Focus on Arab IDPs

Tribal leaders sat on carpets discussing their plight in an unfinished building that had a sheet as an outside wall to guard against the elements. Most in the group were rewarded with plots of land and houses in Kirkuk and Khanaqin in northern Iraq for fighting in the eight year Iran/Iraq war. But when the Saddam Hussein regime fell after US-led coalition troops entered Iraq, people living in those cities told them to leave. Under Saddam Hussein’s “Arabisation” programme to get more of his supporters into parts of the country where he was not liked, many of the Arabs were permitted to move into houses previously occupied by others. After the regime fell, those people asked for their houses back. Thousands of people were moved around in Iraq in the last 35 years as part of the programme. In a complex dance, many have now been thrown out of their homes into various temporary quarters around the country. “I’m like a refugee in my own country,” 56-year-old Halil Naismotlik, a tribal leader sitting on the carpet, told IRIN. “All of my fields, my money, were taken and we are angry,” he lamented. More than 100 families live at a former Iraqi military base, worrying about what to do next. Women in long black coverings crowd around the entrance to the unfinished room, pointing to their children as they try and explain the terrible conditions - no running water and no electricity. One of the men said he recently tapped into existing electricity wires about 100 meters away, pointing to a ceiling fan twirling slowly in the late summer heat. When asked if doing so is illegal, he shrugged his shoulders, saying, “We have no choice.” “Kurdish (residents of northern cities) people gave us just a few days to leave,” Salem Majid, told IRIN. “We are Iraqis, but now we have no place to go,” he added. US troops recently came to see the group, Major David Vacchi, a US military spokesman at a nearby base in a former military hospital, told IRIN. They believe the families should move back to Nasiriyah, a city in the south where most have relatives. No international aid agencies have offered help, although some have come to visit, tribal leaders said. Officials from the newly formed ministry of justice offered them electricity and water, but did not say what the people should do to prepare themselves for winter, according to Sheik Akram Juad. “We refuse to go back to Nasiriyah,” Juad told IRIN. “We have too many people now. Where would we stay?” he added. City residents complain that the newcomers are shooting guns late at night and causing problems in the formerly peaceful city. US forces recently raided the camp twice after finding bombs on the road into town. The raids netted numerous weapons and bomb-making equipment, according to Vacchi. “The right thing for them to do is to go back to their hereditary land in Nasiriyah. It’s rightful for them to get their homes back there,” he maintained. “They’re illegal in the place they’re currently staying.” US troops have tried to help the group, loaning them trucks to move their belongings, for example. But the group stayed put. "The US military does not believe in forcibly removing the group," Vacchi said. “I know it’s not the United States here, but you don’t take a guy from New York and give him a chunk of land from Houston,” he added. "If the group doesn’t move, it should at least have a more proper refugee camp with toilets and showers," he noted. “These guys are very poor,” Khalid Daod, aged 33, told IRIN. He was a friend visiting the group who lives in Baghdad. “If they stay here, of course they’ll make problems.” Vacchi said he believed no one should have to live in such poor conditions but added that the US military didn’t have any money to help relocate the group. He also thought the group could do more to help the military - by telling them who was putting bombs on the road for example. People used to being taken care of by Saddam Hussein have difficulty comprehending the position they now find themselves in. One man said he accepted that he was told to leave his house in the north, since he said he knew the house he lived in used to belong to someone else. But he also believed he and his colleagues had done nothing wrong. “The US Army should take care of us,” Sabar Dombas, told IRIN. “We sacrificed ourselves in the war with Iran. If the United States and Islamic countries accept that there are refugees in this place, they should also accept us,” he maintained.