BAGHDAD: Levels of violence in their home country may be falling steadily, but for hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees living in neighbouring countries it is still too early to risk returning.

For the risks are indeed great. They fear a further outbreak of the vicious sectarian violence that swept the country in the wake of the March 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Refugees who found shelter in Jordan and Syria also fear returning to find their homes either destroyed or occupied by someone else. And they fear not being able to get out again if they do go home and things get worse.

So prudence is the watchword for now, and exile the safer option.

“My family is still in Jordan and I think I will not bring them back before six months,” Iraqi businessman Ammar Orfali told AFP in Baghdad.

He said he had sent his family away but did not leave himself as he works for the US military.

“I’m not willing to take any risk. My children are going to school in Amman. I want to be 100 per cent sure that it’s safe before bringing them back.”

Since the invasion five years ago, a flood of more than two million people surged to safety beyond war-ravaged Iraq’s borders.

The UN says around 1.5 million people sought refuge in Syria and around half a million in Jordan.

Returnees are generally people with no other choice, according to Damascus-based Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group, co-author of a recent report on Iraqi refugees.

“Only those who no longer have the means to survive in Syria are going back,” he said.

“The great majority remain cautious, and those who can stay here or in Jordan do so while waiting to see how the situation evolves.” Statistics from the Iraqi ministry for migrants and the displaced show that some 8,000 Iraqis have returned from abroad since the beginning of the year.

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) figures show that during October just 280 refugees returned home, among them 125 from Syria and 103 from Jordan.

Convoys of returning Iraqis leave Amman once or twice a month, but the chance to go home rarely attracts more than a few dozen people. The most recent convoy arrived on Sunday in Baghdad and comprised 91 refugees, the UNHCR said.

Overall the picture is bleak, and it looks unlikely to change quickly.

“Information coming from the first returnees to Iraq is not such that it is likely to inspire a massive return,” said a Western diplomat in Amman, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“Over the past 12 months the number of Iraqis who entered Jordan was greater than the 14,000 who went home.”—AFP