BAGHDAD (AP)
-- The head of the United Nations refugee agency warned Tuesday that
Syria could be on the "verge of the abyss" as aid workers brace for a
likely increase in the nearly 2 million refugees who have already fled
the country's civil war.
Antonio Guterres, the
head of the Office for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, called
on Syria's neighbors to keep their borders open to accommodate
additional Syrians seeking to escape the war.
He
made the comments during an interview with The Associated Press in
Baghdad while on a visit to Iraq. The country's northern Kurdish region
has been flooded with tens of thousands of refugees since the middle of
the month.
Guterres stopped short of
predicting the effect on the refugee crisis if the United States and its
allies move ahead with a possible military intervention in the more
than two-year-old civil war. But he said his agency is prepared for the
conflict to "go on escalating" and called for further support from
international donors.
"This is becoming a
global threat. With the recent escalation of the conflict, Syria could
be on the verge of the abyss," he said. "Obviously we need to be ready
for any escalation," he added later.
Gutteres' visit to Iraq highlighted how even that violence-ravaged country has emerged as a haven for Syrian refugees.
He
was accompanied by the head of the World Food Program, Ertharin Cousin.
She cautioned that humanitarian organizations' ability to meet
refugees' needs will become more difficult the longer the Syrian
conflict grinds on.
"Everyone is concerned about the possibility of this becoming more than a conflict inside the borders of Syria," Cousin said.
U.N.
officials say more than 44,000 refugees have poured into Iraq's
northern Kurdish region since August 15, when Kurdish officials opened
access to a bridge leading from Syria. Aid workers have described that
surge as one of the biggest waves of refugees since the start of the
rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad in 2011.
The
influx in new arrivals has pushed the number of Syrian refugees in Iraq
to roughly 200,000, 97 percent of whom are in the Kurdish region,
according to U.N. figures.
More than 40,000
refugees are living in the overcrowded Domiz refugee camp, a vast tent
city with little relief from the scorching summer sun. Smaller camps are
scattered around the Kurdish region. Other refugees have been taken in
by friends and relatives, and some have found shelter in schools and
mosques.
"The regional government has shown a
remarkable capacity to react," Guterres said. "But we have no illusions
that Iraq has enough problems of its own and this comes on top of that.
So international solidarity is absolutely a must if we want borders to
remain open."
In addition to the Kurds'
support, Iraq's central government has pledged $10 million toward the
relief effort, according to Guterres.
Iraqi
Kurds' largely autonomous three-province region is far safer and more
prosperous than many other parts of Iraq, which is grappling with its
worst spike in violence since 2008. The Kurdish region has its own armed
force, known as the peshmerga.
The region's
president, Massoud Barzani, earlier this month vowed to defend the large
Kurdish population in Syria from al-Qaida-linked rebel fighters, though
there is no indication for now that the regional government plans to
deploy Kurdish fighters across the border. Doing so would further strain
fraught relations with the central government in Baghdad and anger
neighboring Turkey.
More than 25 million Kurds
live in parts of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq. Many hope to one day
carve out an independent homeland of their own.
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