Why Iraq's Refugees are Going Home

Iraqi refugees from Syria are starting to return to Iraq. The question is, are they returning due to a drop in violence following the troop surge, or because Syria is forcing them out?
Newsweek reports that "[t]housands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war."
Examples of that unwelcome attitude in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, Newsweek says, include forbidding Iraqis to hold jobs. In the case of Egypt and Lebanon, it also includes a refusal to allow Iraqi children access to public schools.
The UNCHR reports, "that only 14 percent of Iraqi refugees are returning because of improved security conditions. Around 70 percent say they are leaving because of tougher visa regulations and because they are not allowed to work and can no longer afford to stay in Syria."
Contrast that with a stories from the Associated Press picked up by the NY Times, Washington Post and FoxNews:
WaPo: "Iraqi refugees, heartened by reports of the lull in violence in the capital, were beginning to return."
NY Times: the return of refugees was "hailed" by the Iraqi government "as a sign of growing public confidence." It quotes a Iraqi military spokesman who said, "the returning home of displaced families is considered as a great victory for law enforcement and national reconciliation."
FoxNews: "Many Iraqis have headed back on own their own from Syria and elsewhere as extremist attacks have fallen sharply in Baghdad and other areas."
Certainly, many Iraqis are returning because they believe it is safer to do so now than at any time in the past. But the wire stories carried by media here do a journalistic disservice to their readers by underplaying, to put it mildly, the reasons why a large majority of Iraqis are going home.