NGOs feed displaced and undernourished children

With backing from international NGOs, a local organisation in the northeastern Iraqi governorate of Diyala is distributing specially prepared food packages to internally displaced children who show signs of malnutrition. Based in the mainly Kurdish town of Khanaqin, al-Salam Organisation began handing out rations of fish, chicken, corned beef, honey and protein-rich biscuits this August after a survey of children aged between six months and six years found 800 with vitamin deficiencies and abnormally low body weight. Of the total, 300 are from mixed Arab and Kurdish villages around Khanaqin. Heavily arabised by the former Iraqi regime in the 1970s, the area has seen a large number of Kurds returning over the past 12 months. The other 500 children are living in and around Mugdadiyya, an Arab town 60 km further east that has the highest concentration of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Diyala governorate. Aid agencies say 3,200 Arab families evicted from Kurdish areas after the war are living there in extremely primitive conditions. In normal circumstances, the countrywide monthly rations system should act as a barrier against child malnutrition. But local officials say that, in the chaos caused by large-scale movements of people in Diyala governorate, some families may have slipped through the net. "Village children have the additional problem of suffering from diseases caused by dirty water and lack of hygiene, worms and dysentery for instance," Dilshad Othman, director of health in Khanaqin district and organiser of the July survey in 35 surrounding villages, told IRIN. "We were not surprised to find cases of mild anaemia to be common." Dr Othman's surveyors compared the weight and height of all village children between six months and six years to standards set by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). For those found to be below, special rations are distributed every 20 days. In Karame, a Kurdish village of 22 families north of Khanaqin, the rations seem to be having a positive effect. "You should have seen him at the height of summer - he was as white as flour," Jameen As'ad, grandmother of four-year-old Ahmad Khalif, told IRIN. "He's much better now." Standing out by the reed beds that give the village its name, Adham Hasan points to his niece, the five-year-old Sharia Jamal, chasing her brothers and sisters through the dust. "It must be all that meat she's eaten," he said. "Four months ago, she was as slow as an old woman." But rations for five of the children here are only a first step to ensuring Karame's future. Razed in 1975 by the Iraqi army, its inhabitants resettled in Tikrit and Baquba in central Iraq, the village was rebuilt for Arab settlers further up the hill, away from the water source. That, combined with poor management and climatic change, has turned what the villagers describe as once fertile land into a semi-desert. "Even growing vegetables behind the house is impossible," complained Jameen As'ad, pointing to the streaks of white salt crystals strewn across the ground. "You can't grow anything in that." Like other returnee families, hers makes its money grazing the flocks of wealthy farmers in the nearby town of Kalar. The Sulaymaniyah-based NGO Norwegian People's Aid, dug two artesian wells in Karame three months ago. The villagers await pumps with increasing desperation. It's 400 metres to the nearest stream, and the water there is not clean. "Last week two families decided they had had enough and moved to Khanaqin," Adham Hasan, told IRIN. "If things haven't got better by spring, we will follow them," he added.