The result was a refugee exodus southward, that settled in the Chouf District.

The refugee exodus arose partly from ethnic massacres last year that killed some 500,000 Rwandans, mostly members of the minority Tutsi.

In Afghanistan, the potential for a huge refugee exodus remains.

"It's going to outlive us all," said W. Courtland Robinson, the author of a recent book on the refugee exodus.

In addition, the political crackdown following the 2009 election protests is said to have created a "spreading refugee exodus" of elite Iranians.

The lesson of the Indochinese refugee exodus is that without American leadership, the world tends to lose its focus.

As it happened, Amanpour was in Haiti when the refugee exodus began, waiting for the American invasion that then seemed imminent.

The Iraqi military touched off the refugee exodus by crushing a Kurdish rebellion last month.

At the height of the refugee exodus, there were some 20,000 Haitians at Guantanamo.

More so than in any of the Slavic ghettos that had grown up with the great refugee exodus of the previous generation.