U.S. grapples with refugee challenge in Iraq

BAGHDAD — Handling the return of millions of Iraqis who fled to other countries or were driven from their homes during Saddam Hussein’s rule stands as one of the most daunting long-term challenges for the U.S. administrators running Iraq.

About 200,000 Iraqis are living in neighboring Iran, whose government is now eager to send them home. But U.S. officials are balking, worried that a flood of mainly Shi’ite Muslim Iraqis would further destabilize a situation that is precarious.

“We’re facing problems created by the occupying powers that prevent us from returning these refugees,” Ahmad Hosseini, Iran’s director general for refugee issues, recently told reporters at the Geneva offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

“The occupying powers believe it’s not the proper time for all Iraqis who reside abroad to go back,” he said without elaborating.

More Iraqi exiles live in Iran than in any other country, except Jordan, most of them Shi’ites who are viewed with suspicion by Sunnis in Iraq as well as policy analysts in Washington because of their religious links to Iran’s mainly Shi’ite population.

U.S. officials say they support an orderly return of the refugees but decline to offer any specifics on a timetable, or what conditions would have to be met to create a stable environment.

“As a practical matter, we simply do not have at the moment the capacity to perform adequate security checks on people returning in large numbers,” said L. Paul Bremer, the chief of the civilian Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupying power in Iraq.

Returning refugees “must be well looked after once they get here,” he added.

Looming crisis

For more than a month, the United States and Iran have squabbled over everything from Tehran’s nuclear program to accusations that it is hiding operatives of terror network al Qaeda and attempting to foment rebellion in predominantly Shi’ite southern Iraq.

While the fate of Iraqi refugees adds to the inevitable sparring between Washington and Tehran, a looming crisis for Iraqi refugees stretches to nearly every corner of the globe.

Within the country, displaced Kurds, Shi’ites and Marsh Arabs, suddenly freed of a fiercely controlling central government, are attempting to return to their long-lost homes — even if other families are now living there. Incidents of previous tenants or owners returning to claim their homes or land are anecdotal but rising, experts say.

The postwar chaos has created an unprecedented opening for “economic migration,” as those seeking to upgrade their living standards simply move into empty homes or kick out members of a marginalized group that may be unable to resist.

Yusuf, a Shi’ite engineer who has lived in one place for 31 years, was surprised when a neighbor he had never seen before offered to sell him another apartment in his own building.

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