Refugees

In the secluded courtyard of a weathered condominium complex, at the dead end of a graffiti-marred Santa Ana street, the Cham are busy preparing a summer feast. Banana trees grow tall here, shadowing crowded stalks of lemon grass and green onion. Severed bits of a cow slaughtered in conformity with Islamic law fill bright blue plastic tubs. Nearby, women sit cross-legged, chatting and laughing; their strong hands grind fresh ginger in stone mortars.

The chief of U.N. humanitarian efforts urged Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels Friday to let tens of thousands of civilians leave the South Asian country's war zone, saying there were "credible reports" that some people trying to flee had been shot. John Holmes also called on the Sri Lankan government to allow civilians to leave safely, either by agreeing to a temporary cease-fire or allowing a humanitarian corridor for safe passage through the front lines in the island's northeast.

They stream down from the mountains, limping along in small groups, riding in battered cars, hanging off jampacked trucks and buses. Along with its long list of problems, the Pakistani government must now cope with hundreds of thousands of stressed and bedraggled civilians fleeing clashes between soldiers and militants.

Tens of thousands of civilians, many on foot or donkey-led carts, on Sunday took advantage of a lifted curfew to flee Pakistan's embattled Swat Valley, and the army said it had killed 400 to 500 militants in its battle against the Taliban. The hemorrhaging of residents from a scenic valley that once attracted hordes of tourists threatened to exacerbate an internal refugee crisis for a nuclear-armed nation already facing economic, political and other woes.

At the entrance to the Hazrat Usman camp just south of the Swat Valley, a welcoming committee greets those fleeing violence between the government and militants with a cool glass of water, a meal and a place to sleep with fans and a pharmacy. Though camp organizers don't voice any overt sympathy for the Taliban, their view is clear: The entire crisis is a creation of the government and the army. Two miles up the road sits the much larger government-run Jalala camp.

A U.N. official and a guard were shot and killed Thursday during an attempted kidnapping at a displacement camp in northwestern Pakistan, underscoring the level of violence plaguing the country even as government leaders say it's safe for camp dwellers to return to the volatile Swat Valley. The slayings occurred at the Kacha Garhi camp outside Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan's largest city. Zelle Usman, a Pakistani field officer with the Office of the U.N.

On a pleasant afternoon in Amman, the genteel Jordanian capital, a petite Iraqi woman with carefully coiffed hair, heavy makeup and lots of gold jewelry sat in a classroom full of refugees heading to America, her face frozen in wide-eyed horror. Her husband had disappeared in the war. Her request to settle in Jordan had been denied. Now an advisor from the International Organization for Migration was telling her no U.S. firm would recognize her law degree or her nearly two decades of experience.

After I survived my first bombing, I said to myself, I won't see worse than this. Then I survived my second bombing and it changed everything. It was a Wednesday in August, and I was sitting at my desk in the Foreign Ministry doing routine paperwork. I can't remember what time it was. My colleague entered the room, and at that moment, there was a huge explosion. Glass flew in and the ceiling collapsed. Black smoke came through the window. I felt pain in my abdomen; blood stained my shirt.

For centuries, Adam Abdi Ibrahim's ancestors herded cattle and goats across an unforgiving landscape in southern Somalia where few others were hearty enough to survive. This year, Ibrahim became the first in his clan to throw in the towel, abandoning his land and walking for a week to bring his family to this overcrowded refugee camp in Kenya. He's not fleeing warlords, Islamist insurgents or Somalia's 18-year civil war. He's fleeing the weather. "I give up," said the father of five as he stood in line recently to register at the camp.

In an unremarkable room in a corner of UC Irvine's main library, the little-known stories of Southeast Asian refugees are kept alive. The room holds rare items from decades ago -- audio recordings of those recounting their journeys fleeing Vietnam by boat, letters written from refugee camps to families left behind and refugee orientation brochures they picked up upon arriving in Orange County.