It was a homecoming that no one would wish for. After 10 years of exile in Iran, Abdullah al-Karim and his family travelled back to their home in Basra, to find an empty shell of a house which had been burnt and then occupied by looters.
"This is worse than being away for so long. I would have rather continued living with my relatives in Iran than have seen this," said Abdullah, outside his ruined house in one of Basra's relatively wealthy areas.
From an empty window in the building a looter could be seen hanging up a set of ripped curtains. "The families inside have told us to go away, that this is their house now and that they will kill me if I try to return," said Abdullah, a former engineer.
Although Basra has returned to calm after days of looting there appears to be little room in southern Iraq for the estimated 1 million exiles who are beginning to return to the area with the end of Saddam's regime.
More than 200,000 fled to Iran following a failed uprising by the Shia majority in southern Iraq after the first Gulf War. For the crime of not belonging to the Baath Party, Abdullah and his family were hounded out of their home in 1993.
"But now everyone seems to forget the sacrifices we have made. People seem to think that those who lived through Saddam's regime in Iraq are the only ones to have suffered.
"I have been living in poverty without a job in Iran for 10 years, and now I find I am homeless," said Abdullah, who was on his way to go and live with other relations in Basra. Abdullah's despair is rapidly turning to anger at the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the religious group which has nominated itself as the representative of Iraqi Shias in Iran.
As opposition groups meet in Nassiriya to begin discussion on an interim administration in Iraq, The Supreme Council's excluded head, Mr Hakim al-Bakr, has begun broadcasting messages through his own private radio station calling on Shias not to co-operate with coalition forces and to prepare to fight.
"If necessary we will liberate Iraq from the Allies," said one optimistic broadcast on Revolutionary Iraq Radio.
Members of his several thousand-strong Badr brigade, the armed wing of the group, have also been reported to be crossing over the border by military officials. A senior British officer said, "We're going through something of a honeymoon period here in Iraq at the moment, but we know that once the future power structure begins to take shape those who are on the outside are going to become increasingly desperate.
"There's been some movement on the Iranian border, and we shall definitely be monitoring the situation very carefully over the next few weeks," he said.
