Migrants Are Being Evicted From Capital

Authorities have evicted from Baghdad more than 4,000 families who migrated to the Iraqi capital after fleeing southern towns during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. Thousands more are expected to be forced to leave the city, the statement said. The statement did not say when the deportations started nor how many people 4,000 families constituted. It said eight committees have been set up to survey Baghdad’s nearly 5.4 million people to see who is eligible to stay. Under a 1994 law, only those people who came to Baghdad before 1991 have the right to stay. Public utilities in Baghdad are relatively better than elsewhere in the country--particularly the battered south, which bore the brunt of Iraq’s 1980-88 war with Iran and also the Gulf War.