One in ten Iraqi families have fled their homes and not returned. A population shift on this scale has not occurred in the Middle East since the establishment of the state of Israel and the displacement of Palestinians in 1948. What many experts call a “silent crisis” has impacted not only the lives of the 3.5 million Iraqis currently uprooted from their homes, but also the communities and social fabric that those fleeing have left behind. Engineers, artists, lawyers, academics, doctors, and other professionals were among the first to escape the war. This migration drained Iraq of its middle class. It dismantled many of Iraq’s cultural and educational institutions sustained by teachers and artists. And it stripped a society of the many services that such professionals provide. Hundreds of Iraq’s doctors have been killed, and an estimated half of its 34,000 doctors have fled the country.

It is unsurprising, then, that crucial health indicators in Iraq have drastically worsened. The infant mortality rate increased 150 percent from 1990 to 2005, the worst retrogression in that basic indicator of well-being in the world. The World Health Organization estimated that 70 percent of Iraqis lack access to clean water and 80 percent lack sanitation, conditions leading to epidemics of cholera. Rates of cancer in Iraq have also increased precipitously, a possible consequence of the 1,700 tons of depleted uranium used by the US in the 2003 invasion. In Babil, south of Baghdad, there were 500 cases of cancer in 2004. By 2009, there were over 9,000. In short, the war has brought increased rates of illness and disease to Iraq, while displacing the very medical professionals who could have treated Iraq’s sick.

The displacement of millions of Iraqis has also reconfigured the ethnic and religious composition of neighborhoods. The bombing of the Al-Askari mosque in Samarra in 2006 incited sectarian violence by militant groups and led to a second wave of forced migration in which many Iraqis fled. Their departures left neighborhoods and governorates in once plural cities like Baghdad and Diyala ethnically homogeneous for the first time.                                                                                      

There is little hope that the diverse population that Iraq has lost will be regained any time soon. Few refugees plan to return. As one Iraqi engineer who now works in a restaurant in Damascus stated, “There is no Iraq to return to, my friend. Iraq only exists in our dreams and memories.”