Kareem has gone back to Baghdad, where she had stayed with relatives since September 2006 after Sunni insurgents began threatening to kill Shiites who did not leave. Kareem, who fled with the rest of her family, came back after hearing that Saba al Bor was safe again. Then she saw her house.
On the eastern side of town, where Saba al Bor's Sunni population lives, Talib Abid Karim, who returned Nov. 20, says she did not know she could apply for compensation. She looks at Usama Ali, a volunteer helping resettle people, and asks him to explain the program. Ali says even if she applied for the money she would not get it, because, he insists, only Shiite returnees are being compensated.
Later a U.S. soldier, Army Capt. Brooks Yarborough, dismissed Ali's claim as "just a rumor." But he acknowledged that it was a sign of the lingering distrust that must be overcome if Saba al Bor, which before the war was a relatively affluent community of about 73,000, is to once again become a thriving city.
Karim's house is unscathed, but she is worried for the future. Her husband has no job, and her 12-year-old daughter bears ghastly scars on her stomach from the time she was caught in crossfire during the year they lived elsewhere. She fears that the girl has no chance of getting married if her scars cannot be treated.
But both Sunnis and Shiites, as well as U.S. troops, say there is nowhere close for Sunnis to go for serious medical problems. The nearest hospitals require traveling through areas still considered high-risk for Sunnis because of Shiite militia activities. Many Sunnis are too afraid to go even to the clinic across the city. Getting to a hospital in a Sunni city requires a circuitous route that would take about nine hours.
At a recent meeting in Saba al Bor's newly refurbished government center, which doubles as a U.S.-Iraqi military post, two city leaders were trying to devise a system to ensure that returnees stay. They could fix problems such as broken doors and windows, but not broken trust.
Radhi Muhsin, the city manager, and Mohammed Abdullah, a resettlement volunteer, agreed that getting people to return is not the problem. It is making the city work again, and getting the Sunni and Shiite population to mix.
In the last two months, U.S. officials say, more than 20,000 people have streamed home to Saba al Bor, which had a mixed population before the war. Now, it's mainly Shiite because many Sunnis are wary of returning to a place guarded by a police force that is nearly 100% Shiite, Abdullah and Muhsin said.
