Slowly and unsurely, Iraqis who fled the bombings are beginning to return home

Published on Friday 23 November 2007 01:02

ENCOURAGED by the lull in the bloodletting in their homeland, Iraqis are beginning to trickle home, desperate to escape the financial hardships that exile has imposed.

"There is nothing sweeter than being in Iraq. I will not leave again," said Saadiya Tawfik, a 70-year-old grandmother, whose family struggled to make ends meet after fleeing to neighbouring Syria with more than a million other Iraqis.

International aid agencies say the number of people displaced in Iraq still exceeds the number of returnees. While most are still too fearful to return Abdul Samad Sultan, the displacement and migration minister, said about 1,600 people were coming home every day.

The government has been keen to highlight the number of families coming back to show that a nine-month-old US-Iraqi military campaign to quell sectarian violence is working.

However, anecdotal evidence suggests there is a push-pull factor at work. Iraqis are certainly coming home because of improved security, but equally they are being pushed out of the countries that have taken them in. Unable to find jobs, many Iraqis, even those considered well-off, have become impoverished in exile.

Iraq is now at a crossroads after savage violence between majority Shiites and Sunni Arabs killed tens of thousands, displaced more than a million people and sent millions more fleeing abroad in an exodus of Biblical proportions.

Many of the two million Iraqi refugees abroad, who are mainly in Syria and Jordan, are waiting to make sure that the downturn in violence is not simply a lull but a "long-term phenomenon", said the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

"All Iraqis are convinced that the withdrawal of the US army will spark a civil war," said Alaa al-Tememi, 47, a Shiite engineer in the ministry of industry who returned home to Baghdad after fleeing to Iraq's more stable Kurdish north.

Mr Tememi was cutting the grass in his garden in Ghazaliya, a mainly Sunni district in west Baghdad that he left in July after gunmen killed his brother. "The killing frightened my family and we decided to go north to Arbil. I couldn't speak any Kurdish, which is important to work there. We suffered a lot until I found a job with a foreign company. We found security but lost our comfort," he said.

He is not easily persuaded the violence is over. He believes the drop in bloodshed is only being sustained by a massive security presence in Baghdad that cannot last forever.

Some are making the most of the relative peace. Rifaat al- Haliji, 32, is a bandleader who plays at weddings. After Ramadan ended last month, he said that business in the capital started to increase. "We were stuck out of work for seven months," he said. Now, "we do five weddings a week".

The revival, however, has been far from complete. Mr Haliji said there were still many neighbourhoods where he could not go. "Dora, Saydia, Ghaziliya, Jihad, Shula" — he ticked them off one by one. Then, fearing that someone from the Mahdi Army might be listening, he leaned in and whispered: "Sadr City, too."

Some other signs of normality are emerging. Dining is not for the squeamish in a city inured to death, especially after sectarian slaughter that saw bodies floating past the rear window of the al-Faris fish restaurant, on the eastern bank of the Tigris River.

Despite the violence, Hashem Jassem's restaurant never closed. But business was bad, and on many days it sat empty except for fish. Nervous patrons rushed in, grabbed their dinner and disappeared quickly, eager to be home before nightfall. Now things are a little better. Customers come at 4pm and leave at 11pm.

Mr Jassem remains generally upbeat, about safety at least. "Security is a little better than before," he said. "Probably things will get better, God willing."

The minister, Mr Sultan, said the government is offering financial help to returning families. About 4,000 families have each received 1 million dinars (about 400), while 4,650 more are still waiting for the payments to be processed.

"The prime minister has ordered us to pay the costs of trips for families who want to return home ," he said. "We have talked with the embassies and Iraqi airlines to register the names of people who want to return."

Falih Mohammed, 40, a Sunni Arab university professor, has returned home to Shaab, a mainly Shiite district in northern Baghdad after fleeing a year ago to live in Egypt, which has taken in up to 70,000 Iraqis.

He was prompted to leave Iraq by the kidnapping of his brother and his son at a fake checkpoint. Although the pair were later released, the incident persuaded him it was time to move.

"We suffered in Egypt, having to move house all the time. I decided to return home after a friend told me the university was going to dismiss me because I had exceeded my one-year holiday time," Mr Mohammed said.

"I was not convinced about staying in Baghdad, but after returning to my district, I found many things had changed, like more security forces. Now I remember the moments of homelessness outside Iraq. Travelling is death's brother."

While Mr Mohammed and Mr Tememi have gone back to neighbourhoods where their sect is not in a majority, that is unusual. According to the IOM most are returning to homogenised areas.

IN SEARCH OF A BETTER LIFE

AT LEAST two million Iraqis have fled the country since the US-led invasion of 2003.

Most of these went to neighbouring states, with Syria and Jordan taking the overwhelming bulk - and experiencing consequent strains on their societies.

Other countries in the region, such as Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and Turkey have also accepted Iraqis.

In Europe, only Sweden has accepted sizeable numbers of Iraqi refugees, allowing in 9,000 during 2006, a figure that will be topped this year.

Of the 310 Iraqis who sought asylum in the UK in the second quarter of 2007, only 30 were allowed to stay on their first application and a further 25 were given leave to remain. The rest were refused.