Iraq's dispossessed must return home with dignity

Most of Iraq's problems are obvious, as immediately became apparent to me on an Amnesty International mission to southern Iraq in late April and early May.

War and looting have taken a visible toll. Shortages are evident in the long lines for gasoline. Frequent electrical outages and lack of clean water are constant reminders of the damaged infrastructure.

The power vacuum and lack of basic security are also painfully clear. Scavenging of buildings with nothing left to loot continues openly.

Land mines strewn in the streets have been pushed into piles on the sides of roads. The occupying powers' armoured vehicles speeding through the streets on patrol make passers-by aware of the fleeting show of strength and more acutely conscious of the absence of genuine law enforcement.

Another vast problem lies under the surface. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of foreigners are, or soon will be, on the move, either seeking to recover lost homes or newly displaced and homeless.

A brief summary of the major displacements includes at least a quarter-million Shiites who were expelled to Iran at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war in the early 1980s.

Then, in the mid-1980s, the Anfal campaign wiped out predominantly Kurdish villages in the areas bordering Iran and Turkey, displacing large numbers of people.

The next major wave of displacement occurred when Saddam Hussain crushed the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings at the end of the 1991 Gulf War, forcing about a million people from their homes. Many weren't able to return.

Since 1991 the government of Iraq has drained the marshlands in the country's southeast, displacing hundreds of thousands more.

It also conducted an "Arabisation" campaign to purge oil-rich Kirkuk of its Kurdish and other non-Arab ethnic populations, pushing some 100,000 people into the Kurdish autonomous zone in the north and relocating Arabs from other parts of the country to the Kirkuk area.

In the absence of any assurances to Iraqi displaced people that their right to return to their homes will be respected, they're now beginning to move spontaneously and in some cases are taking the law into their own hands.

Amnesty International delegates learned of cases in which displaced people had sent warnings to the current occupants to leave their homes; some left under the threat of violence.

Among the most vulnerable today are foreign residents, including Iranian refugees, Syrians and tens of thousands of Palestinians, whom the Baathists had placed in the homes of forced-out dissidents. Many of them are now homeless, frightened and destitute.

We also saw squatters taking over virtually every former public building and property in Basra, including bombed, burned and looted buildings.

The walls of such properties are festooned with graffiti making claims, such as "private family lives here." Vacant lots are blocked out with squares of stones, chalk and string, signaling claims for small plots.

Intermixed with the formerly and newly displaced are people who are simply poor, seizing the chance to grab a piece of property and seeing their first opportunity to make a marginal improvement in their lives.

The only competition for private families comes from the rapidly proliferating political parties that lay claim to the choicest properties, hanging their banners and pictures of their leaders.

The international law obligations of the United States and Britain as occupying powers include protecting housing.

But their authority under international law is transitional and limited to providing protection and assistance to the occupied population in the emergency created by war.

Relevant international agencies must therefore, together with Iraqi civil society, play a central role in the next step: establishment of a legal, orderly system for adjudicating property claims, evicting illegal occupants, providing alternative housing for secondary occupants, and making restitution to the displaced and dispossessed.

This will be an enormous task, complicated by the large and varied populations of persons displaced over more than two decades and by the wholesale destruction of property titles and other records in the looting and burning that swept the country as the Baathist regime fell.

Despite its enormity, meeting this challenge is essential. Safe, voluntary and dignified return can occur only where human rights are respected.

One of the tests of a society ruled by law is the protection of home and property. Iraqis today are experiencing a frightening free-for-all, compounded by threats to their personal safety and uncertainty about the future. Stopping the land grab now, as well as wholesale looting and theft, must be an immediate imperative for the occupying powers.

But the international community must also move quickly to restore rights, particularly by creating conditions that are conducive to the voluntary, safe and dignified return of the displaced to their homes.

The writer is refugee programme director for Amnesty International USA.