirty-five percent said they’d fled between July and October, when U.S. troop strength peaked. An additional 30 percent said they’d fled to Syria last year, as violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims intensified.

More than half the survey’s participants said they’d received direct threats or had lived through bombings.

Eleven percent had been assaulted and 6 percent had been kidnapped.

The number of refugees with missing or dead relatives has risen steadily in the past four years; 54 percent had dead or missing family members this year, up from 22 percent last year.

Murder was cited as the No. 1 cause of death, listed in 78 percent of the cases in the U.N. survey. A majority of respondents, 62 percent, blamed sectarian militias for the deaths. Twenty-eight percent listed “unknown,” and 2 percent listed “al-Qaida.”