Biyara IDPS face tough winter

It is midday and the welcome sun bathes Avin Abdullah’s home in the remote village of Biyara. The icy mud has just begun to melt as the temperature creeps above zero. For Avin, the next few hours are the only time she will not feel cold. That is because for her and seven other members of her family, home is a sagging tent on a hillside just outside Biyara, where nearly 60 families are trying to survive. "Our life is not good," Avin told IRIN in Biyara. "When there is a little bit of rain it comes inside the tent. So what do you think it’s like when it rains heavily?" In 2001, Biyara was taken over by the hardline Islamic group Ansar al-Islam. Many residents fled the northeastern mountain village, which lies near the border with Iran border, only returning after US-led forces had pounded the Ansar fighters out of their stronghold. When the residents returned, they found that most of their houses had been destroyed by the Ansar or the Coalition shelling. More than 100 houses were rebuilt by the NGO Dutch Consortium, but with so many more people coming to Biyara, a tented camp was set up for another 150 families on the steep hillside near the village centre. Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) together with the Kurdish NGO Civilisation Development Organisation (CDO) have obtained funding to build another 100 houses, but with winter having begun, construction has stalled. Meanwhile, about 100 families who had been living in the tents moved in with relatives or friends to escape the worst of the weather, but the rest are still in tents covered with nylon tarpaulins. Avin said her family had missed out on the 100 new houses and had no idea when they might be able to shift from the tent they had been in since April. At 15, she had to give up school because of the fighting and now wonders if she has any future. "I’m sorry, but I’m totally without hope. When it’s so cold that you shiver all night and can’t get to sleep how can you think about the next day?" Shirwan Muhammad Majid, CDO’s monitor in Biyara, told IRIN that the families living in the tents were internally displaced persons (IDPs) who had been forced to leave their villages either during the Iran-Iraq war or by the Ansar. Many had already been very poor and economically vulnerable before coming here, Shirwan told IRIN. "They absolutely have to live here - there is nowhere else for them," he said. The 100 most needy families had been selected for the new houses, but CDO's resources were limited and more help was needed. "We are yelling and screaming to the NGOs to please come and give us some money to give these other people a home," Shirwan said. In the short term, CDO was helping the families with kerosene and heaters, but the IDPs still lacked many basics such as warm clothing, he added. Then he looked towards Avin and her sister standing nearby outside their tent. "If you think they are the worst off, don’t believe it - I can show you much worse," he said in a low voice. In his experience, he noted, Biyara had suffered more than any village in northern Iraq because of its occupation by the Ansar. In a smoky tearoom in the village, men in thick coats huddled around a wood fire clutching small glasses of sweet tea. Seventy-year-old Haji Wali Nasrullah Mustafa told IRIN that Biyara had experienced war and destruction during the fighting with Iran, then in the internecine battles between Kurdish political groups, and finally at the hands of the Ansar. "So we have been suffering for a long time," and life under the Ansar occupation had only been a "half-life", he said. He went on to point out that in his view assurances given by American forces after this year’s war to reconstruct Biyara had not been fulfilled. "They promised us they would make Biyara a tourist paradise, but this is not happening. We lost everything - our houses, our animals, our furniture - even our kitchen equipment," he said. But 21-year-old Damawand Miqdad Rashid said that despite the generalised hardship, his own life had greatly improved. "I am young, last year I was also young. The difference between today and last year is that I now have hope for the future and feel free. Before, all this was choked out of me," he told IRIN. NPA's programme manager for rural rehabilitation, Soran Sa'ed, told IRIN in the northeastern governorate of Sulaymaniyah that needs in Biyara were far in excess of the NGOs' resources. NPA was not only trying to meet immediate needs such as housing but also to create a broader development strategy to enable the village to surmount its current crisis. However, it was more difficult to obtain funds for longer-term work and donor agencies were often focused on the very visible and more widely documented situation of Iraqis in the south and centre of the country, he said.