THE children in Qawala camp are grubby, bundled up in as many clothes as their
parents can find to ward off wintry temperatures in the tents on a rubbish
dump in northern Iraq that they now call home. They wrap their feet in
plastic bags to walk through the mud to school.
Their plight is the untold story of Iraq — of families who were forced to flee
for their lives when sectarian fighting between Sunnis and Shi’ites erupted
in 2006 after Al-Qaeda bombed the Golden Mosque, a revered Shi’ite sanctuary
in Samarra.
Qawala camp, two miles outside the city of Sulaymaniyah in the north of the
country, is home to 3,000 men, women and children, a tiny percentage of up
to 2.5m Iraqis believed to be homeless in their own country.
These people rarely feature in news from Iraq that focuses on calibrating the
gains or losses of the American military “surge”, or the record of the
deadlocked parliament under Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister. Yet it is
crucial to the country’s future that they should be able to return home and
rebuild their lives, or they will be a ticking bomb that threatens any
possibility of a peaceful future for Iraq.
In Qawala, the refugees are safe from the internecine violence they fled, but
it is no place to live. The stench of sewage is overwhelming and dogs
scavenge for food. Residents dump their rubbish and old refrigerators there.
Sahira Jasmim, 38, lives in squalor in a tent with her five children. She fled
Baghdad after her husband, a taxi driver, died in the wave of killings that
engulfed her neighbourhood, Dora, in the south of the capital.
“I’m forced to live like this,” she said. “I feel exhausted inside. When I was
living in Baghdad I had electricity, water and a home. Now I have nothing.
It’s very cold in here in the winter and I have one gas heater to keep the
children warm. It’s on the entire time and kerosene is very expensive. I
don’t think about the future — what future?”
Everyone in Qawala longs to go home but is too frightened. Hadi and Khushay
Ali, former sheep merchants from the city of Mosul, live near Jasmim in
another tent with their six children, and the four orphaned children of
Hadi’s brother, who was beheaded by Al-Qaeda. Their 27-year-old mother died
of a heart attack when her husband’s head was brought to her.
“I lived in a good house in Mosul and had everything I needed,” said Khushay,
wearing a patterned dress and black headscarf. “Two of my husband’s brothers
were killed by the militia and we were scared he would be killed next, so we
had to leave.
“I cook one meal a day, and we haven’t eaten meat since October last year,”
she said, surrounded by barefooted children. “I thought everything would be
better after the war but life has gone from bad to worse.”
As the fifth anniversary of the war approaches this Thursday, the government
is doing little to help the refugees of Qawala — many of them widows — or
those in similar shanty towns across Iraq. The lack of security makes it
dangerous for aid organisations to intervene.
Shaista Aziz, who visited Qawala last month for Save the Children UK, is
trying to get help for countless widows and their families. “These women are
afraid, they are unprotected and they are voiceless. Most have had to flee
their homes and their jobs, taking their young children with them. They and
their children are prey to extremists, armed criminals and militiamen,” she
said. “They want to go home as soon as possible, but ‘as soon as possible’
looks like a distant dream.”
Along with the internally displaced, another 2m Iraqis have fled the country,
mostly to Jordan and Syria. They include many of Iraq’s best and brightest.
Only about 36,000 have returned, despite the fall in violence in recent
months attributed to the troop “surge”.
There are, however, recent moves to piece back together the Rubik’s cube of
Baghdad and other Iraqi cities where Shi’ite and Sunni lived side by side.
Shatha al-Musawi, a Shi’ite member of parliament who was forced out of her
house in the Baghdad district of Hay al-Adel by a Sunni militia, is leading
a group of widows trying to get their homes back.
Supported by Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician assigned to help refugees
return home, and by the American Major-General Jeffrey Hammond, she has
enabled several families to reclaim property, although she is still living
in the Shi’ite district of Hurriya herself.
The women returned a few weeks ago with Chalabi, backed by Iraqi soldiers, and
sat with the Sunni militia members who had not only taken their homes but in
some cases had killed their men. “I met the man who is in my house, and it
was very hard,” Musawi said.
“He said he was just taking care of the house for me but I told him I do not
need anyone to take care of my house,” she added, uncharacteristically
breaking down in tears.
“It was the hardest thing I have had to do in my life. But I have to do this
and keep inside my anger because we want a future for Iraq,” she said.
