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Iraqi Kurdistan Struggles to Meet Needs of Displaced Syrian Kurds

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq is struggling with the number of displaced Syrian Kurds flowing into the region, writes Abdel Hamid Zebari.
Members of a Syrian refugees family, who fled the violence back home, are seen at the Domiz refugee camp in the northern Iraqi of province Dohuk July 25, 2012. The number of refugees that have fled to Iraq's Kurdistan region is in excess of 11,000 refugees, and they are settled in the region's three provinces: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniya. As for the Domiz refugee camp, the number of refugee families reached 696 families, equivalent to 2,800 people, but on the other side of the camp, where young refugees ar
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When popular protests erupted in Syria, a mass influx to the Kurdistan region of Iraq began, particularly from the Kurdish majority areas in Syria. The flow of people reached numbers that exceeded the expectation of the Kurdish administration, which started to look for ways to provide refugees with shelter and assistance.

Since March 15, 2011, Syria has experienced popular protests that started with demands for democratic reform, and ended with demands to bring down Bashar al-Assad’s regime. These protests were met with bloody violence by the Syrian security forces and “thugs,” which has resulted in the death of more than 70,000 people, according to the United Nations High Commisioner for Human Rights. Moreover, tens of thousands of protesters are currently being detained in Syrian prisons, according to the SOHR. While there are hundreds of thousands of refugees, displaced and missing persons, the Syrian authorities accuse terrorist groups of being behind the violence.

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