In the heart of Little Fallujah (where Pelosi should have strolled)

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ID06Ak08.html

This is biblical exodus - the YouTube version. Welcome to Little Fallujah - previously Geramana, southeast Damascus. The Nahda area of Geramana now boasts at least 200,000 resident Iraqis. They visibly came with all their savings - and made good use of it. The congested main drag of al-Nahda is an intoxicating apotheosis of anarchic capitalism, business piled upon business - Hawaii fruits, Galilia underwear, Call Me mobile, Snack Bambino, Discovery software school, Eva sunglasses, boutique Tout le Monde, all Iraqi-owned.

Street banners promote nightly Iraqi music festivals. Iraqi restaurants rule - such as the favorite Iraqi Palm Tree, with piped bird-singing and a flotilla of Chevy Suburbans with red Iraqi license plates at the door, also popular with Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians from refugee camps and even Somali and Sudanese immigrants. According to a resident, "Druze beautiful girls" in the neighborhood have been replaced by "fat Iraqi men" - a reference to when al-Nahda used to be a little Druze village sprinkled with a few Christians.

A 100-square-meter apartment sells for 2 million Syrian pounds (roughly US$40,000) - four times as much as before the Iraqi invasion. One square meter in prime business premises is now $20,000. Iraqis always pay US dollars cash. No wonder the price of potatoes has also risen fourfold. Not to mention the inflation of hairdressing salons - where Mesopotamian sirens perfect their Christina Aguilera-influenced, multi-shaded pompadours. And right beside al-Nahda is the action - al-Rahda, peppered with smart cafes like the Stop In and al-Nabil not far away from a huge Sunni mosque.

-snip-

In northern Damascus, a crammed room inside the Iraqi Embassy compound is pure Dante's purgatory - waves and waves of Iraqis desperately in search of the right missing papers to request political asylum in a Western embassy. Thousands may be planning to stay in Syria, but for the great majority the promised land really means a visa for Canada, Australia or the ever-elusive European Union.

-snip-

Syria recognizes - formally - that Iraqis are refugees who need to be protected. The administrations of George W Bush and Tony Blair, on the other hand, could never admit to the world they are the source of all this - "the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world" as defined by Kenneth Bacon, president of Refugees International.

Pelosi would have learned much more about the effects of the war on Iraq - and what Syria is actually doing about it - if she had traded the historic wonders of the Old City for a stroll in all-too-real Little Fallujah.
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[DURHAM D]

1. Why have you posted this?

There is no real point in the article as it relates to Pelosi and no point in posting here. I would guess you just wanted a headline to backhand Pelosi.

As best I could tell the author (Pepe) is more concerned about the displacement of "beautiful women" then anything else.

[donsu]

2. I didn't write the article - what backhand?

america is responsible for 200,000 + refugees

actually the neo cons are responsible for the refugees it's just us americans paying for it in blood and money