Perspective: Uneasy Havens Await Those Who Flee Iraq

AMMAN, Jordan, Dec. 6 — Every day at dusk as the streets of this brooding city empty, people like Halima Reyahi scramble to become invisible again.

She sticks to side streets, her eyes scanning for the increasingly frequent police dragnets and checkpoints set up in search of illegal Iraqi immigrants like her. The loneliness of her exile is magnified by the fact that all four of her sons have been turned away repeatedly at the Jordanian border.

Ms. Reyahi is one of nearly two million Iraqis who have fled the vicious chaos of their country since the American invasion nearly four years ago, flooding neighboring states, especially Jordan and Syria, but also Lebanon and Egypt.

As they leave Iraq at a rate of nearly 3,000 a day, the refugees are threatening the social and economic fabric of both Jordan and Syria. In Jordan, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are trying to blend into a country of only 6 million inhabitants, including about 1.5 million registered Palestinian refugees. The governments classify most of the Iraqis as visitors, not refugees.

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