The displaced and forgotten villagers of the Nineveh plains
"Who can help us return home?" asks Hamdullah Hassan, Chief Engineer in Control Systems for the Iraqi Ministry of Oil and a former resident of Tel al-Yawa village.
Hassan who spoke on behalf of the displaced villagers: "In our village, no one returned until now,"
"We talked to other people to share our concerns, but we haven't been able to reach a high level of government," Hassan continued. "We don't know where to go or who to go to for help."
Most of the population of the abandoned villages cannot afford to rent houses in Mosul and are forced to live in the three surrounding IDP camps, Khazir, Hassansham U2 and U3 camps.
They receive basic supplies but they have no financial assistance and no freedom of movement.
"I live in Mosul but I visit the camps. I see how they live. It's a difficult life," Hassan who now lives in Mosul explained.
He said that once 45 families lived in their village of Tel al-Yawa.
Now, some of the remaining houses are temporarily occupied by Bedouins passing through the areas with their livestock despite the risk of mines and explosives.
Hassan Sham, Nazmia, Big Tel Aswad, Small Tel Aswad, Manguba, Chemakor, Sherkan are some other villages with the same fate as Tel al-Yawa.
"Living under control of KRG government, we don't know who can help us, Kurdistan or the Iraqi government," Hassan said. "There should be coordination between both governments to solve this problem. Until now, they don't allow us to come back to our villages."
Khazir camp manager, Twana Jumah, told Rudaw that approximately 400 families from these villages are at Khazir camp. Hassansham U2 camp management confirmed that 1,510 IDP families live there and 1,350 at Hassansham U3.
Jumah said that United Nations agencies recently visited the camps to assess and if the people could return home with government approval, but they haven't heard back from them yet.
Another camp manager, who preferred not to be named, believed that because many of the IDPs are Sunnis or ethnic minorities the Shiite government wasn’t in a hurry to help them return to their villages.
"All candidates make promises but we don't know if they will help us or not," he said of Saturday’s parliamentary elections. "Villagers said whoever is able to return us home, we'll vote for them. We only care about making a living."
According to Hassan some families have been able to move to Mosul and rent homes for $210 - $300 a month.
Other families are forced to send their children to work to earn meager incomes by selling things on the street.
"We don't know when the problem will be solved in our villages and we can't stay in the rental house forever," Hassan said.
"There is no money, there is no work,” he lamented. “It is better for us to come back than to stay in camps. If they are back in their villages, they can bring some animals, start farming. In the camps life is restricted. There is no freedom, people cannot come and go easily.”