The fear of being sent back to Baghdad has taken its toll on Mustafa Aziz Alwi.
He says he cannot sleep and has lost about 10kg since his claim for asylum in Sweden was rejected in January.
"They told me it's because it's calmer in Iraq now, that I can go back and be happy. But they don't know that it's death there," said Aziz Alwi, 25, wiping away tears in an interview at his cousin's apartment in the Stockholm suburb of Sollentuna.
Had his case been decided a year earlier, he would probably already hold a residence permit. Sweden has given shelter to about 100,000 Iraqis, 40,000 of them since the US-led invasion in 2003. That's far more than any other Western country, including the US, which admitted just over 1,600 Iraqi refugees in the last fiscal year, nearly 400 short of the annual goal of 2,000, and a big reduction from an initial target of 7,000.
But Sweden has gradually tightened its asylum rules, worried that its generous welfare system can't cope.
The effects became evident this year, when immigration statistics showed only 28 percent of the claims were approved in January and 23 percent in February -- down from 85 percent in January last year.
While Sweden has won praise for the welcome it extends to Iraqis, the government sees the surge of newcomers as out of control and has appealed in vain to fellow EU states to share the burden.
"We find it totally unacceptable that some countries do a lot while others do very little," Migration Minister Tobias Billstrom said.
"When very many people arrive within a very short period of time, it puts an enormous strain on the system, like schools and health care," he said.
Last year, more than 18,000 Iraqis applied for asylum in Sweden -- four times more than in Germany and 10 times more than in Britain, figures compiled by the European Council of Refugees and Exiles, an advocacy group, show.
But the numbers dropped sharply this year, with only 835 asylum-seekers arriving in Sweden in February -- down nearly 40 percent from the previous month to the lowest level since July 2006. In the first three weeks of March, only 376 Iraqis sought asylum in Sweden, suggesting the decline continues.
Sweden's turning point came last July when the Migration Board, citing decisions by the nation's highest immigration court, said the situation in Iraq could not be described as an armed conflict.
As a result, asylum-seekers now must show that they have fled specific threats of violence; turmoil is no longer sufficient grounds.
Some refugee experts say they've noticed a recent drop in refugees both inside and outside Iraq as security there has improved.
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