Which Iraqis Are Coming Home?

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Babak Dehghanpisheh

Larry Kaplow

Rod Nordland

Lennox Samuels

Silvia Spring

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Larry Kaplow

While the rate of Iraqis fleeing their homes has been lower in the last several months than before, it still looks like only the biggest risk-takers or those with the shortest journeys are ready to bet on a return. They face tough conditions in their old homes--including poor services and low employment, but many say they feel safe.

A new report from the Switzerland-based International Organization for Migration (www.iom-iraq.net/idp.html), perhaps the best record-keepers of these things, says they have counted about 80,000 Iraqis (13,030 families multiplied by their standard six per family for 78,180 individuals) who have returned to their original neighborhoods from around Iraq or abroad. The report notes that these figures are likely the "majority" of those who have returned, but there's no comprehensive registry of these movements. So the real figure could be more than 150,000 – a sizable amount but just a fraction of the more than 3 million who have fled their homes or country since 2003. The bulk of the movement since 2003 came in 2006 with the escalation in sectarian killing.

The group interviewed 900 returning families. It's not a fully representative sampling of all returnees and there are some puzzling trends. For example, the number of returns for March, 2007, is much higher than any month before or after. But it looks like those coming back are probably the most fearless--they stuck it out longer in their homes and returned sooner. Here are some of the hints the survey offers about those braving a return to Iraq:

    --46 percent of those returning were only out of the country three to six months, meaning they had stayed long into the violence and came back amid the first indications that bloodshed was decreasing.

    --53 percent said they left for specific threats against them or the expulsion from their property. Others cited less specific worries, such as generalized violence, armed conflict or fear.

    --Only about 8 percent were returning from bordering countries, meaning most of are making the trip back from temporary homes in Iraq.

    --About 72 percent were Shiite Muslim Arabs and about 25 percent Sunni Arabs. Only one returning family of the 900 questioned was Christian, though Christians have fled the country in large numbers.

    --55 percent said they "consistently" feel safe in the places they went back to and 43 percent said they "sometimes" feel safe.

    --10 percent said the homes they fled are still occupied by others (the returnees are in their neighborhoods but not their original homes). Polls of those still displaced have shown about a third of them saying their homes were occupied.

    --About 76 percent said they have 10 hours or less of electricity in the homes they returned to, including 37 percent with two hours or less.

    --Of the married men who are heads of households, 48 percent said they were unemployed.

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