THEIR country is a quagmire of insurgency and sectarian violence, but the number of Iraqi asylum seekers opting to return voluntarily has almost doubled since the government introduced a controversial cash-for-repatriation scheme.

In 2005, just 768 Iraqis left the UK voluntarily, but new statistics obtained by the Sunday Herald show 1387 have left this year following a pilot government scheme which offers £3000 to asylum seekers who go home of their own volition.

Under the enhanced assisted voluntary return (AVR) programme, returning asylum seekers are paid £500 cash on arrival at their departure airport, with the remaining £2500 going towards support and employment on return to their country of origin.

The pilot scheme, which is open to all those who applied for asylum in the UK before December 31, 2005, was launched in January and closes next month. So far, it has received a total of 6120 applications, with Iraqis applying in greater numbers than any other nationality, despite Foreign Office advice against all travel to the capital Baghdad and all but essential travel to Iraq as a whole.

Around 30,000 Iraqis have applied for asylum in the UK since 2000, 90% of whom have been rejected.

Campaigners yesterday said they were concerned the scheme was intensifying the pressure on Iraqi asylum seekers to leave the UK and warned that it may backfire.

Kasim Karim, of the Kurdish Cultural Association, said: “They are returning on the promise that [the government] give them £3000 if they return before December. If they return after this they may only be given £1000, which is nothing.”

Karim claimed he had spoken to some returnees who were finding it difficult to settle and predicted that many would seek asylum again at a later date.

“The voluntary returns have not been successful; we know because we contacted some of them.

“I don’t advise any people to go back. It is not a very good choice, but you cannot force them to stay or advise legally – it is up to them to make their own decision. Half or three-quarters of them may return to the EU because there is no safety in the country.”

Salim Salih, 45, an Iraqi Kurd who has been seeking asylum in Scotland for the past six years, agreed that returning presented too much of a risk. He said he and his family felt more secure seeking refugee status in this country.

“Nobody is happy. Everybody knows that Iraq is not safe,” he said. “The [UK] government puts too much pressure on people to go back. The support the government gives is small and it forces people into feeling that though they are not safe in Iraq they are also not safe living here – they have no freedom, they have no papers, no job, no house and no life. They prefer to go to hell than stay here.”

He added that returnees who called him from Iraq now felt rootless in their country after years away.

A Scottish Refugee Council spokesman said Iraq remained “highly volatile”, adding: “We should not put lives in danger merely to meet arbitrary removal targets.”

A spokesman for the Home Office said the department had been working with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to make voluntary returns to Iraq safe: “There is a difference between the risks a British citizen would face in travelling to Iraq and those of an Iraqi returning to their home country. There is clearly a difficult position in those parts of Iraq most affected by insurgencies, but we do not accept this is the case in all areas.”

A spokesman from the IOM’s office in Scotland agreed, saying: “The returns we make are voluntary returns. We encourage people to research the state of their home country before they go. We put people back into the Kurdish areas where it is deemed to be safe and it has been extremely successful.”