Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed. Thousands have left their refuge in Syria in recent months, according to some estimates. The Iraqi Embassy is organising a secure mass convoy from Damascus to Baghdad on Monday for refugees who want to drive back. Embassy notices went up around the Syrian capital yesterday, offering free bus and train rides home.Saida Zaynab, the Damascus neighbourhoods once dominated by many of the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, is almost deserted. Apartment prices are plummeting and once-crowded shops and buses are half empty.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was scrambling to assess the transformation last night. An interim report is expected today. “There is a large movement of people going back to Iraq. We are doing rapid research on this,” a spokesman said.
| "Right after lunch [burp]," he added. |
Hussein Ali Saleh, the director of the National Theatre in Baghdad, who is staging Iraqi plays for refugees in Damascus, said that his audience was disappearing. A month ago the al-Najum theatre near the Syrian central bank building was filled with 400 Iraqis every night. Now barely 50 turn up. “In the last month, 60 per cent of the Iraqis I know have returned,” he said. “The situation has been changed completely. They all want to go back. Even my own family back in Baghdad is telling me the situation is much better.”
The return of so many Iraqis is a strong vote of confidence in the security situation in Baghdad. However, it also reflects the tightening of visa regulations by Syria two months ago, making it more difficult for refugees to stay and impossible for most to come back if violence flares up again. The border crossing into Syria is closed for them. Their trip to Iraq is one way.
| Now let's hope that, given what they now know, they'll work to make Iraq a better place. |
Abdel Samad Rahman Sultan, the Iraqi Minister of Displacement and Migration, said that about 9,000 families had returned from abroad since February. He noted, however, that 170,000 families were still listed as internally displaced people inside Iraq. Returnees often come back to ethnically cleansed neighbourhoods, sometimes finding their abandoned homes looted or even occupied by families who have fled from other parts of Iraq.
“It’s better to have a chance at peace than wait here forever,” Haidar Ibrahim, a refugee, said. Not all Iraqis in Damascus agree. “Before, my family refused to let me even talk about going back,” Ahlam Ahmed said. “Now they are calling me every day and saying, ‘Why don’t you come?’. This is a real change. But I don’t yet trust the situation.”
Most Iraqis interviewed by The Times, though, seemed enthusiastic rather than despondent. “Throughout history Baghdad has fallen many times but she always rose up again,” Abu Ibrahim said. “We all know this and that’s why we return. We return to rebuild Baghdad now.”
Saida Zaynab, on the outskirts of Damascus, is known as “Iraq Street” because at least 350,000 Iraqis have lived in the area in the past few years. With them they brought a little bit of home. There is the Bakery Baghdadi selling Iraqi specialty pastries such as sticky-sweet pieces of carrot-pistachio marzipan, and the Habayibna Restaurant, where guests eat charcoal-grilled fish from the Tigris.
“The Syrians were generous with us for a long time,” one diner said, “but they didn’t really like having us here. With so many more people in the city, the prices for everything went up, like flour, milk, vegetables. So it is best to go home when you can.”
Life has been hard for Iraqis in Damascus too, with most prevented from working there. It was, though, the only refuge for poor Iraqis who could not pay to get into Jordan, and many of them said that they were grateful. “Thank you, Syria,” one said, “but I am homesick.”
In a side street Iraqi families were packing their cars for the journey home. Some of the vehicles were decorated with their national flag. “We are not going to Anbar or Basra or Baghdad,” a young man said, “we are going to Iraq.”