Iraq's Other Refugees

By Alain L. Sanders

The stories they recount in the refugee camps in the Iraqi town of Safwan are appalling. "Iraqi troops sent a tank to knock down the door of the holy shrine of Najaf," recalls Hajj Hattin. "Then they began looting all the deserted homes. They shot people at random in front of the crowds." Hajj Mohammed remembers a helicopter gunship shooting at civilians in the streets of Najaf. Iraqi soldiers "went into schools to threaten small children into giving the names of relatives they could accuse of being rebels," he says. "If the child did not answer, they shot him and his family." Ahmed Ali still shudders at the memory of seeing people massacred by troops, their bodies left to rot in a schoolyard until dogs came to eat them.

These are some of the nightmarish recollections of the more than 18,000 people crammed into two huge, dusty tent camps along the Iraq-Kuwait border, one of them run by U.S. troops near the site where the Iraqi military accepted the allied cease-fire. The residents are the refugees of Safwan, most of them Shi'ites, who fled from Saddam Hussein's vengeful army when it recaptured several rebellious cities in the south after the war.

Though their living conditions are not as grim as those of the Kurds, the Safwan refugees have for weeks been reliving their worst dreams, fearing for their lives. Protected by U.S. troops, the camp residents have begged the soldiers not to depart, sometimes even vowing to lie down in the path of withdrawing tanks. "Everyone here believes we will be killed when the Americans leave," says Mustafa Jafar. "The Iraqis will send the secret police to do the job."

Last week as American troops turned over an observation post north of Safwan to U.N. observers, both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia tried to assure the refugees that their worst dreams were not coming to pass. Colonel William Nash, commanding officer of U.S. forces in Safwan, told General Gunther Greindl, head of the U.N. observer force, "We will continue to protect the refugees in this area." In Saudi Arabia, General Khalid bin Sultan al-Saud, head of the Saudi forces during the war, announced that his government would accept and shelter the stranded Iraqis by building a $30 million camp near the Saudi border town of Rafha.

Among the Safwan refugees, news of the aid met with mixed emotions. Many of the better-educated refugees are wary about moving to what could become a permanent camp in the Saudi desert. Still, as a Baghdad professor put it, "Any country in the world is better than Iraq."

With reporting by William Dowell/Safwan