RAFHA, 28 April 2003 — More than a decade after being driven out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein, hundreds of Iraqi refugees in the Kingdom are weighing up their return now he is gone.

Around 300 of more than 5,000 refugees at the Rafha camp have asked to go home despite UNHCR warnings that they cannot guarantee their safety upon their return. But many more refugees say they want more money from their hosts before leaving the refugee camp.

The Saudi government paid SR10,000 to each of the 3,000 or so refugees who returned to Iraq when the country was still under Saddam’s rule. But many refugees say the amount is paltry and not much of an incentive for anyone thinking about going back to Iraq.

“We are not greedy. But if I go back, I have no home, no wife and no job for the last 13 years to fall back on, so SR10,000 will not do much,” said Najib Hashem, 39, from Baghdad.

“It takes at least SR30,000 to buy a house. We’ll be beginning from zero since our lives stopped for 13 years. Our hope is with God and with Saudi Arabia,” he added.

Samer Haddadin, the representative of the UN High Commission for Refugees at the site, said the refugees could return within days, once the paperwork is approved by the Saudi government and the US administration in Iraq.

He described Saudi largesse at the camp, which includes schools for over 1,000 pupils and a monthly food bill of around SR300 per person, as unprecedented.

But many refugees remained unimpressed.

“This place is a prison,” said Said Karim, 37, one of a crowd of angry former Basra residents at the camp. “If they find you outside during a curfew, which is every night from midnight to six in the morning, you get 10 days in jail,” he said.

Representatives of the refugees, who spoke in the presence of the military, said 13 years of frustration and desert living had made the men exaggerate.

They also said there was some light at the end of the tunnel.

“We are at the threshold of returning to our injured country. Saddam wanted to destroy our dignity, and our hope is that after difficult times will come easier times,” the men said in a statement read out to visiting local and foreign journalists.