Iraqis Returning Home to Fight al-Qaeda....
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The first bus loads of Iraqi refugees from Syria started arriving in Baghdad yesterday, spewing out exiles who had run out of cash or visa extensions and others who hoped that the city was returning to normality. Some had even come back to fight the militants who drove them from their homes.
“I decided to go to Syria after they killed many doctors in Baghdad,” Sabah al-Qubaisi, a Sunni doctor, said. “I returned today because of what I saw on TV and what I keep reading in the newspapers, about what happened to Baghdad and how it was safe now. They say the Mahdi army stopped killing people,” he said, referring to the Shia militia of militant cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has ordered his forces to stand down for the moment.
Qassim al Atwani, a 38-year-old Shia teacher from the predominantly Sunni area of Amariyah, returned with his two children because he was unable to renew his Syrian visa and because the regime prevented Iraqis from working. His Shia neighbours in Amariyah telephoned to tell him that a local US-backed militia force had helped to drive al-Qaeda out from their bastion in the west of the capital, and urged him to return.
One of the new arrivals from Jordan was the head of a Sunni and Shia tribe who had been driven from his home in Sleikh in northern Baghdad by a grenade attack after he urged his fellow citizens to rise up to fight al-Qaeda. He had come back to fight.
“Two days ago, some of my friends called me and told me they started an anti-al-Qaeda militia in Sleikh and they need me and my boys’ support. That’s way I returned today,” Sabaah Alu Obeidi, 62, said.
ZIP
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