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Iraq
Children play outside the unfinished house that is their temporary home in Kirkuk on September 12, 2020. Their family was displaced from the Hamrin area during the war with the Islamic State (ISIS). Photo: Rudaw
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Security forces in Kirkuk have established a committee to facilitate the return of displaced persons, but concerns about insecurity and lack of services means many people aren’t ready to go home.
"We have set up a high-level committee, which I will lead… for the purpose of returning the displaced people home," Saad Harbiya, commander of Kirkuk Operations Command, told Rudaw on Saturday. Kirkuk’s civil administration is also involved in the committee, he added.
In the first phase, they will send internally displaced persons (IDPs) sheltering in Kirkuk city back to their homes in Hawija and Daquq, in Kirkuk province, as well as towns in Salahaddin province.
More than six million Iraqis fled their homes when the Islamic State (ISIS) swept across northern and western Iraq in 2014, coming close to Kirkuk, and in the military campaign to liberate these areas. According to data from the Kirkuk immigration office, nearly 40,000 registered families are still in the city nearly three years after ISIS was militarily defeated in Iraq.
Many of them still are not ready to return home.
"We want our areas secured so we can return home...," Salam Salebi told Rudaw. He is from the village of Tarfan on the outskirts of Mount Hamrin, south of Hawija and is now living in an unfinished house in Kirkuk. "We plead to the government to help provide security to our regions," he said. "There are no services in our village. We cannot go back home in this way."
The rugged terrain of Hamrin was one of the last areas where Iraqi forces battled ISIS and remnants of the group still operate in the area.
Accusations of sympathy with ISIS is another factor preventing some from going back home. ISIS held control over large swathes of Iraqi territory, running a de facto state that ruled over millions of people, including major urban centres like Mosul, for more than three years.
"Some of the IDPs are prohibited from returning home," said Ismael Hadidi, an advisor to the Iraqi president, calling for a process of reconciliation.
"Genuine social reconciliation must be built among all the people,” he said. "The IDPs must be allowed to return home, because economically the war-ravaged areas are collapsed."
Human Rights Watch has accused Iraqi authorities of allowing collective punishment of people accused of collaborating with ISIS or sympathizing with the terror group. “Iraqi authorities have put in place a system that has allowed communities, security forces, and government agencies to collectively punish families whose relatives were allegedly linked to ISIS,” Belkis Wille, senior researcher for the watchdog said in a report last year.
Under international law, forced repatriation of refugees and displaced persons is illegal. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has partnered with Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement to aid the voluntary return of displaced families. This week, 35 families were helped to return to their homes in Nineveh province. The IOM coordinates with a network of UN agencies and NGOs to give the returning families assistance that includes grants of cash, protection, housing and livelihood aid, and support reintegrating into their communities.
More than 1.35 million Iraqis are still displaced, according to IOM figures.
Translations by Zhelwan Z. Wali
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