US surge sees 600,000 more Iraqis abandon home

There have been many arguments over the degree to which the US surge in Iraq is succeeding, but there is one area in which Iraqi humanitarian groups say there is no dispute, and that is the amount of Iraqis fleeing their homes since the surge began.

The Iraqi Red Crescent Organisation said the total number of internally displaced has jumped from 499,000 to 1.1 million since extra US forces arrived with the aim of making the country more secure. The UN-run International Organisation for Migration says the numbers fleeing fighting in Baghdad grew by a factor of 20 in the same period.

These damning statistics reveal that despite much- trumpeted security improvements in certain areas, the level of murderous violence has not declined. The studies reveal that the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes ­ not intending to return ­ is far higher than before the US surge.

The flight is especially marked in religiously mixed areas of central Iraq, with Shia refugees heading south and Sunnis towards the west and north of the country.

Calling it the worst human displacement in Iraq's modern history, a report by the UN migration office suggests that the fierce fighting that has followed the arrival of new US troops is partly responsible.

Whilst politicians argue over the number of Iraqis killed, the scale of Iraqi displacement is largely ignored. Ethnic cleansing is now rampant in parts of Iraq, which is strange considering how harmonious the country was under the rule of Saddam. One can only presume that his iron fist rule kept such tensions from spilling over and that, once the invasion took the lid off the box, this cancer spread throughout Iraqi society.

The UN found that 63 per cent of the Iraqis fled their neighbourhoods because of threats to their lives. More than 25 per cent said they fled after being thrown out of their homes at gunpoint.

I've said it until I am blue in the face, but this is the greatest failing of the Bush Iraqi invasion plan. The primary task of any occupying army is to restore order. Without order, society itself collapses. The worrying signs that the US did not understand this prerequisite to occupation came when Rumsfeld dismissed the looting shortly after the invasion with his infamous phrase, "Freedom's messy".

Freedom, of course, is not messy. Anarchy is messy. By sending too few troops to secure the streets, Rumsfeld lost the war in the first few weeks of the campaign. The US have never recovered from this early mistake and resistance to them has only grown as time has gone on.

In such a disordered environment ethnic cleaning, the very thing we invaded Kosovo to stop, has now taken grip in Iraq. Indeed, it has taken grip to such an extent that one must wonder whether or not there will even be a country called Iraq when this nightmare is finally over.

A damning new assessment was recently delivered by all 15 US intelligence agencies calling the improvements obtained by the surge "modest".

Written by the CIA, it concluded that the government in Baghdad was "unable to govern effectively" and "will become more precarious" in the next six to 12 months, with little hope of reaching accommodation among political factions.

However, the surge appears to be causing a huge increase in the number of Iraqis fleeing their homes and vowing never to return.

This is the hidden human cost of this conflict; the lost homes, the displacement, the suspicion which now exists between former neighbours. It will take decades to ever undo the damage that has been done to Iraqi society, if - indeed - the damage can ever be undone.

And this is being done to a people that Bush set out to "liberate". He should be jailed for what he has done.

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