Iraq StreetThe US military in Iraq has invested a lot of media effort trying to convince not only Americans but also Iraqis to believe we’re making so much progress in reducing violence that displaced Iraqis can begin returning home. It’s a strategy apparently based on the bootstrap theory that if you can convince enough people that things are better, people will actually start to behave as though things really are better.

So it is with some irony that the New York Times’ Michael Gordon co-authors this story reporting the US military’s frustration with the problem of returning refugees, something both the US and the Iraqi authorities are pointing to as a sign of progress. But when bus loads of Iraqi refugees recently returned from Syria — an event probably staged for the media given the mainstream coverage — the returning refugees often had no where to go.

Many of the refugees left Iraq because they were forced from their homes by terrorist ethnic cleansing campaigns from one or another sectarian militias. Gordon’s article acknowledges that the success of ethnic cleansing may account for part of the drop in violence:

Many neighborhoods in Baghdad have become largely Shiite or Sunni, as one group drove the other out in calculated sectarian cleansing. Sunnis have moved into Shiite homes, and Shiites into Sunni ones. This segregation has contributed to the decline in violence. But what would happen if the original residents insisted on moving back into their homes?

So once a neighborhood was “cleansed” of members of the offending sect, the abandoned homes were quickly turned over to other displaced persons from the opposite sect. Coming “home” is not possible for the returning refugees without forcing a dangerous reverse chain reaction, creating new displaced persons and risking a return of the sectarian strife that led to the displacement and refugee conditions in the first place.

I assume the military’s main purpose in planting these articles is to portray US military officials as both sympathetic to the problem and frustrated at the absence of any effective plans by the al Maliki government for solving it. But aside from the fact that a substantial number of those who fled are Sunnis for whom the Shia government, already suspicious of the US pro-Sunni efforts, may be less than sympathetic, it’s not clear how much the government can really do. How does a government force tens of thousands of once displaced people out of their dwellings and back on the streets for the purpose of reintegrating neighborhoods that were recently segregated through violence? Perhaps that’s why al Maliki has given the job of figuring it out to Ahmad Chalibi, the man who was also tasked to resolve the oil revenue distribution issue.

The Times article suggests the problem might be mitigated if Iraq can just build new housing and communities to handle the returnees, but how realistic is that? Various estimates place the number of Iraq refugees in neighboring countries in excess of 2 million, and the number of “internally displaced persons” within Iraq at 1 to 1.5 million.

Even under the best of conditions, which don’t exist, it’s unrealistic to believe even a strong, efficient and unbiased central government — and there isn’t one — could deal effectively with a problem of this size, complexity and potential for violence. Building whole new neighborhoods seems beyond a government that is struggling just to deal with a growing cholera outbreak that has now spread into Baghdad because of the deteriorating condition of water and sewage treatment facilities. And it’s not as though the US could easily solve this by pouring additional billions into Iraq and sending in the Army Corp of Engineers. Remember Katrina.

When George Bush announced his plan for an “enduring relationship” with Iraq last Monday, complete with promises for US forces to ensure Iraq’s internal security, he didn’t mention that the most likely security issues could arise in dealing with Sunni/Shia interactions. Solving the refugee/displaced persons dilemma implicates that security responsibility, which is perhaps why Michael Gordon is suggesting it’s now the US military’s problem.

Our military commanders are no doubt recalling that when President Bush was asked whether Palestinian refugees could return to their homes in Israel, his answer was no.

Photo: Street near Baladiyat refugee camp, by aliveinbaghdad

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