They’re coming home.
Iraqis who fled their country for Syria and Jordan in the wake of roadside bombs and terrorist attacks are coming back to Baghdad in dramatic numbers, reports The Times of London.
A spokesman for the United Nations’ High Commission on Refugees confirms that “there is a large movement of people going back to Iraq,” adding: “We are doing rapid research on this.”
But research isn’t really needed. It’s pretty obvious what’s going on: The surge – ordered by President Bush and executed by Gen. David Petraeus – is working.
US military casualties have dropped drastically, as have terrorist incidents – down 55 percent since the surge reached full strength. And Iraqi civilian casualties fell 60 percent in that same period.
That translates into a newfound sense of security for Iraqis and Americans alike. Even The New York Times had to admit it in a front-page headline last week: “Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves.”
Clearly the word has gotten out – especially to Syria, which has been a haven for many of the 4 million Iraqis who fled their homeland. The Iraqi embassy in Damascus has even begun organizing mass convoys back to Baghdad.
The director of the Iraqi National Theater, who has been staging plays for refugees in Damascus, told The Times of London that his nightly audience of 400 has now dwindled to less than 50. “In the last month,” he said, “60 percent of the Iraqis I know have returned.”
The reason is simple: As Maj. Gen. (ret.) Robert Scales, former director of the Army War College, wrote in The Wall Street Journal, Petraeus’ soldiers and Marines have essentially ejected al Qaeda from both Baghdad and the urban center to which it relocated, Baquba.
Scales, who recently returned from Iraq, says the surge has “achieved success on the ground at an unprecedented speed in the history of counterinsurgency warfare.”
To be sure, there are signs of other trouble ahead. Iran has temporarily pulled back, but its proxy army of Shiite militias may be regrouping. And it would be foolish to underestimate al Qaeda’s ability to adapt, even to major setbacks.
But the lesson here is that Iraqis are feeling safer for a reason – they are safer. And they’re giving US-led forces a vote of confidence in the most demonstrable way possible: with their feet.
As Gen. Scales writes, we may now be reaching a “culminating point” in Iraq – the moment when the advantage shifts and the outcome becomes irreversible.
All the more reason why Congress must not put these gains at risk by mandating a premature withdrawal of forces.