“We have to persuade the people in our houses to leave voluntarily, because
there have been cases when someone was forced out of a house by the rightful
owner, and that person then came back and burnt it down.”
The struggle comes against a backdrop of violence that has cast a shadow over
the success of the surge, which saw an extra 30,000 troops arrive in Iraq by
last June. Attacks on civilians and the American and Iraqi armed forces
increased by 30% between January and February, although they are well down
compared with the same time last year.
A senior US official said last week that attacks had decreased from 180 a day
in June to 60 a day in January.
There were worrying signs that Al-Qaeda in Iraq had not been defeated. Ten
days ago, two massive bombs hit Karradah, a popular shopping district in the
heart of Baghdad, killing 68 people. Last week came the worst attack on US
forces in months when a suicide bomber struck a patrol in Baghdad, killing
five soldiers.
Nor have sectarian murders ceased. Last week the body of Archbishop Paulos
Faraj Rahho, leader of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Mosul, was found in a
shallow grave. He had been kidnapped on February 29 as he drove home from
mass.
However, the formation of the US-financed Awakening Councils has seen Sunni
tribes who once fought against American and Iraqi forces take up arms
against Al-Qaeda instead. Hammond described Al-Qaeda’s status last week as
“frustrated but not defeated”.
Al-Qaeda has regrouped in the northern areas of Diyala and Mosul and is
largely responsible for most of the American and Iraqi losses. Baghdad is
calmer, but Iraqi intelligence sources said the group had gone underground
and was biding its time.
The Awakening forces could themselves turn out to be a problem in future. They
still resent the loss of power they suffered when Saddam Hussein’s
Sunni-dominated government fell, and now want to be integrated into the
official Iraqi military.
The Shi’ite-dominated government is loath to take in 80,000 Sunni tribesmen,
fearing they could become a fifth column. Maliki has pledged to put 20% of
them on the military payroll and efforts are being made to find jobs for the
others to stop them returning to the ranks of a well-financed insurgency.
Crucial to the next few months will be the progress of the Iraqi security
forces as the Americans plan to withdraw 25,000 troops by mid-summer,
leaving 130,000 in the country.
Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric who leads the Mahdi Army, a Shi’ite
militia, has extended a ceasefire and Iraqi politicians hope to bring him
back into the fold.
Some of the biggest problems confronting Iraq in the next year will be on the
political front. The security gains were intended to provide an opportunity
for Shi’ites, Sunnis and Kurds to reach agreements on sharing oil revenues,
improving economic performance, ending corruption and launching a process of
national reconciliation.
After months of deadlock, Maliki’s government did pass a law relaxing
restrictions on former members of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath party, but there
is still no agreement on oil and local elections will be delayed because of
arguments about the rules.
The most encouraging sign may be that Iraqis are starting to blame their own
government for their woes, rather than American or British forces, and many
are talking about votes rather than guns. At a recent meeting in Diwaniyah,
a southern city with 80% unemployment, men sat on pillows around the room,
discussing their plight. Hussein, a once-successful farmer who cannot get
his produce to market because of the high cost of fuel, said: “We voted for
this government but they have done nothing they promised. We need to go to
new elections and elect people we know who will help us.”
Any progress is cold comfort to the families stuck in Qawala. Saad Setta, 45,
a widow living with four sons and three daughters in another freezing tent,
has nothing to go back to in Baghdad. A Shi’ite militia posted leaflets
through her door in the Saidiya district, forcing her to flee, and she has
since learnt that her house was burnt down.
“This war has created a disaster for women like me,” she said as she mashed
chickpeas to make falafel, the family’s one meal of the day. “I am alone,
left to take care of my children, and there are many more women like me all
over Baghdad without husbands. We have a government only in name.”
Like anyone else among the displaced millions, Setta still hopes to make a
life for her children outside the makeshift camp. “Iraq is my home, Iraq is
my country, and inshallah [God willing] one day I feel that I will have Iraq
back,” she said. The resilience of Iraqis may be their best hope for the
future.
Video: Angelina
Jolie visits troops in Iraq
"Suffer the little children........"
I hope all the great and good who agreed with Blair and Bush remember this quote when reading this article - a good intro for Easter in many ways !!! What would Christ think of all this harm towards Children born out of the mayhem in the Middle East at present ? Think of this Blair when you preach to your flock at Harvard about Christianity !!!!
Ian Payne, WALSALL,