Homesick Iraqi refugees return to uncertain future

By Wisam Mohammed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - 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, but most are still too fearful to return.

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

International aid agencies say the number of people being displaced in Iraq still exceeds the number of returnees. Displacement and Migration Minister Abdul Samad Sultan told Reuters about 1,600 people were returning to Iraq every day.

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

But 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 Shi'ites 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 2 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", says the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

FINANCIAL HELP

"All Iraqis are convinced that the withdrawal of the U.S. army will spark a civil war," said Ala'a al-Tememi, 47, a Shi'ite engineer in the Ministry of Industry who returned home to Baghdad after fleeing to Iraq's more stable Kurdish north.

Tememi is cutting the grass in his overgrown garden in Ghazaliya, a mainly Sunni district in west Baghdad that he left in July after motorbike-riding 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.

Minister Sultan says the government is offering financial help to returning families. About 4,000 families have each received 1 million dinars (about $800), while 4,650 more are still waiting for the payments to be processed.

"Prime Minister Maliki has also ordered us to pay the costs of trips for families who want to return home from neighboring states by plane and cars," he said in an interview.