Iraq: Platitudes v reality

Whilst the US president and Iraqi PM have exchanged platitudes in Washington today - and America is on the cusp of withdrawing its military from the war-torn Iraq, leaving some 16,000 personnel (private contractors and otherwise) to attend to defending the US embassy in Baghdad - the realities for the Iraqis from the 9 year war are enormous.

"Of all the problems that the U.S. troop withdrawal won't affect in Iraq, what to do about the number of internally displaced people looms the largest.

As many as 2 million Iraqis — about 6 percent of the country's estimated population of more than 31 million — are thought to have been forced from the cities and towns where they once lived and are housed in circumstances that feel temporary and makeshift.

More than 500,000 of those are "squatters in slum areas with no assistance or legal right to the properties they occupy," according to Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group. Most can't go home: Either their homes have been destroyed or hostile ethnic and sectarian groups now control their neighborhoods."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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