Agencies overwhelmed as thousands of displaced ready to return to Mosul

Agencies overwhelmed as thousands of displaced ready to return to Mosul

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Displaced families from Mosul embrace in Khazir Camp. Photo: Judit Neurink

NINEVEH PLAINS, Iraq – Pickups with goods piled high leave Khazir Camp as thousands of displaced residents of Mosul return home after the eastern part of Iraq’s second city was declared liberated completely from ISIS. 

Three months of battle against Mosul and its surroundings displaced almost 190,000 civilians, of whom 29,000 have returned home. Of those, about 13,000 left the two camps near the Kurdistan Region capital of Erbil, Khazir and Hassan Sham, in just over two weeks.

Many more are eager to follow their lead, like Ashar Abbot, 25, who came to Hassan Sham Camp with her husband and five children. “We have not enough space, with seven people in a tent,” she complained. “The children feel cooped up.”

She also worried about them catching illnesses both because of the winter cold and also because of overcrowding with so many people living so near to each other.

Although her home neighborhood is safe, it does not have electricity and water, like most of the city.

“We just have to manage,” Abbot said. “We have a well for the water and will buy a generator.”

For this very same reason, internally displaced from other Iraqi towns have not returned yet. When Tikrit and Fallujah were liberated it took months before comparable amounts of civilians went back, even though it was safe and mines and booby traps had been cleared.

The situation in Mosul is different because many civilians decided not to leave in order to secure their houses and possessions, and under the advice of the Iraqi army who encouraged people to stay in their homes rather than flee and overwhelm limited resources for displaced persons. For that reason, only days after the Iraqi army recaptured neighborhoods, daily life returned. 

Even while the army was still looking for ISIS fighters who had gone into hiding, with dead bodies still in the streets, and the danger of mines in every corner, shops reopened.

The Provincial Council of Mosul has also returned and called on civil servants to report for work.

The decision for a family to go back home is usually taken by the men. Ashar Abbot admits that this was the case for her as well.

“Women tell us their situation is better in the camp,” said Dimen Nadir, a coordinator for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). “They only leave because the husband and the family decide to. And single women or widows have no say at all.”

Yet now the decision is made, Abbot is ready to leave as soon as possible, but has been waiting for permission of the Kurdish security police, the Asayesh, for days.

The Asayesh took all the identity cards of those who arrived, and will only return them when the forms for return have been filled and fingerprinting is done.

Abbot and her family have finished the procedures, but they are still waiting.

And so is Iman Mahmoud, 44, a widow with eight children who wants to travel to the Iraqi capital Baghdad to register her husband’s death and apply for a pension.

“I have been told that my papers have been sent to Baghdad,” she stated. “But I think that is not the reason for the delay. I think they are checking us all again, because even after the screening done when we came in, people still have been reporting that Daesh has entered the camps.”

The delay has led to frustrations and violence at the security police offices, she said. “If the identity cards were returned faster, many more people would be leaving.”

According to a spokesman of the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC), the names of those in the camps are checked against names in its database of people connected with ISIS. “Everybody’s background is checked when they come in,” Aziz Ahmed stated. “There is no policy to delay the paperwork. There are simply too many people. Yes, we are overwhelmed.”

The UN’s organization for refugees, UNHCR, is aware of the problem and has called on the Asayesh to improve the procedures and is now monitoring the process, spokeswoman France Lau said.
  
The problem is mainly administrative, she thinks: “The amount of people that want to go back simply too high.”

The problem also affects the transport out of the camps for those who do not have their own car.

“The Iraqi Ministry of Migration and Displaced (MoMD) that provides the buses is overstretched. And then people want to take items that they received in the camps. Some rent a pickup to be able to transport that home.”

The departure of thousands back to Mosul does not mean the camps are emptying out. The UNHCR reported almost 7,500 new arrivals in the first three weeks of the new year and expects many more when the fight for the west side of Mosul starts in earnest.

Aid organizations report a worsening situation with lack of food, high prices, and increased persecution by ISIS in western Mosul where some 750,000 civilians are still living.