In Desert Limbo--21,000 Iraqis Who Can’t Go Home : Refugees: The Saudis treat them as guests. But there is little hope of resettlement.

It may be the world’s only air-conditioned refugee camp.

Then again, the 21,000 Iraqis who revolted against Saddam Hussein, then fled his wrath, are likely to be in desert limbo indefinitely.

The refugees were relocated three weeks ago to this two-square-kilometer camp in a remote area near the Iraqi border, more than 450 miles from Riyadh.

Many said Tuesday they will not return to Iraq while Hussein still rules. Yet no Persian Gulf nation has indicated a willingness to accept them for resettlement--particularly their Saudi Arabian hosts.

The Saudis are treating them with grand largess, moving them from tents to prefabricated shelters complete with furniture, running water and two air conditioners. Already, Rafha resembles a semi-permanent city; it has two wells, a water treatment plant, a mobile hospital and plans for schools and playgrounds at a total cost of more than $25 million.

“It won’t be like a Disney World, but we will try to make it comfortable,” Saudi Lt. Gen. Khalid ibn Sultan said Tuesday as he toured the sprawling encampment trailed by two busloads of journalists. “They will stay here as long as they need. They are not refugees. They are our guests.”

By refugee standards, Rafha is almost luxurious, with the Saudis providing food, water, shelter and medical treatment. But it is also carefully isolated, surrounded by barbed wire in the endless Al Hajarah desert, about 15 miles from the nearest town.

“This is the latest edition: Desert Shield, Desert Storm and now Desert Limbo,” said Kenneth Roth, deputy director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch. “Can you imagine the helplessness of waiting for Saddam Hussein to fall? Because that is the only thing that is going to save these people. Nobody else is going to take them.

“I wish some of the resources brought to bear to meet their material needs might instead be spent to resettle them and help them get on with their lives,” Roth added.

Most of the refugees are Shiite Muslims from southern Iraq, with many coming from Najaf and Diwaniya, cities that were strongholds of the postwar uprising.

As Iraq’s Republican Guard moved in to crush the rebellion, some refugees fled toward allied-controlled areas of southern Iraq and wound up in the Safwan refugee camp near the Kuwaiti border. Others ran headlong toward the Saudi border, where they were kept in rough encampments before being relocated to Rafha.

Among the Iraqis are a sprinkling of Afghans, Egyptians, Pakistanis and Sudanese, all of whom are expected to be repatriated by the United Nations.

The Iraqis, many of them doctors, engineers, teachers and leaders of the rebellions, recall vicious street fighting and bloody repression and insist they will not cross the Iraqi border without guns in their hands.

Yassim Zamili, an artist, had sketched scenes of the war in pencil on cardboard scavenged from food crates. He said he had fled Diwaniya 15 days ago, but not before tearing up all of the Saddam Hussein portraits he had been commissioned to draw.

“The president of Iraq right now is a psychotic who suffers from megalomania,” he said through an interpreter.

Abu Haider, a former Iraqi army colonel who said he commanded rebel forces in Najaf, said the city was besieged by rockets, tanks and attack helicopters.

“Saddam’s troops would fly in helicopters over some neighborhoods of the city and ask them to leave the neighborhood, and then shoot them as they left their houses,” he said.

Haider and other refugees also claimed that the Iraqi forces had dropped napalm and mustard gas, drowned people in the river and committed other atrocities. Some wondered why the Kurdish refugees had drawn the world’s sympathy while their plight seemed largely ignored.

“Why did the world forget about getting Saddam?” asked Salem Mahadi, 27. “Where is George Bush who asked us to have an uprising?”