If the Shia-led government in Baghdad appears reluctant to see Assad go, its Sunni opponents are broadly sympathetic to the rebels. That might seem natural given their respective political and religious alignments, but it was not always so.
From the time Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003 until late in 2010, the Iraqi government frequently accused Assad of fomenting unrest in Iraq and providing safe haven to insurgents, especially but not only to Baath party members. Over the same period, Iraqiya, the main Sunni parliamentary bloc often defended the Syrian government on the grounds that it was housing and feeding large numbers of Iraqi refugees.
Conflict in Syria has effectively switched those two positions.
Another effect of the fighting has been to reverse the flow of refugees.
Sectarian violence in the years after 2003 prompted tens of thousands of Iraqis to go to Syria. The head of the parliamentary committee for displaced persons, Liqaa Wardi, says there were 143,000 Iraqi families in Syria at the beginning of 2011. She says about 100,000 individuals have returned to Iraq since the Syrian unrest began.
Iraq itself has become a destination for Syrian refugees, although Wardi is critical of the way this has been handled, with the Iraqi authorities sealing border crossings and allowing only women and children into the refugee camps.
“That policy has increased the suffering of refugees as it separated families,” she said.
As of April 28, the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR said there were just under 138,000 registered Syrian refugees in Iraq. The vast majority were in the Kurdistan region, with just 6,800 in Anbar province.
Laith Hammoudi is IWPR’s editor in Iraq.
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