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McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Sun, Dec. 11, 2011
David Enders | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: December 11, 2011
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/12/11/132550/huge-numbers-of-iraqis-still-adrift.html
MOSUL, Iraq — 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 — nearly 6 percent of the country's estimated more than 31 million population — 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.
Those who are displaced internally say the Iraqi government has done little or nothing to help them, and in some cases has even prevented them from returning to their homes.
Iraqi officials concede that the problem is formidable but they challenge the numbers, saying that the issue is getting better.
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