In Iraq, displaced families return to ruins

When the family of 12 returned to Hay Askari in mid-July, little remained of the prosperous market village they remembered from a year ago. Every facade had been sprayed with bullets. Entire blocks had been reduced to charred shells. In a daze, they picked out the place where their house had stood. All that remained was a pile of rubble.

"We were all crying," said Salar Kadim, the head of the family.

When Iraq plunged into civil war in 2006, Hay Askari was caught on the front line between the country's two main Muslim sects. Sunni Arab militants pushed into the village from the north, and Shiite Muslim fighters fought back from the south. Hundreds of families of both sects fled.

The return of about 230 of the families since June is a sign of the uncertain calm taking hold in some of Iraq's most treacherous corners. Whether the peace lasts, however, hinges on whether Iraq's traumatized communities can set aside their hurt, whether there will be sufficient forces to protect them, and whether the government can provide the financial help they need to start over. Already, the government's attempts to compensate for losses are mired in allegations of corruption and sectarian bias.

More than 2 million people have been displaced in Iraq, about half of them since February 2006, when the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra unleashed waves of retaliatory killing.

Here in Diyala province east of Baghdad, residents make up nearly 20% of Iraqis displaced in the last two years, according to the International Organization for Migration. Local officials estimate that about 3,000 families -- no more than 18,000 people -- have returned home.

Sunni militants loyal to the group Al Qaeda in Iraq centered their self-styled Islamic caliphate in religiously mixed Diyala after they were driven out of Fallouja in 2004. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the rival Shiite Badr Organization are also active in the province.

Residents of Hay Askari say hundreds of mortar rounds and thousands of bullets were fired, and the militants blew up abandoned homes to prevent their owners' return. But no one speaks of how many died here; the toll is too painful to tally.

In a low monotone, Kadim, a Shiite, described his loss.