Returnees Find a Capital Transformed

washingtonpost.com ^ | Friday, November 23, 2007 | Sudarsan Raghavan

[Reagan is King]

BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 -- Iraqis are returning to their homeland by the hundreds each day, by bus, car and plane, encouraged by weeks of decreased violence and increased security, or compelled by visa and residency restrictions in neighboring countries and the depletion of their savings.

Those returning make up only a tiny fraction of the 2.2 million Iraqis who have fled Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But they represent the largest number of returnees since February 2006, when sectarian violence began to rise dramatically, speeding the exodus from Iraq.

Many find a Baghdad they no longer recognize, a city altered by blast walls and sectarian rifts. Under the improved security, Iraqis are gingerly testing how far their new liberties allow them to go. But they are also facing many barriers, geographical and psychological, hardened by violence and mistrust.

Days after she returned from Syria, 23-year-old Melal al-Zubaidi and a friend went to the market on a pleasant night to eat ice cream. It was a short walk, yet unthinkable only a month ago for a woman in the capital. Still, her parents were nervous, and Zubaidi wore a head scarf and an ankle-length skirt to avoid angering Islamic extremists.

The Zubaidis, a Shiite Muslim family, have yet to pass another boundary. When they fled Iraq five months ago, a Sunni family took over their large house in Dora, a sprawling neighborhood in southern Baghdad. When the Zubaidis returned this month, they were too scared to ask the new occupants to leave. So they rented a small apartment in Mashtal, a mostly Shiite district.

"Security is better," said Melal al-Zubaidi, who has a degree in engineering. "But we still have fear inside ourselves."

[Reagan is King]

Typical WaPo column. Takes good news from Iraq and throws in every nugget of bad news they can find to go along with it so you don't get too optimistic. Here's a good example: (emphasis mine)

But those freedoms still come with constraints. Weddings, accompanied by honking cars and lively bands, are reappearing on the streets, but they still end before darkness falls.

You'd have to do the same in downtown Detroit, Philly, D.C., etc.

[cake_crumb]

I see the Compost is still competing with the NY Times to see who’s best able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

[drpix]

Security concerns? Let WaPo do an article on the sectarian violence inflicted on Christians in Bill Clinton’s triumphant success, Kosovo. But I won’t hold my breath.

[Caipirabob]

It will be "interesting" to see how the Democrats take credit for all of this.

[reagan_fanatic]

I’ve been thinking about how Pelosi & Co. will be twisting the good news from Iraq to their favor, and I think it will go something like this: “Well, none of these improvements in Iraq’s security situation would have happened had we not held President Bush’s feet to the fire and forced him to be accountable for his actions.”

[Caipirabob]

I agree with that. In truth, though, there was a major reorganization with the folks running the campaign, beginning with Donald Rumsfeld. The change in leadership drove the change in focus in the campaign. The surge was the major component in getting the job done, though, and the rats were besides themselves in the attempt to dismantle it. Sadly, the sheeple have such a short memory the rats may be successful in fooling at least their own constituents. On the bright side, their mouth-frothing moonbats may never forgive them for their abysmal failure to stop the war.