Nico Pointner -
Neyma Suleyman Hassan is desperate. The 65-year-old woman, wearing a brown dress and white headscarf, stands in front of her tent and repeatedly beats her head with her hands.
“We’ve lost everything,” she calls out, pleading to God.
Behind her, a wet cupboard stands against the tent wall.
It had rained the day before at the Kabarto refugee camp in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq; her family’s accommodations have been completely flooded. Inside, they are sweeping the water out from the concrete floor. It’s the third time this has happened, she says.
There’s no work in the camp, or money.
She receives only $15 a month. “I can’t even buy a kilo of tomatoes,” she says, adding that it’s Ramadhan.
The war against the IS terrorist organisation has left large parts of Iraq destroyed, with the north and west of the country particularly badly affected. Reconstruction is a massive task.
A total of 2.2 million internally displaced people, mostly from the Sinjar and Mosul regions, lead a makeshift life far from home. While the Iraqi army largely drove out IS from the territories it held in 2017, including the city of Mosul, the group is still holding out in pockets of the desert area in west Iraq.
The refugee camps are subject to extreme weather conditions.
In winter there’s a lot of rain and the temperature falls to nearly freezing, while in summer, they can soar to 50 degrees Celsius.
At Camp Kabarto, near the city of Dohuk, 26,000 refugees are housed in 24 square metre white tents. They had fled their homes to escape the IS. Most are Yezidis, and around half are children.
According to the United Nations, since 2014 the ethnic minority has been the victim of a genocide perpetrated by IS. Many of these displaced people have been living in the camp for years.
The construction of a wastewater treatment plant was only completed recently — before, wastewater and excrement flowed through open sewers.
And while there’s electricity, running water and schools, there’s little prospect of ever being able to return home. Neyma Suleyman Hassan and her family have lived here for four years. They sleep on mats that they lay out on the floor every evening. She and her family come from the Sinjar Mountains.
Hassan recently re-registered at the camp for another three years. She would like to go home, but she’s frightened. “I’m afraid of genocide,” she says. When she says the words “IS,” she suddenly becomes very quiet and can only whisper. — dpa
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