Baghdad offering compensation for displaced to return home

Iraq’s Displacement and Migration Ministry is offering 1 million Iraqi dinars (U.S. $800) to each displaced family in Baghdad willing to return to their original home, according to an IRIN report today. Approximately 500,000 individuals throughout Iraq have been displaced since the Samarra bombings in February 2006. Of those, 180,000 have fled Baghdad. Since the U.S. troop surge began in Baghdad in February, about 10,000 individuals have returned to their homes in the city.

Iraq's central government has implemented a 15 day timeframe in the capital for those occupying homes of the displaced to return the property to the rightful owners or provide proof of permission to be there. Many Iraqis, however, may not trust the government to actually protect them from the sectarian violence if they return to their homes. One Baghdad-based political analyst summed up this sentiment: “The government is unable to protect its key offices and almost 90% of Baghdad areas, how can it offer protection to the thousands of families who have left their houses? It has to put an army or police check-point in each street…This will not succeed. The government needs to get to the root of the problem, which is not a military one; it’s about bringing this society together again renouncing all their sectarian differences.”

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