Iraqi leader gives refugees free flight home

[August 12, 2008]  BAGHDAD (AP) -- Several hundred Iraqi refugees flew home from Egypt on Monday on the Iraqi prime minister's plane, the first government-organized flight aimed at accelerating the return of Iraqis now that violence has waned.

Many of those returning on the free flight, however, said they had come back only because they were broke after years of living outside Iraq and still feared the dangers in their homeland.

"If I had more money, I would have stayed and never gone back," Abu Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite merchant, said waiting to board at Cairo's airport. "We hear from other returnees that they had regret going back because there is still bombing, kidnapping and killing."

The International Organization of Migration says some 13,000 Iraqis have returned from nations in the region -- a tiny proportion of the estimated 2.5 million who fled Iraq's turmoil after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Nearly 3 million more Iraqis have been displaced inside the country, the Switzerland-based humanitarian group says.

With violence down sharply over the past year, Iraq's government is eager to encourage more to come home.

Most Iraqis who have returned arranged their own trips. The government previously organized a few free bus trips from Syria, and on Monday it offered the first plane ride at no charge.

Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi military spokesman for Baghdad, said the government hoped to arrange up to two flights a week for returnees from countries around the Middle East.

"God willing, the flights will continue in order to fetch all families that wish to come back ... we welcome all our citizens who want to come home," he told Iraqiyah TV.

Imad Abbas, head of Iraqi Airways operations at Cairo International Airport, said further trips would depend on the numbers ready to return. Syria and Jordan have the largest concentrations of Iraqi refugees, with smaller ones in Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt.

Monday's group flew back on the Iraqi Airways Airbus A300 used by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and he was on hand to greet the returnees at Baghdad airport in a televised ceremony. Children carrying Iraqi flags were the first to stream out of the airplane.

The United Nations has welcomed the plan, saying a voluntary return is always the best solution to a refugee problem. But it also has expressed some concern that Iraqis may be coming back for the wrong reasons.

"Some Iraqis are choosing to return because the situation has improved in their areas, but many others find themselves under many pressures in the host countries as their savings and resources have been exhausted," said Abeer Etefa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency.

Many Iraqi refugees are unable to get work permits and eke out a living on the dwindling funds they managed to bring out of Iraq. In Egypt, where an estimated 150,000 refugees live, most complain of ill treatment by authorities and their lack of legal status.

Ibrahim Amir Abbas, 17, felt the risks of returning home even before he got on the plane, when his mother made him cut his long hair and take off his necklaces and bracelets. She was afraid his more hip, Cairo-influenced style would antagonize Muslim extremists in Iraq.

"I'm concerned that I will not be able go out freely whenever and wherever I want, like I used to do in Egypt," he said. "I don't know how we are going to cope with our new lives ... It is going to be hard with no security, electricity or enough drinkable water."

The call of home proved strong for others like Sondos al-Azzawi, an English teacher who marched her seven-member family proudly onto the plane.

"We have had enough of being away from home," she said. "It is of our duty to rebuild our country and to help rid it of sectarianism."

Such patriotic sentiment played heavily in the broadcasts of the refugees' arrival in Baghdad, with one weeping veiled woman saying how happy she was to be back and thanking Maliki for "sending his own plane to fetch us."

"The whole thing is cheap propaganda," grumbled Abu Hussein, the returning merchant. "Look at the double standards of this government -- it did not help us during all the bad times in exile, but when it came to its own political gains, they sent a plane to get us back, probably to our death."

[Associated Press; By OMAR SINAN and SAMEER N. YACOUB]

Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub reported this story in Baghdad and Omar Sinan in Cairo, Egypt.

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