IDPs moved out of government houses

Families stood out on the street in the middle-class neighbourhood of Jadriyah in Baghdad over the weekend with their mattresses and suitcases, the children waving at passing cars. Earlier in the day, armed Iraqi police moved the families' furniture and other belongings out of government houses where they had been living illegally since US-led forces began fighting to topple Saddam Hussein in March 2003. The government housing complex near new Interior Ministry offices used to be used to house visiting foreign delegations. "We don't have any houses, so the government promised us they would find something for us after the fall of the former regime," Khaedher Abbas Jassem, 42, told IRIN. "The Ministry of Housing and Reconstruction said they would compensate all of us, but we have not received any money." It was the first time the police have cracked down on the large number of people who illegally occupy numerous government buildings around the country, including many former government buildings in Baghdad. Interior Ministry officials declined to comment officially on the crackdown. But police at the scene said that, while they sympathised with the people's plight, the new government had to take control. "This is a general campaign. We will make not only the people who live here leave, but those living illegally in any government building," Khanem Bender Mohammed, a police officer helping to move furniture out of a house, told IRIN. "These houses belong to the government. Just because [former President] Saddam Hussein leaves doesn't mean anyone can live here." Families with no place to live taking over former government buildings is a pressing issue all over Iraq, according to aid agency workers who declined to be named. Many of the families were forced to leave rented accommodation when landlords raised the rent drastically last year. Others are victims of Saddam Hussein's "Arabisation" programme, in which he gave houses in northern Iraq to Arabs. After the regime fell last spring, original owners of the houses often came back to reclaim their houses. There are about a million internally displaced people (IDPs) in Iraq today with the majority, some 800,000, in the north of the country. US administrators catalogued the displaced and pledged new housing costing millions of dollars, but so far no new housing projects have been finished. Other displaced people live in former army barracks around Iraq; some live along the Tigris River in former army officer houses and in damaged buildings in the capital. In the meantime, police said they would help people they were throwing out of the houses in Jadriyah with up to 600,000 Iraq dinars, or about US $400, in compensation. Families on the street said they heard they would receive less than $200 and that they hadn't seen any money from the police. "These police act just like Saddam's police. Is this democracy?" Falah Hassan Abbas, 33, asked IRIN. "None of us received any money. Even if we did, it's not enough to put down on rent for a new apartment." The houses are to be used as offices for the new government, Ahmed Hussein, a police officer who said he also worked for 20 years under the former regime as a traffic policeman, told IRIN. "I share these people's feelings. They are being treated terribly," Hussein said, shrugging his shoulders, his palms outstretched to show he meant no harm. "They have no guilt, but what can we do, it's our job." The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently gave funds to the Ministry for Migration and Displacement to pay rent for one year for 150 Palestinian families, who were made homeless when landlords increased rents, to move from a football field to apartments around the capital. Another estimated 80 families remain in the field while their cases are decided on. Under the former regime, their rents were heavily subsidised by the government. It was unclear if UNHCR would be involved in helping find places for the newly displaced people. By Monday, most families had gone to stay with relatives in Baghdad. Mouna Hathem, 30, and her family of four lives with three other families in a two-room flat without air-conditioning, which is why they moved to the government houses, she told IRIN, stroking her five-year-old's head. Hathem said Saddam built the houses for himself and there was no reason she and her family could not stay there. Police officer Hussein disagreed, saying that any building that belongs to the government should be available for use by the government.