Many Iraqis long for home

Neighborhoods calm, but no longer mixed; ousted ex-residents struggle with new lives

By Kim Gamel ASSOCIATED PRESS | Wednesday, May 28, 2008

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BAGHDAD - The surge has been good for the Murads.

A little more than a year after they were driven out of their Baghdad neighborhood by militants who kidnapped their son, the parents and children are back in their home. The Shi'ite family is living among longtime Sunni neighbors, protected by U.S. forces and armed with safety guarantees from the Sunni tribal sheiks who had joined forces to drive al Qaeda in Iraq from the area.

"I am happy to be back to my house and enjoying the company of my Sunni neighbors and friends," said Ali Jassim Murad, 43, a Culture Ministry employee and head of the household.

But 15 months after the U.S. military poured reinforcements into Iraq's worst battlefields to regain control, families like the Murads are a tiny minority. Of the 5.1 million Iraqis uprooted from their homes, about 78,180 - less than 1 percent - had returned by March 31, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental humanitarian group based in Switzerland.

Up to half of the displaced are in neighboring countries, chiefly Jordan and Syria. But these countries, feeling overwhelmed, have tightened visa restrictions. Meanwhile, Iraqis who are refugees in their own country are feeling the pinch of high rents, lost jobs and the disruption of their children's education.

Yet the United Nations and aid agencies warn that despite the drop in violence, a rapid mass of Iraqis demanding return to their homes may only reignite sectarian tensions.

So the exodus from Iraq could remain the biggest crisis of its kind in the world today, and could stay that way indefinitely.

Bilal al-Mashhadani, a 45-year-old Sunni teacher, is still afraid to return to the Baghdad home that he fled after five black-clad Shi'ite gunmen, whom he recognized as members of the Mahdi Army militia, came to his house and told him that he was no longer welcome in the neighborhood.

The next day he found an envelope on his doorstep. It contained a bullet and a letter saying, "Leave or die."

Mr. al-Mashhadani, his wife and three daughters packed what they could, locked the door and on Dec. 20, 2006, fled to the Amariyah district of Baghdad.