Word: iraqi
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...surge of violence in Iraq hasn't changed the Obama Administration's plans to withdraw American troops from the country, it has certainly forced many Iraqi refugees to put off plans to return to the country. A series of bombings across Iraq in April killed more than 200, the highest monthly body count in roughly a year. Andrew Harper, head of the Iraq Support Unit created by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told TIME that the rate of refugee return slowed dramatically in April. And a "significant number" of returnees have turned around and fled the country again...
...rise in violence is also a quandary for Iraq's neighbors, which play reluctant host to the refugees. The exact number of refugees is hard to gauge, but the Iraqi government estimates there are 2 million. The majority of them live in Syria and Jordan, which are struggling with weak economies and mounting joblessness among their own populations. Government officials in Damascus and Amman have been counting on the improving security environment in Iraq to persuade many refugees to go home. Aid workers in both countries say many refugees are being pressured to leave. (See pictures of the recent revival...
...Iraqi government says fewer than 1% of the refugees have returned home. (The International Organization for Migration estimates that 18% of the 1.6 million internally displaced Iraqis have returned to their original homes.) Few refugees have signed up for the UNHCR's own programs offering financial assistance and subsidized transportation for those wanting to return. Many of those who do go back don't inform the U.N. unit, for fear of being taken off its refugee register. "They want to keep options open," Harper says. (See pictures of the Iraqi man whose job is to bury Baghdad's unclaimed dead...
...doctrine stipulates that anything less than a large-scale response would risk the credibility of the Iranian regime - and its survival. And importantly, it does not draw a distinction between Israel and the U.S., if for no other reason than Israeli jets have to fly across U.S.-controlled Iraqi airspace to hit Iran...
...long, costly war. Iran learned how to fight an asymmetrical guerilla war in the 1982-2000 conflict in Lebanon, learning that lightly armed, small, mobile units can beat a larger enemy. Secondly, Iran knows it needs to eliminate any potential fifth column. Saddam's failure to destroy the Iraqi opposition, in particular the Kurdish groups in the north, called into doubt the Iraqi regime's legitimacy. It facilitated the notion that the Iraqi people had asked for a foreign invasion to deliver them from Saddam. Iran's crackdown on student dissidents, foreign journalists and dissident political movements should be viewed...