Donate Now Matthew Hay Brown, for the Pulitzer Center
Amman, Jordan
Officially, the Iraqi government is encouraging its citizens abroad to return to the country. When they might make that trip is another question.
"We're still in the organization process," Aleaddin H. Ali, the first secretary at the Iraqi Embassy here in Jordan, told me this afternoon. "We're getting statistics and preparations are being made."
Ali said the embassy's consular section had seen the number of Iraqis seeking repatriation has increased "substantially" in recent months. This contradicts what I have been hearing this week from Iraqis and the aid workers who serve them.
Officials from the United Nations and other agencies here say they have seen no substantial return to Iraq. Not one I have met has had plans to go home; every one I have asked has said it remains too violent.
"It is impossible," said Nadia Abbas, a 39-year-old Shia who is married to a Sunni.
"I cannot live in a Shia neighborhood because my husband will be killed," she said. "We cannot live in a Sunni neighborhood because I will be killed."