IDPs in Duhok find safety, but need supplies

D. Morrow
1 October 2014
Duhok

You realize as soon as you arrive in Duhok that things here have changed. As you drive down the brand new road into the valley that holds the city, you notice immediately that there are new residents here.

Concrete-framed, half-built apartment buildings are suddenly full of colour, from the tarps and laundry that hang from the bottom few floors. We pass under a bridge and see a number of families squatting with more tarps, small stoves, and tents. The most unlikely place set up camp, and yet, I suppose, an obvious one.

The number of internally displaced people currently living in Duhok is reaching a breaking point. Some estimates put the number of people who have come here equal to the number of actual residents. The streets are full, the schools are full, and the nights are getting colder.

At one school, an older man sat on the stairs, watching the street. He tells us that the families living in this place come mostly from Mosul and Sinjar. They fled when they saw rockets being fired towards them, and have been living in Duhok for two months. “Thousands and thousands of us,” the old man tells me, “and we had no food, no water, we have so many babies…”

Duhok is much better, the boys beside him agree. The Duhok governorate is currently providing food, water and clothes to the people who need it here, and there are enough other families throughout the city that in some way, they are able to form a community here, to feel safe. “It’s not the same,” says the old man, but it will do until they can return home – something they all wish for fervently.

In the meantime, there is not much to do. There is no school for the children, not even any books to read. The boys tell me though, with some pride, that there is a football field attached to the school. I ask if they play and they glance at each other. The field is the first thing, but no one has a ball.