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Photo: Afif Sarhan/IRIN

Hussein Iyad was forced to leave his Baghdad home because of his religious sect

BAGHDAD, 11 January 2007 (IRIN) - “I am a 38-year-old Shiite Arab and I have never been in such a horrible situation as now. I have been displaced since 23 March 2006 when insurgents came to my home in the Kadhimiya neighbourhood of Baghdad and gave me and my family 24 hours to vacate our home.

“I have a wife and four children to look after but I have had no job since I was displaced. I was a mechanic and here it is impossible to get work in this area. We fled to Kerbala, southern Iraq, because it is a Shiite city. But since I am jobless we cannot afford a house here.

“We are now living in this improvised camp for displaced families as we have no money because we used all our savings of US $1,000 to buy food for my family. Now we are totally dependent on local NGOs to give us assistance because Iraq’s central government hasn’t done anything to help us.

“Local NGOs help us with clothes, food and sometimes medicines but in the past three months the aid has been drying up. There are about 2,000 living in this camp and we all depend on assistance.

“Actually, I had five children until three months ago when the smallest one died from dehydration. Hassan, who was only two years old, got very sick from diarrhoea caused by drinking bad water and because we couldn’t afford to buy him nutritious food. My wife, Samiha, was pregnant again and couldn’t breastfeed him so he died.

“Our situation is one of misery. We don’t have anything. We left all our goods in Baghdad and we have been informed that insurgents entered our home and broke everything, accusing us, just because we are Shiite, of being government followers and responsible for the US invasion of our country.

“My children do not go to school because it is too far from where we are living now and the nearest one has no place for new students. In addition, my children are getting sick with the terrible cold weather of the past few days.

“I’m desperate and cannot find any kind of job. The unemployment rate is very high in the south and those jobs that are available are given to people whose origins are in Kerbala.

“My wife cries all the time, afraid that such a misery will take away our other sons. We are not sure if she will be able to deliver safely because she is not eating well and has no medical assistance at all.

“We have to walk nearly 20 km to get health assistance because a doctor rarely visits our camp and without a car the situation is harder for a sick person.

“Hundreds of Iraqis have joined us in the past four months, driven here by the sectarian violence. But the improvised camp, which we have named ‘Saving Lives’, lacks essentials, including food items.

“I’m the only son of my family and my parents were killed in Yarmouk district in the capital in June 2006. Insurgents shot them dead because they refused to leave their homes to join us here.

“This is what Iraqis are now getting for being born in this land. You are either killed or you have to scurry like animals from place to place searching for security, having to go without food for days on end so that your children can eat.”

as/ar/mw