DEZFUL, 24 July 2003 — More than 200,000 Iraqi refugees in Iran, most of whom fled Saddam Hussein’s crushing of a 1991 uprising, cheered as they watched his downfall on TV but now have mixed feelings about going home.
Salem Khozayer, 44, from the Shiite city of Najaf south of Baghdad, said in the Ashrafi Isfehani camp where he has spent the past 12 years: “The random arrests carried out by Saddam Hussein’s regime drove me out of Najaf. “I was a civil servant there, but with Saddam’s regime it made no difference, since we were Shiites living in the south, it was guilt enough to be stripped of our rights,” he told AFP, at work in his shabby grocery store.
Ashrafi Isfehani camp, the largest of 22 camps set up along Iran’s 1,600 km border with Iraq, has been home to nearly 12,000 refugees. It is located on the outskirts of the city of Dezful, 70 km from the Iraqi border. About 50,000 Iraqis live in the camps, or about a quarter of the total in Iran. The rest are settled in urban areas of western Iran, with large numbers in Tehran and the holy city of Qom.
Many of the refugees come from southern Iraq, around Basra, and fled Iraq in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War when Saddam Hussein cracked down on a Shiite uprising. An estimated 1.3 million Iraqis crossed the border at the time.
“The question of Iraqi repatriation is not a simple one,” the UNHCR spokeswoman for Iran, Marie-Helen Verney, told AFP at the Ashrafi camp.
“The Iran-Iraq border is the most heavily mined in the world, also there is the matter of reintegration of these people into the communities which they left about a decade ago,” she said.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers, on a camp tour, said: “UNHCR is concerned about the safety of these people, so we are doing our best with our colleagues on the other side of the border to facilitate their safe return and integration without any difficulties.” Lubbers, speaking to a cheering crowd in the camp, aired his agency’s concerns: “I can hear you loud and clear, but the repatriation should be carried out step by step.”
Some of the crowd carried posters which read, “Our Return with Dignity is the UNHCR’s Responsibility” and called for their immediate repatriation to Iraq. But Lubbers in a press conference Monday came up with little consolation for those who wish to return home soon.
“The repatriation of Iraqi refugees should begin early in August but this is an ambitious plan. We have to reach agreement with the local authorities here,” he said. Lubbers, a former Dutch premier on a fact-finding mission, added: “There are doubts by the US and UK forces about the whole issue of repatriation, but I assured them that repatriation is going to be done in harmony and peace.”
He said: “UNHCR is working on the logistics of putting in place the infrastructure necessary for a safe and dignified return, similar to the voluntary repatriation of Afghan refugees from Iran.”
Verney said: “The first facilitated returns, for a limited number of 100 refugees, are expected to take place at the Chalamcheh border crossing point, on the road between Ahwaz in Iran and the southern Iraqi city of Basra.
These refugees will come from Ashrafi Isfahani.
But Khozayer said: “If the situation in Iraq is okay, I will go yesterday before today, but I am not sure about the US intentions there.
“There is a saying in Arabic that we welcome a guest, but on the third day we ask him how long he wishes to stay... We as hosts have the right to know how long the so-called liberators are going to be here.”