Adel: I am a doctor. We lived here for one year, yeah. We lived here compulsory, we ran out of Baghdad. I did not work here, they do not let people to work here. Already they have no vacancies here. Life here for Iraqis is very tough. In Baghdad I had my own home. I left it and I don’t know anything about it. I’ll go and check, they say it’s stable now. If it’s OK then maybe we’ll stay there. If not…let us see. Let’s wait and see.

Aaron Brown: For some, months of poverty ends in impossible choices. Take that bus back to Iraq to uncertainty and danger, or stay here without money or prospects.

Woman in bus (subtitles): We’re going to see what the situation is. We’ll see if it’s good. It’s a school vacation anyway, so we’ll take a look. If it’s bad we’ll return to Syria.

Man in bus (subtitles): In Syria there are no work permits. It’s a country with limited resources. They can’t handle large numbers of refugees. It affects their economy.

Aaron Brown: Just two weeks after we filmed this scene we received an email from Adel, the doctor we met at the bus station. He is now back in Syria. His English may not be perfect, but his analysis is eloquent.

Adel: I cannot risk me and my family. The Iraqi authorities would like the refugees to get back home for political and elections reasons but this should not be on expense of our lives, they can't play with us as toys, if the situation gets back to normal then we would get back. It is our home and we would like to take part in rebuilding it.

Aaron Brown: If the story of the Iraq war is starting to seem old, the story of the war’s refugees is just now being written. Too many came too fast. Relief agencies can’t keep up, the United Nations can’t keep up, and Syria and Jordan can’t absorb them all.

And then there is this. In weeks of filming here in Jordan and in Syria, no one - not an Iraqi, not a Syrian, not a Jordanian, nobody believed the refugees were going home soon, if ever.

The rich Arab nations have done virtually nothing. The rest of the world seems unwilling to do any more.

And what special responsibility does the United States have? We can tell you from here that everyone from Queen Noor on down believes the United States is not doing nearly enough.

Meanwhile some two million people wait to be resettled, and each day they get a little bit poorer, a little bit more desperate, a little bit angrier. Some two million people without homes or hope.

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