Iraqis Find Travel to Jordan Increasingly Frustrating

"The Iraqis are already hurting," Shawk said. "It's not safe. There are no doctors. It's not our fault. It's terrorists that do this. Why are all the Iraqi people guilty? Why?"

Alaa Abbas, 39, who was wrapped in a dark shawl against the evening chill, said she was recently singled out at the airport when she arrived from overseas, and was now headed to Baghdad by car. "They made 100 copies of my passport," she said. "We are the mother of civilization. Why does everyone treat us like this? I am an Iraqi! I am an Iraqi! I was the only one at the airport they searched."

At a desolate waiting area between Ramadi and Hit in western Iraq, where Iraqis who are turned back at the border often bide their time for a few days before giving up and returning home, Hassan Yaqub, 45, a Baghdad resident, said Jordanian authorities did not allow him to enter the country and offered no explanation, "even though I am a merchant and I make many trips to Jordan a month. I have proof."

Muhammad Sabah, of the southern Iraqi port city of Basra, said guards at the Jordanian border offered to allow his wife and daughter to cross without him. "But my wife and my daughter refused and told them either we enter together or we go back together," he said. The family left.

Hikmat Saub, an Iraqi customs agent, said Jordanian authorities were "allowing four out of every 100 to enter -- and mostly residents or people who had permission from the Iraqi government."

Dhia Kabi, a prominent Iraqi surgeon, slept on the Iraqi side of the border in one of the passenger vans. "They said my daughter can enter, but I told them that my wife is in Jordan and I must meet her there with my daughter," he said. "They refused, so I took my daughter to return back but I could not reach Baghdad. We are out of gas, and we are waiting for someone to bring us gas."

Special correspondents Yasmine Mousa in Amman and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.