46,000 Iraqis Have Left Syria
Returns Reflect Security Gains, Aid Workers Say

By Amit R. Paley
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, January 5, 2008

BAGHDAD, Jan. 4 -- Nearly 50,000 Iraqi refugees returned home from Syria in the final 3 1/2 months of 2007, the latest sign of diminishing violence in this war-pocked country, according to new data from relief workers.

"Security has definitely improved, and improved by far," said Said I. Hakki, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, the aid group that compiled the statistics. "And yet the return is really not that dramatic, when you consider that there are almost 2 million Iraqi refugees out of the country."

The new figures, contained in a report scheduled for release Monday, are significantly lower than those provided by some Iraqi officials. One Iraqi spokesman said nearly 50,000 returned in October alone.

But the minister of displacement and migration, Abdul Samad Rahman Sultan, said in an interview Friday that the Red Crescent numbers were more or less accurate. He said the growing number of returning refugees was becoming a major challenge for his ministry, which has not yet received money to support them.

"We need more support, more backup," Sultan said. "We have funds to support internally displaced people, but not those refugees returning from outside the country."

The Red Crescent report estimates that 45,913 refugees returned to Iraq from Syria between Sept. 15 and Dec. 27. Most of them came to Baghdad, with only 7,177 returning to provinces in the rest of the country, the group concluded.

Those figures represent a significant increase since a Red Crescent report at the end of November found that only 25,000 to 28,000 Iraqis had returned from Syria since mid-September. The aid group said most of Iraq's 1.5 million to 2 million refugees have settled in Syria.

The new report said the decrease in violence that followed the buildup of American troops over the past year had been a major factor in the return of refugees. "In Iraq, the security situation improved as a result of law enforcement," it said. "Consequently, a significant number of Externally Displaced families returned to Iraq starting mid September."

But Hakki, the Iraqi Red Crescent president, had another explanation.

"People are coming because they are desperate," he said. "The majority of them are broke or their visas have expired. That's the bottom line."

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, told reporters last month that there were no reliable figures on refugees coming back to the country. Referring to the Red Crescent, he said, "There is certainly a softness to their data and the other organizations that try to track this."

American military officials have expressed concern that a flood of refugees could spark more sectarian violence in Iraq, but Petraeus said U.S. forces could not be in charge of resettlement.

"We obviously do not have that kind of capability on the ground here," he said. "I think this is just going to remain a very, very tough issue for some time and, again, is one that Iraqis, as the security situation continues to improve, are going to have to come to grips with more and more."

Sultan, the displacement and migration minister, said his agency has budgeted supplies for internally displaced people -- including 1 million shoes, 300,000 blankets and 140,000 mattresses -- but none for refugees from Syria. He hoped parliament would approve a budget including new funding in the next two months.

In other developments in Iraq, a one-day vehicle ban was imposed on several cities in volatile Diyala province following several recent suicide attacks.

Lt. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Rubaie, the military commander in Diyala, said the curfew was imposed in the provincial capital of Baqubah and the towns of Khalis and Moqtadiya because of threats of violent attacks, the influx of pilgrims returning from Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and several large demonstrations protesting detentions of Sunnis accused of killing civilians.

Iraqi troops also arrested the commander of the Mahdi Army militia for the southern province of Qadisiyah, an Iraqi military official said. The official said the commander, Kefah al-Qreeti, was responsible for kidnapping and killing Iraqi military officials.

Correspondent Joshua Partlow and special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Zaid Sabah in Baghdad, special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.