Focus on desperate Kirkuk IDPs

Sometimes Rebwar Mohammed Ibrahim wonders when life is going to get better. In his 25 years he has been evicted from his home, imprisoned, tortured and seen his brother killed. Now he is sheltering in a former sports stadium in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, one of more than 1,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who have nowhere else to live. “I just want to live like everyone else - in a house,” he told IRIN in Kirkuk. He used to live in a house in Kirkuk when he was a boy but in 1995 three of his brothers were arrested and the family was told they would only be freed when the family and its possessions were on the edge of town ready to leave. As part of Saddam Hussein’s Arabisation process, thousands of Kurdish families were forcibly moved from the area and replaced by Arabs from the south and centre of the country. After some time Rebwar sneaked back to Kirkuk, got married and in 2000 had a daughter. The following year he was arrested and imprisoned. For the next seven months he was tortured, hung by his wrists, given electric shock treatment and had all his toenails pulled out. When he was released he became a Kurdish peshmerga fighter and amoung the first group of soldiers with US forces to enter Kirkuk in April this year. His joy at being back in his homeland still endures, but is tempered by the conditions he now finds himself in. Having no house to go back to, he was one of seven families who set up home in the former international sports stadium in Kirkuk where he once watched Iraq play Saudi Arabia at football. In the eight months since then, he has been joined by 340 other families who have built crude mud shelters outside the stadium and around its running track. Chickens squat on the pole vault run-up in the shade of clothes drying and a child defecates in the long jump pit. The IDPs have started ripping up the concrete seating to use as a floor in their shelters so they don’t have to sleep on the mud. Bits of the rubber track have been pulled up to provide paths over boggy areas. Pipes pour raw waste from the shacks onto the paths while sacks and blankets are all some families have for walls. Rebwan, who is the elected representative of the stadium IDPs, said there have been promises of help and housing but so far nothing has materialised. “We came with the hope that the Coalition and other nations would give us the opportunity to build houses quickly. We didn’t think it would take so long,” he exclaimed. Some NGOs had donated supplies, but with new families arriving every day the problems were still huge. In a stadium that used to be the scene of happiness and triumph there is no cheering now. “We want liberation and freedom which will eventually mean this place becomes a place of healthy life and sports again not a place of disease and sickness.” While his living situation depresses him, Rebwan said he would still rather be in his home city than exiled as he was before. “Now I can see my child playing on Kirkuk land. My greatest hope was and still is to see my child free - but in my own house. Of course I still have hope. Paying the sacrifice of our souls and blood will bring something good.” For fellow stadium resident Manija Mohammed Sayeed, something good would be almost a miracle in her life. In April 1988 Saddam’s forces attacked her village of Qaitool south of Kirkuk as part of the Anfal campaign, which saw 4,500 Kurdish villages destroyed. Manija managed to escape and hide with her six children. The other 177 residents, including 41 of her extended family were taken away. They have never been seen or heard of again. In 1998 she got work in Tikrit for some rich Arabs but was eventually discovered and put in jail simply for being a displaced Kurd in an Arab area. When released she moved to Chamchamal near Kirkuk and came to the city as soon as it was freed in April this year. For her, living in a freezing room under the stadium is better than her previous house as here she doesn’t have to pay rent. But there are no other benefits. She has no heater and only a small kerosene stove to provide comfort against the winter. Water leaks in through the walls and it’s too uncomfortable for her two youngest daughters to live here, so she has left them with friends in Chamchamal. “Three times I have been a homeless person now. For 16 years I have not been living.” The only moment of happiness recently was when Saddam was captured. “I don’t need a house or land or money. Saddam is gone - that’s enough. I don’t want to see him killed. I don’t want him in the soil of our land. I don’t want him in the same soil as my family.” Twenty-year-old Saman Nooraddin Ezzaddin shifted back to Kirkuk from Sulaymaniyah five months ago. He had been expelled from Kirkuk when he refused to become a Baa'th Party member and ended up living in an IDP camp because his family couldn’t afford to pay rent in Sulaymaniyah. “If we paid rent we didn’t have enough to eat,” he told IRIN. With his new wife and three-month-old son he came back to Kirkuk with the hope of reclaiming a house but there was nothing. So he built a tiny mud shack at the stadium’s entrance with what he could find. Often there was no fuel for cooking so they collect sticks for fires. The hope he had after Kirkuk was freed has all but disappeared now. “We are living below the lowest level of life. But we still hope that someone will help us. We don’t need much. Just give us a small piece of land and say this is Saman’s and I will do something on it.” His wife Nazdar grumbled that he was too depressed and should have more hope for the future. “I am living in a cave - what do you want me to say?” he replied. Like most of the IDPs at the stadium, Adnan Abdullah Ahmed was expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam’s forces and returned hoping to resurrect his life. “All of the families you see here came back with the hope that they would get a civilised, acceptable house for humans. We never thought that all we would get was promises and promises. If I had known I would be living here for so long I would never have brought my family back,” he told IRIN. He said he had a long list of NGOs and authorities that had visited the stadium. “So many gave promises but no answers.” Many of the things they brought were of little use for the IDPs, he said. “They bring big things that they can paint their logo on and say ‘we were here,’ and take photos.” Following various security incidents across Iraq targeting aid agencies, many have reduced staff, therefore lessening the amount of humanitarian work being carried out in the volatile country. With four children to feed, he saw little hope that he could move them into a real house in the near future. Searching for solace for his situation he resorts to a proverb. “To have a hut built from mud here is better than a palace made from gold and marble on the Arabian Gulf.” Right now, something in between is all he is asking for.