Iraqis return after yrs of exile in KSA

Iraqis returning from the Rafha refugee camp in northern Saudi Arabia wait to be processed upon their arrival in the port of Umm Qasr yesterday. A first group of 244 Iraqis left the camp, built at the end of the 1991 Gulf war after the Shiite uprising in southern Iraq which was brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein's army and where some 5,200 Iraqi refugees still live. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) expects more than 3,600 refugees to be repatriated by year's end following the ouster of Saddam Hussein in April. Photo: AFP

"I feel like my soul has returned to my body," said Ali Salman, his eyes swimming with tears at the Umm Qasr border crossing in southern Iraq. "I can't believe I am actually home and that I will see my family again. I just can't believe it."

Like most of the 240 men, women and children who were repatriated by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, Salman is a Shiite Muslim who fled to Saudi Arabia after a failed 1991 uprising against Iraq's now deposed leader Saddam Hussein.

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Other returnees were former Iraqi soldiers who defected during the 1991 Gulf War.

The fearful refugees sought asylum in Saudi Arabia where they lived in relative luxury at the frontier Rafha camp. But the idea of returning home remained a remote dream until US-led forces ousted Saddam in April.

The 240 returnees were among a group of 5,200 Iraqis in Rafha who had held sit-ins and hunger strikes to pressure the authorities and the UNHCR to repatriate them.

"Today marks the beginning of the end for the Rafha refugee camp," said UNHCR Assistant High Commissioner Kamel Morjane. "We hope to repatriate everyone as soon as possible.

Moments after stepping off the bus, Yacoub Ghazi spied his sister Fatima among the crowd of relatives straining against the customs area fence. He flung himself into her arms and sobbed like a child.

"Beloved, beloved, I didn't think I would live to see you," Fatima said, kissing her brother's graying head repeatedly.

A British soldier prevented Najm Ali from scaling the fence to embrace his son Mohammed, who sank to the ground to kiss his father's feet through the bars.

"He has changed so much in the last 13 years," an emotional Ali told Reuters as Mohammed processed his immigration papers. "I never thought I'd see him. Thank God that Saddam is gone."

Layla Hassan went to Rafha aged just three, but after living almost all her life in Saudi Arabia, the veiled 16-year-old was ecstatic to be in Iraq.

"I am home. I am Iraqi. I dreamed of this day," she said.

Cradling her one-month-old daughter, with two toddlers in tow, Ibtisam Nouri could not believe she was home. Overcome, the only words she could manage were: "Thank God, thank God."

In contrast with the bleak existence of many Iraqi refugees elsewhere, Rafha residents were given a monthly stipend by the Saudi government, food rations and air-conditioned houses.