A wrenching report from the International Herald Tribune on Iraqis displaced within their own country and therefore not technically considered refugees by the United States or United Nations:
…”In Najaf, estimates of the number of the displaced ranges from 60,000 to more than 400,000. The official number is 10,000 families, or 60,000 people, since humanitarian organizations estimate that there are six people on average in each Iraqi family, according to the International Organization for Migration, which works with governments worldwide on refugee issues. The majority live in squatter villages far from services; there are about 1,700 in the refugee camp.
But Kammal Abdul Zahra, the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent’s Najaf office, puts the real figure at about 400,000. That would be a 45 percent increase since the Samarra bombing, which marked the beginning of the mass migrations. Numbers are hard to estimate because some displaced families stay only a few months in one place and then move on.
Such a jump in population would present huge problems for cities in a developed country, let alone one in a less developed country still recovering from decades of war.”