Iraqis return--big time

Times:

Iraqi refugees are returning home in dramatic numbers, concluding that security in Baghdad has been transformed. Thousands have left their refuge in Syria in recent months, according to some estimates.

The Iraqi Embassy is organising a secure mass convoy from Damascus to Baghdad on Monday for refugees who want to drive back. Embassy notices went up around the Syrian capital yesterday, offering free bus and train rides home.

Saida Zaynab, the Damascus neighbourhoods once dominated by many of the 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, is almost deserted. Apartment prices are plummeting and once-crowded shops and buses are half empty.

The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) was scrambling to assess the transformation last night. An interim report is expected today. “There is a large movement of people going back to Iraq. We are doing rapid research on this,” a spokesman said.

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Hussein Ali Saleh, the director of the National Theatre in Baghdad, who is staging Iraqi plays for refugees in Damascus, said that his audience was disappearing. A month ago the al-Najum theatre near the Syrian central bank building was filled with 400 Iraqis every night. Now barely 50 turn up.

“In the last month, 60 per cent of the Iraqis I know have returned,” he said. “The situation has been changed completely. They all want to go back. Even my own family back in Baghdad is telling me the situation is much better.”

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“It’s better to have a chance at peace than wait here forever,” Haidar Ibrahim, a refugee, said. Not all Iraqis in Damascus agree.

“Before, my family refused to let me even talk about going back,” Ahlam Ahmed said. “Now they are calling me every day and saying, ‘Why don’t you come?’. This is a real change. But I don’t yet trust the situation.”

Most Iraqis interviewed by The Times, though, seemed enthusiastic rather than despondent. “Throughout history Baghdad has fallen many times but she always rose up again,” Abu Ibrahim said. “We all know this and that’s why we return. We return to rebuild Baghdad now.”

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Maybe they will bump into John Murtha muttering that it is just a lull. He and a few Congressional Democrats appear to be the last to recognize how the situation in Iraq has changed for the better. The real change is with the Iraqis who are not just coming back, but those who stayed and helped to defeat the enemy Murtha and the Democrats wanted to retreat from. While the Iraqis are acknowledging the victory over al Qaeda, Murtha and the anti war Democrats are trying to pull the rug out from under them by demanding a retreat in the face of victory. It is a situation that should find them ridiculed for generations. Hopefully the American voters will do so at the ballot box next year when they realize just how desperate these Democrats were for defeat.