Tag Archives: Iraqis

One year on, Baghdad falls silent to mark defeat of Islamic State

A member of security forces flashes the victory sign, during marking the one year anniversary of the military defeat of Islamic State, at Tahrir square in Baghdad, Iraq December 10, 2018. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A hush descended on central Baghdad on Monday as Iraqis observed a minute’s silence for those killed in the battle against Islamic State a year after the group was defeated.

Fireworks were scheduled to be set off later in the evening. The government has made the date a national holiday and dubbed it “victory day” but some Iraqis felt little cause for celebration, however.

Iraqis with security forces stop during a minute of silence, marking the one year anniversary of the military defeat of Islamic State, at Tahrir square in Baghdad, Iraq December 10, 2018. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

Iraqis with security forces stop during a minute of silence, marking the one year anniversary of the military defeat of Islamic State, at Tahrir square in Baghdad, Iraq December 10, 2018. REUTERS/Thaier al-Sudani

Little meaningful reconstruction has taken place in cities decimated by battles against the jihadists between 2014 and 2017, and Iraq is in the throes of a new political crisis which has prevented it forming a government that can tackle widespread corruption and lack of jobs and services.

Meanwhile, Islamic State militants are still carrying out insurgent-style attacks against security forces and have been blamed for car bombs and assassinations of local notables.

“Iraqis are scared that the problems in parliament … and the inability to form a full cabinet … have helped create the (unstable) environment for Islamic State cells to re-emerge,” Najah Jameel, 48 a civil society activist, said.

Another Baghdad resident, Dawood Salman, 55, said he would remember the soldiers and fighters who were killed battling the jihadists.

“We congratulate the military and the Popular Mobilisation Forces,” a grouping of mostly Shi’ite paramilitaries, he said.

Iraq’s military, Kurdish forces and the Shi’ite militias backed by U.S.-led air strikes and special forces drove Islamic State militants out of areas they had controlled for three years in 2017.

Former prime minister Haider al-Abadi declared the Sunni Muslim extremists defeated in Iraq on Dec. 9, 2017. The group had ruled over a self-styled caliphate, governing large parts of northern Iraq and eastern Syria according to its fanatical interpretation of Islam and Islamic law.

“This is a day that we are all proud of when our courageous country defeat the enemies of peace,” Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said in a televised address.

(Reporting by Reuters TV in Baghdad; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)

In Greece, refugee women and children live in limbo

Faten 25, (L) from Syria, sits at the edge of the beach beside her sister-in-law near their tent outside the Souda refugees camp in Chios Island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "It's taking too long. This slowness to reunite families scares me," Faten said. "We have nothing to do all day long, we just sit by the tent which I share with my sister-in-law, a friend and her daughter."

y Zohra Bensemra

CHIOS, Greece (Reuters) – Thousands of refugee woman and children are living in limbo in Greece, waiting for the day they will be reunited with their families in other European countries.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says nearly 75,000 refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Western Balkans are at risk of “psychological distress” caused by existing in a prolonged state of transit.

About 60,000 refugees and migrants, mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis, have been stuck in Greece for over a year after border closures in the Balkans halted the onward journey many planned to take to central and western Europe.

More than a quarter are children and over half the new arrivals have been women and children, according to U.N. data. Men were the first family members to flee to Europe in previous years, leaving others to follow.

“Despair is haunting me at the moment,” said Soha, a 23-year-old Syrian who lives in a tent on the island of Chios with two her two-year-old daughter and other Syrian women.

In the camp, next to the ruins of an ancient castle, overcrowded tents are pitched on the edge of the pebbled shore, and rats roam among the garbage. Women say they are too scared to leave their tents at night, fearing harassment.

Like other women, Soha declined to give her last name or be identified in photographs, fearing it could affect her application to join her husband in Germany.

Family reunification can take between 10 months and two years, UNICEF says, making life particularly hard those left behind.

The uncertainty caused “significant psychological distress and anxiety for children and their families, setting them back for years to come”, UNICEF Regional Director Afshan Khan said.

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. "I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany." Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. "I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document.... I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children."

A one-year-old girl smiles as she sits with her mother, Ibtissam, 22, at the Souda Refugee Camp in Chios island, Greece, June 10, 2017. “I was one month pregnant with my daughter and my son was one year old when my husband migrated to Germany.” Ibtissam, who is from Raqqa said. “I feel devastated, at the moment I can’t apply for family reunification because I have to wait until my husband gets his asylum document…. I feel depressed but I have to keep holding on for my children.” REUTERS/Zohra Bensemra

“I spend most of the day alone,” said Farhiya, a 23-year-old Somali who lives in a volunteer-run camp on Lesbos island.

“The other refugees don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic. It’s hard to live alone,” she said. Farhiya applied to join her husband in Austria seven months ago while still pregnant, but has not heard back, she said.

