The Long Road Home to Baghdad

Nov. 29, 2007 — -- The flow of Iraqis fleeing their country because of violence appears to have reversed -- at least for the time being. As security has improved in recent months, people are now coming back to Baghdad.

And the Iraqi government is encouraging returnees by offering free bus travel and $800 payments to each returning family.

The U.N. estimates some 2.2 million Iraqis have fled their country -- most live in neighboring Syria and Jordan. But life is tough for the Iraqis, as they are not entitled to work and most have to live off their savings. So when news started to spread about a reduction of violence back home, families began to think of returning. According to the U.N., some 600 Iraqis are returning from Syria every day.

We followed Mohammed Abed Saeed and his family back home. They had lived in Damascus for 18 months, but since their money was running low and their relatives back in Baghdad were telling them the security situation was improving, they decided to pack up and leave. They boarded a bus that took 30 hours to get them back to Baghdad, with long delays at the Syrian border and the multiple checkpoints on the highways inside Iraq.

But when they reached Baghdad close to midnight on Wednesday, Saeed got out of the bus and said, "I cannot describe how happy I am -- because this is my country."

Life had been tough for them in Syria, his mother said.

"We couldn't afford to live there," she said. "My son couldn't get a job."

Even though Baghdad is less violent than at the beginning of the year, some of the returnees find problems when they come back to their old neighborhoods, as squatters have occupied some of the houses that were abandoned. And in some cases neighborhoods have been so thoroughly ethnically cleansed of Sunnis or Shiites that it is not safe for them to go back.

The Iraqi government has played up the returnees as further evidence that they have gained the upper hand over the insurgents. But many of the returnees told us that if the security situation started to get worse, they would turn right around and leave again.