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The National: Iraqi refugees fear returning home

By Suha Philip Ma'ayeh and Hugh Naylor

Andrea Lari, director of regional programmes at Refugees International, a Washington-based organisation, said the US should expect a surge of social problems from its Iraqi-refugee community.

US authorities had not taken into account the high levels of psychological and physical trauma and difficulty in assimilating into a vastly different society, [he added].

"Yes, families may have been resettled. But there's no pre-existing safety net that's here to help integration," [he said]. "I've heard many accounts of Iraqi refugees who are so frustrated that they want to go back to Iraq, or at least somewhere else."

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