In Athens, 36-year-old Khalissa, who fled Syria with her three young children, spends her days in a drop-in center run by a UNICEF partner, a brief respite from her problems.

She colors in hearts representing her feelings about the past, present and future. The past is blue for sadness, the present brown for fear and the future, in which she hopes to reunite with her husband after two years, yellow for happiness.

Ultimately, she longs to go home.

“If Syria becomes as before the war, I will return home,” she said. “We must return home.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris, editing by Ed Osmond)

Iraqis who escaped Islamic State grapple with trauma

Displaced people, who fled Islamic State militants, cross the bridge in Al-Muthanna neighborhood of Mosul, Iraq,

By Stephen Kalin

DEBAGA, Iraq (Reuters) – While fleeing Islamic State rule in northern Iraq three months ago, Laila saw two of her daughters die in front of her. Crippled by grief and the trauma of that night, she now struggles to walk and hardly eats.

Running under the cover of darkness after more than two years under the jihadists’ harsh rule in Shirqat town, south of Mosul, Laila’s children stepped on a mine. The youngest one died on the spot, covered in blood and partially buried in the dirt.

Her 16-year-old daughter had a leg blown off and lost consciousness. Laila tied the girl’s leg with her own headscarf, then carried her on her back for several kilometers to the Iraqi army’s frontline.

“I could hear her soul leaving her body, her head on my shoulder,” she recounted earlier this month at a nearby camp for internally displaced people (IDPs) where she now struggles with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The battle to retake Mosul, Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, is playing out among the city’s nearly 1.5 million residents who have spent 2-1/2 years under the ultra-hardline group’s repression.

The militants have employed extreme violence to impose their strict interpretation of Islamic law in territories they seized in 2014, whipping people for smoking, cutting off hands for stealing, stoning women for adultery, and throwing men off of buildings for homosexuality.

Several thousand civilians have been killed or wounded in the street-to-street fighting since the U.S.-backed offensive began in October.

Nearby camps are full of civilians displaced from in and around Mosul and many suffer from depression and anxiety disorders, aid groups say.

“I feel lost, my life has no meaning anymore,” said Laila. “If your car is stolen, you can buy another one. If your house is destroyed you can build another one. But a life cannot be replaced.”

She is taking psychotropic medication and attends weekly counseling sessions run by aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but she says nothing helps.

“Treatment cannot heal a heart in pain,” she said.

MASS TRAUMA

In a nearby tent at Debaga sits a young mother of three, from another village south of Mosul. She looks about twice her 20 years and speaks in a monotone, rarely making eye contact.

It was during their escape last autumn that she went into labor, giving birth to twins. The couple declined to go into details about the circumstances of the birth, but the woman has since been diagnosed with depression and PTSD.

A counselor says she has struck her husband and tried to kill one of her babies. She also has suicidal feelings but refuses medication.

“She is talking to you normally right now, but sometimes she chokes the baby and tells me, ‘I don’t want him, you take him’,” her husband said. Their names are withheld by Reuters to protect their safety.

Their flight is just one of a raft of deeply traumatic events suffered by their family in recent years, and by many others like them.

They had not yet fled their village when Islamic State fighters stormed their home, accusing the husband of sedition. A former policeman, he had worked with U.S. forces following the 2003 invasion.

The militants shot in the air around him, then put a machine gun to his head and dragged him off to a mosque where they beat him.

Another time, an air strike destroyed a neighbor’s house. Their dog picked through the rubble and dragged back human remains.

“There were parts left there, a hand or a leg,” the woman said. “The dog brought them to our front yard and chewed on them in front of our kids.”

LIMITED ACCESS TO MEDICATION

Pre-existing mental health conditions affecting IDPs have been exacerbated by limited access to medication under IS rule and the trauma of displacement.

Those still in Mosul have even fewer opportunities for treatment, as is the case for those affected by physical illness and the wounded.

A resident of Muharibeen district told Reuters last week that his mother fell into a coma more than a month ago when Islamic State fighters stormed their house.

He pleaded in vain for an ambulance to transport her to nearby Erbil, the capital of the relatively peaceful, autonomous Kurdish region, where hospitals treat those of Mosul’s wounded civilians who make it there. As of Friday, his mother was still at home in Mosul, and still unconscious.

Another local man said his five-year-old daughter, who has a brain defect due to premature birth, has been unable to obtain medicine for more than two years. She can barely speak.

Treatment of the displaced is hampered by the continued violence in Mosul.

“The rate of relapse is very high… because the IDPs on a daily basis receive painful news and stories,” said Bilal Budair, MSF’s mental health manager.

“So we treat and support them, but the bad news has an opposite effect and sets back some of the patients to zero.”

(Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)