The Saddam family tells Asharq Al-Awsat: The desire for retaliation deterred us from coming back.

Since 2014, which witnessed the rise of the “ISIS” organization and its control over large parts of the governorates of western and northern Iraq, including Salah al-Din Governorate, more than a thousand families have been displaced from Al-Awja, the birthplace of the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Many of them moved to the Kurdistan region, and some of them went to live in the city of Tikrit, and some preferred to emigrate abroad.
The military authorities in Al-Awja, which is located on the banks of the Tigris River and is about 10 kilometers south of the city of Tikrit, the center of Salah al-Din Governorate, give different reasons and pretexts for not allowing the return of these families, including that some of the residents of the region had sympathized with the terrorist organization, and some of them participated in most of its criminal acts. .
Falah al-Nada, the son of the sheikh of the al-Bunasir clan, to which Saddam belonged, talked about the diaspora of the people of al-Awja, saying: “There are other families who were not allowed to return to their homes, such as the people of Jurf al-Sakhr, but our misfortune seems exceptional given our closeness to the late President Saddam Hussein.” . He added, in a phone call to Asharq Al-Awsat from his residence in the Kurdistan region, that “the new regime has placed us in the category of permanent enemies.” Al-Nada finds no justification for preventing their return except for “the will to take revenge.”
When asked about the conditions of Al-Awja now, Al-Nada says: “It has turned into a military barracks controlled by a faction affiliated with the (Popular Mobilization).”
Saddam’s clan: “The will of revenge” is behind not allowing us to return to our homes