Homecoming Is Bittersweet for Iraqi Refugees

Home these days for Haj Hassan Abid, his wife and seven children is a cramped room on the ground floor of a dilapidated house. The cold stone floor serves as the family’s table, sofa and bed.

Abid, an Iraqi refugee who returned from Iran in November, used to earn a living fishing and farming. Now he can’t find work. The family survives on handouts from relatives and friends.

But Abid is willing to tolerate this pitiful existence because he feels he is home. “I have no regrets,” said Abid, 47, who fled Iraq in the early 1990s after participating in an uprising against then-President Saddam Hussein. “This is my country. We got rid of Saddam. Our families are here, our relatives, our tribe. I feel a connection to them.”

Until Hussein’s removal, about 202,000 Iraqi refugees lived in communities and camps in Iran, home to most of Iraq’s externally displaced. Most were exiled during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, while others fled government crackdowns after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Officials at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees say that, since November, they have assisted more than 7,200 refugees who returned to Iraq, including 2,600 from Iran and 4,600 from Saudi Arabia.

About 50,000 Iraqi refugees have made their own way back from Iran, officials in Tehran said. Remaining camps are gradually being closed.

UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler said his agency provides the refugees with a package of basic essentials such as plastic sheeting, blankets, jerrycans, lanterns, toiletries and, if needed, tents. The returnees are also given $20 to cover transportation costs from the southern port city of Basra to their communities, and they are enrolled in the country’s food distribution program, which provides a few meager rations.

The U.N. pulled most of its expatriate personnel out of Iraq shortly after a massive truck bomb destroyed its Baghdad headquarters in August. Sergio Vieira de Mello, the organization’s top envoy in Iraq, was among the nearly two dozen people killed in the blast. More than 100 were wounded.

Kessler, who spoke by phone from Geneva, said refugees were not being encouraged to return home, because conditions in Iraq were too volatile.

“The situation is still too insecure and the humanitarian situation is very fragile,” Kessler said, noting the continued violence, robberies and kidnappings. “Clean water, healthcare and access to education remain problematic.”

But that hasn’t deterred many refugees, who local officials say often suffer extortion from unscrupulous Iranian drivers and risk banditry and kidnapping on the journey home.

“After the toppling of the regime, families were thinking of returning back under any circumstances, because they thought it would be better here,” said Abdulhussein Nasir, chairman of the Hezbollah Party, which was established by refugees living in Iran and offers assistance and moral support to families returning to Basra.

“The families who have returned are suffering because of housing,” he said. “Some of their houses were demolished. They have no money to buy furniture and no help from the Iraqi side.”

In some cases, other families have moved into houses that refugees left behind, and there is no system in place to allow returnees to legally reclaim their property, Kessler said.

In the meantime, many refugees have been forced to share cramped quarters with relatives who remained in Iraq throughout the Hussein years. Some have taken refuge in abandoned, bombed-out buildings, while others have simply built makeshift shelters out of mud and reeds.

Qadir Tahir Halfi and his family returned to Iraq with a U.N. convoy in early December. In Iran, the family lived in a house with running water and electricity.

The Halfis also enjoyed basic freedoms such as being able to openly express their political views, which they could not have done under Hussein.

Now back home, the Halfis are squatting inside the dilapidated ground-floor office of Basra’s former naval academy headquarters. Halfi’s father and other relatives share half the room.

The windows have no glass. Recent winter nights have been frigid, and the family makes its bed on the concrete floor. The only source of water is an overflowing pipe on a nearby street. The Halfis have a kerosene stove, but fuel is expensive and hard to find, so they hardly use it.

Like most other refugees, Halfi is unable to find work. The father of three has been surviving on savings from the odd farming jobs he used to do in Iran. But the money is being depleted fast.

Halfi said he was willing to endure the hardships. What thrilled him most about being back home was the opportunity for his three children to be totally immersed in Iraqi culture. To Halfi’s dismay, his eldest child, a 7-year-old son, speaks Farsi better than Arabic.

“It’s important for me for them to know about their Iraqi culture, education and civilization,” said Halfi, 30, a former student who participated in an uprising against Hussein.

“Don’t forget, I love my country,” he added. “We were forced to be far from it just because of the regime. Otherwise, we would not have left.”

However, many refugees dread the uncertainty that awaits them and they are unsure that they will be able to fully integrate back into Iraqi society.

Local officials estimate that more than 130,000 Iraqi refugees remain in Iran. Many men left their families there and came home alone, on a kind of reconnaissance mission.

“I’m not able to provide housing for them,” said Said Salim Husseini, who returned to Iraq in April, leaving his wife and children in Iran. “I want my children to finish studying there first.”

When Husseini revisited his largely demolished old neighborhood, he ran into some former neighbors.

“I saw the gloomy picture of sadness drawn on their faces,” recalled the 46-year-old, who used to work in the steel and iron industry.

Most had been beaten down by the former system and also were struggling to make ends meet. This is not the atmosphere Husseini wants his children to return to.

Unable to find work in his field, he has opted to channel his energy into supporting the political aspirations of the once-banned Islamic Dawa Party, a predominantly Shiite Muslim group.

Husseini said he would like to see the party gain political power and institute strict Islamic principles, which he believes are essential for Iraq’s development and stability. Only then would he want his family to come home.

But many refugees, such as Abid, the farmer and fisherman, insist that all hands are needed immediately to help with rebuilding Iraq. They contend that despite the difficulties, there is no place like home.

“The most important thing is that we got rid of Saddam,” Abid said. “I can live under any circumstances.”

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Simmons was recently on assignment in Iraq.