Abu Omar can’t stop the bitter half-smile that curls his lips every time he hears of the much-heralded efforts the Iraqi government exerts to lure back millions of people who fled the war-ravaged country over the past five years.
"The government is calling refugees to return to their country, but I would advice them to invite just the wealthy ones," Abu Omar, 43, told IslamOnline.net from his shelter home on the capital’s outskirts.

"The government cannot take care of those who are already suffering in their own land."

As the Iraqi government seeks to stream back some three millions of people who fled the country over the past years, nearly two million Iraqis internally displaced inside the country are still struggling to find shelter and aid.

Abu Omar has lost his home and shop to militias in the capital, and since March 2007 he is living with his family in a shelter outside Baghdad.

He believes the government lacks a mechanism to settle property disputes if former residents return.

"If more people under the same circumstances return to Iraq, we will plunge further into misery."

The government has earmarked some $195 million to facilitate refugees' return.

Officials expect more than 120,000 people to return to Iraq this year under the apparently improved security situation.

"Iraqis should return to the country and have the minimum of dignity they aren’t receiving outside," Abdel-Rahman Abdallah, a senior official in the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, told IOL.

"We aren’t only allocating funds to refugees but also to displaced families inside Iraq," he affirmed.

But displaced people say that government money is never there for them.

"We have been displaced since February 2006 and we depend totally on assistance from aid agencies instead of the government," said Rafek Muhammad, 42, a father of four who lives with his family outside of Baghdad.

"How they can allot money to refugees before taking care of what is under their eyes?" he asked.

Invisible

Displaced Iraqi families lament that their sufferings go both unhealed and unheeded.

"Everyday I have to walk three kilometres with my children to find clean water to cook and drink," Um Alaa, a mother of three living in a shelter in the northern city of Kirkuk, said.

"Aid agencies are taking too long to replace water in the tanks and we are running out from water and food constantly," said the woman who has fled her home along wither her family in July 2003, four months after the US-led invasion to the oil-rich country.

But what hurts Um Alaa worse is how her children are affected by their nightmarish living conditions.

"We were a family which had the best until we were forced out our home and now my children are living like street children, unable to take shower everyday to keep water for cooking," she added.

"The nearby school is too far and we don’t have car to take them there.

"They are turning into illiterates like me and I did everything is this life to give them a good education,” she said bitterly.

"The government, for being unable to take care of us, took that from them."

According to the Iraqi Red Crescent, about 65 percent of internally displaced Iraqis are children under 12 years old.

Um Ala’a is not the only feeling abandoned by the government.

Abu Omar, the Baghdad displaced, says that when his family fled to the capital, they hoped that the city would welcome them and begin to heal their wounds.

"We were forced out from our home, I lost my small shop and now we have to pray for an aid agency to remember us and bring some food for our children,” he said.

"We have to divide the bread we have to be enough for three days and use water as if it was the most precious diamond.

"This is how we live.

"Is there anyone in the government who really cares for us?"


IOL