Chaos At The Border

By James Wilde/Ruweished

They come by shiny air-conditioned sedan, by bus and truck and on foot. Some are sick, many hungry or thirsty. All are desperate. They are among the 2 million Arabs and Asians driven into Jordan by the threat of war. More than 210,000 refugees have arrived in Jordan during the past three weeks, but only 67,000 have been able to leave the country.

The refugees are a problem for Jordan's King Hussein, whose country lacks the resources to cope with the human tide. Last week Jordan announced that it was temporarily closing its border with Iraq because of "concern for the health situation of the arrivals and to make suitable arrangements for their stay in Jordan." Nevertheless, two days after the announcement, the border reopened and thousands of people came pouring in. As the plight of the refugees continued to worsen, an international relief effort picked up steam. In Geneva a United Nations official said 30 to 40 tons of emergency aid, including food, drinking water, blankets and garbage bags, would be flown from Italy to Jordan early this week. The U.S. announced that it would donate $1 million and 500 tents to the relief effort. France, Belgium and the Netherlands have pledged money and supplies to ease the crisis.

For most of the refugees, however, nothing could be worse than being trapped in Iraq or Kuwait. "It's all a bloody mess there, with people running about scared as cats on a griddle," reports Mansoor Hassan, 21, a Bangladeshi who was visiting his parents in Kuwait when the invasion started. "The Iraqis treated us like dogs and called us pigs," says an Egyptian laborer who escaped from Kuwait. "They took all my savings and even this month's pay. I have a wife and six children in Cairo, and I will have no work when I return. We will starve. But Allah be praised, I am out of Iraq."