Coming back on the train from a news-free holiday earlier this week, idly flicking through the papers abandoned by commuters, I found myself plunged into the tabloid world of Iraq Five Years On.

One paper devoted half a dozen pages to the anniversary. There was extensive reporting of the ongoing discussion about when 'we' will withdraw our forces, an 'I told-you-so' piece by a vexed defence correspondent about politicians' failure to listen when it mattered, and a heart-rending account by a childhood friend of a promising young Englishman killed in the battle against Saddam.

Later, I read a report in the Guardian that the army have picked this week to launch a recruitment drive capitalising on the popularity of soldiers in the eyes of the British public.

This kind of coverage in the mainstream media, running alongside a set of preoccupations which include the effectiveness of the "surge" of U.S. troops, the progress of the Iraqi parliament and the fall of sectarian violence, seems to give voice to an underlying desire that western involvement in Iraq - embarrassing as it has been - is in the process of ending.

Yet, as those in the aid world are all too aware, a humanitarian story of gigantesque proportions has been building for some time, with 2 million Iraqi refugees living in empty buildings and makeshift camps in foreign lands, and a further 2.5 million internally displaced within Iraq.

The figures form the basis of an alternative narrative which, in a rare piece about the plight of the refugees in the Sunday Times, Marie Colvin calls "the untold story of Iraq". With only around 36,000 refugees having returned since the decline in violence, the story of Iraq's displaced is likely to go on and on, creating a long term crisis which impedes the rebuilding of the country so longingly evoked by western media and politicians.

But in this anniversary week, humanitarian organisations are highlighting the disjuncture. According to a statement from the International Organisation for Migration, nearly one in five of the Iraqi population before the U.S.-led invasion remain displaced - and the situation shows no sign of improving. "There is very little light at the end of the tunnel in Iraq's humanitarian crisis," said IOM spokeswoman Jemini Pandya. "Conditions for the displaced, and refugees, have been getting steadily worse."

Meanwhile, a report from the UN Refugee Agency also released this week, details the first increase in new asylum seekers worldwide since 2002 - precipitated by the doubling in the number of applications from Iraqis last year, compared to 2006. Applications from Iraqis for asylum in developed countries made up the largest tranche - 45,200 - of the 338,000 applications received by countries around the world.

Another report from Refugees International drills down further into the detail of the refugees' plight and those trying to help them. While western politicians and the military struggle with the consequences of decisions taken five years ago, relief agencies are grappling with new complexities - and partly failing the refugees they aim to help as a result.

One major challenge is how to identify refugees who, surviving in urban environments and from a range of socio-economic backgrounds, often resemble less needy Syrians they are living among. On top of that, half those with appointments to register formally as refugees with the UNHCR in Damascus fail to turn up, the report says.

It also points out that a third of beneficiaries identified as needing food aid in Syria in 2007 did not get it, due to the traditional criteria used for food distribution. The criteria have now been broadened so that 90 percent of the 155,000 Iraqis registered with the World Food Programme receive the hand outs. But the wider lesson remains - aid agencies and those who support them need to get to grips with the particular needs of Iraqi refugees, and adjust their provision accordingly.

This is especially true for Palestinian refugees from Iraq, whose plight is highlighted in the Refugees International report. Like others caught up in a regional conflict on top of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle that originally displaced them, those in Iraq find themselves refugees at least twice over. Denied access to neighbouring countries as asylum seekers, they remain confined to desert border camps, often without access to basic services.

Healthcare is a particular problem - the UNHCR reports that Palestianians in the camps on the Iraqi-Syrian border are dying for a lack of proper medical attention.

And while relief agencies are calibrating their operations to the realities of the new Iraq, the further challenges of communicating with the wider world about what they are doing, and why they need help to do it, await them.

In a future where politicians, the media and the public will want to believe that the road to Iraqi reconstruction will now be an easy one, reminding them of the enormous, ongoing needs of millions of Iraqi refugees may prove to be an uphill struggle.

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