“Iraq is no solution. We cannot return to Iraq,” said Manhal Khoshaba Mikhail, who has been five years in Beirut waiting for a chance to resettle in the West.

“If we talk about going back to Iraq, we’re talking about going to hell,” said Hanah Abdel Hahel Salumi, widow and mother of four in Damascus.

The Chaldean Archbishop of Kirkuk though, claims that almost all Christians who fled to escape death threats and violence during the run-up to the March 7 Iraqi elections have returned.

“The elections were carried out very well. During the campaign period, the political parties debated their programs in a very civilized way,” Archbishop Louis Sako told Aid to the Church in Need March 23. “Whatever happens, it will be a good result. I am very optimistic.”

Even UNHCR doesn't believe Iraqi Christians can return By Catholic Register Staff Can Iraqis go back? The UNHCR doesn’t think so. “Conditions are not yet ripe for a voluntary and sustainable return to Iraq in large numbers,” says the UNHCR’s annual “Regional Response Plan” for its largest active refugee crisis. “Does anyone accept to go to death?” asked Najan Boutros, a disabled Iraqi largely confined to a two-room concrete apartment in a backstreet of a poor neighbourhood in Beirut. The Iraqi government claims more than 32,000 Iraqis did return in 2009. The UNHCR helped 2,400 go back. An Iraqi government program that runs an on-again-off-again monthly bus from Damascus to Baghdad is supposed to help refugees resettle with an $850 payment. It doesn’t seem to be working. There are stories of families who never got the payments, families who could not return to their own homes or their old neighbourhoods, which had been taken over by armed groups. Some families that have taken the bus to Baghdad have ended up right back in Damascus.

But refugees who fled during the elections say they have no intention of returning.

“Impossible, impossible — no way,” Ameera Yalda Matti said. She fled her home near Mosul following the elections after barely escaping a bomb attack on her car.

“If Iraq was a free, democratic country we would not have come here,” said Ihab Ephraim Khodr, who arrived in Beirut within days of the Iraqi vote. Militants had threatened to kill him for selling liquor under the counter at a family business. “Since 2003 there was no authority in Iraq that has found a way of preserving our rights or protecting us.”

“The parties should have looked at Iraq as if we were all Iraqis. This is what was missing,” said Khodr’s wife, Diana Ephraim.

Seven Christian parties vied for five seats reserved for Christians in the 325-seat parliament. With 91 seats and 28 per cent of the vote, Allawi’s Iraqiya group just edged out Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s State of Law party which won 89 seats with 27.4 per cent of the vote.

But neither of the major parties can form a government without the support of either the Shia-based United Iraqi Alliance or the Kurdistan Alliance. The process of coming up with a governing coalition is expected to last months.

Middle East policy expert Oussama Safa believes Christians can play a meaningful role in Iraq’s sectarian politics.

“It’s incumbent on Iraqi Christians to organize themselves and sell themselves as possible coalition partners, coalition pushers or improvers,” said the director of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies.

Though Safa is enthusiastic about the prospects for a healthy democracy in Iraq, impressed by the 62-per-cent turn-out at polls, he acknowledges it’s a long road back to normal civic life for Iraq’s Christians, particularly refugees.

“There is decidedly a wave to make Iraq unlivable for the Christians,” he said. “What’s happening there is direct violence against the Christian community... It’s not a political issue there. It’s, you know, blowing up churches and shooting Christians in the streets.”

Statements from Chaldean Church authorities (about 70 per cent of Iraqi Christians are Chaldean) that encourage refugees to return or try to limit the exodus of Christians aren’t helping, said Fr. Abuna Farid Botros, St. Terezia Chaldean parish priest in Damascus.

“Until now they (refugees) are coming. Until now they don’t trust in the authority in their country,” said Botros. “And they don’t trust in their church. This is very sad.”