On a Sunday morning in Mosul’s Old City in northern Iraq, a group of women sit together in a shaded room. Some chat, others quietly focus on their knitting. They are nearing the end of a training workshop run by the Better World Organisation for Community Development, a nongovernmental organisation set up to help those displaced by the war with the Islamic State terror group. After nearly two weeks of learning, their minds are turning towards the struggles they will face next.
Nearly seven years after Mosul’s liberation, following three years of occupation by Islamic State, also known as Isis, Iraq’s second-largest city is bustling. Crowds shop in the markets or share meals and smoke shisha in restaurants and cafes. Tens of thousands of students are back studying at the once decimated public university.
But the wounds of the past can be hard to move on from for those who were already living precariously.
The area where the women are learning to knit is one of the last Islamic State retreats during the conflict. The brutal nine-month fight saw militants finally ousted from Mosul in July 2017 by a US-backed coalition that included Iraqi forces, Shia militias and the Kurdish Peshmerga. As many as 11,000 civilians were killed in that battle alone, according to an Associated Press investigation. It was the climax of the years-long fight to end Islamic State’s control of large swathes of territory.
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Today 1.12 million people are still displaced in Iraq as a result of the terror group’s occupation, according to figures produced by the UN and used by aid agencies.
About 4.9 million people have returned home, says Imrul Islam, the advocacy manager for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Iraq. That includes about 1.9 million to Nineveh governorate, which includes Mosul. Islam says many went back only to find their homes destroyed. Those facing a “lack of basic services, tenuous safety and security, and a rapidly changing climate” are being forced to move again. “These individuals and families often end up in informal settlements – tents by the roadside on the outskirts of cities like Mosul – where they are effectively excluded from access to basic necessities like shelter, healthcare, and education,” he says.
The women at the skills training have agreed to speak about their living conditions because they want to appeal for more assistance for the city’s most vulnerable people. Names have been changed at their request.
Iqra (39) moved to Mosul after her family lost access to the land they farmed during the war. “Living outside of Mosul is a much simpler life ... but life in Mosul is hard.”
She has six daughters and a son – who are out of school, because of the family’s financial difficulties. They live in a single room without any electrical appliances, says Iqra. Her husband works 12 hours a day, 2am-2pm, in a factory making floor tiles. He earns 8,000 dinars (€5.60) a shift. “My husband, because of this very heavy work having to carry so many blocks, all his joints are really falling apart. Even this very little amount of money isn’t something we can look forward to because we don’t know what’s happening next.”
Before Islamic State’s emergence, Iqra’s husband was a security guard. She says he had a six-year contract, but “when Isis came he had to give it up” for his own safety, as his job had a connection to the government, which put him under threat. During the Islamic State occupation, Iqra says, her husband stayed at home. “I didn’t want him to leave the house in case he got killed, so I went with my daughters to buy milk and make yoghurt.” She sold the yoghurt; that was how the family survived.
During the fight to oust Islamic State, Iqra says, “about eight or nine rockets fell on our house”. She hoped an international organisation would rebuild it. Instead they ended up in a displaced-persons camp for more than a year.
“I’m really looking for any job to help my family because the house we’re living in now is a charity one from our relatives. They want us to move out but we have no idea where we can go,” she says. “Because I have daughters I’m really worried. With a son you can tell him to go and live with his uncle but with daughters you cannot send them anywhere; they have to be with their family.” She found some work with a local organisation but was never paid, she adds. “Now we don’t even have money for breakfast. We don’t know what to do now. It’s getting worse.”
Amra, in her 40s, says her home was also destroyed by air strikes. “The bombing ruined the house. They did not give us any compensation. It was three rooms, made of rocks. It was big enough for us. It’s in the village near Sinjar.”
She says her family also lived in a displacement camp until it was closed down. Now they owe 125,000 dinars each month in rent, which they are struggling to afford. “We just wish for any assistance,” she says.
Before the occupation, life was different. “We had sheep, we were doing farming, we were in a much better situation. We sold the sheep because of the bombings. We couldn’t keep the land any more ... We had to move.”
Amra says her family had no option but to flee Sinjar. “We had to come here. We had to leave with just the clothes that we were wearing. We had nothing else ... There was nothing left.”
Sara (40) says her husband earns a daily wage of 3,000 Iraqi dinars (€2.10) working in construction. Their home is “so basic” that she “keeps buckets inside for the dripping [rain]. We even put a plastic cover over the blanket so that if it rains we can still be warm”.
Even 15,000 dinars a day would barely be enough to get “the very basics”, including vegetables, milk and nappies, she says. “For us, having one meal of chicken every 10 or 15 days is a great achievement ... I really wish I could buy my own stuff instead of getting gifts from the neighbours.”
Seventeen women are taking part in the skills training. The social worker overseeing the project says the workshops – which they also run for sewing and candle making – are beneficial but women need more help. “If they learn to sew but go home and don’t have a sewing machine, what are they going to do? If she [can do] hairstyles but goes home and can’t open a business, how is that helping? Our budget is very small so the things that we can provide are very limited.”
Walaa M Ahmed, who set up Better World, spoke at the One Young World Summit in Belfast last year. She says the organisation has supported more than 10,000 women and adolescents through their programmes, and 100 women have gone on to start their own businesses.
“Isis continues to mount insurgent actions in Iraq and Syria and it operates in many countries around the world. In Iraq, the scale of its destruction is unimaginable,” she says.
The Iraqi government is pushing to close all remaining displaced-person camps by this summer. Some 650,000 people are thought to be living in camps in the Kurdistan region. This includes about 280,000 Yazidis, a Kurdish religious minority considered “infidels” by Islamic State, which murdered thousands of Yazidi men and trafficked thousands of Yazidi women into sex slavery.
The number of Iraqis requiring humanitarian assistance dropped from 11 million in 2017 to 2.5 million in 2022, says Islam of the Norwegian Refugee Council. While Iraq’s government should be “able, and in a position, to take over responsibilities”, he adds, “it is important to temper optimism with caution. Painstaking gains in livelihoods and economic security can easily be undone – including by climate change – and there continues to be a need for targeted humanitarian assistance [from aid agencies] to communities who face complex barriers to securing a sustainable solution to displacement.”
Displaced women are particularly vulnerable, he says. “The war left a generation of orphans and widows who now face both social stigma and legal barriers to reclaiming their rights. Much of this vulnerability is tied to the lack of civil documentation, including restoration of core identity documents and property deeds. Social stigma also plays a part – [the Norwegian Refugee Council] is aware of many instances where single mothers have been shunned by families and wider communities and forced to move to unsafe locations.”
While there has been some progress by the government, he says, “access to courts and to judicial remedy remains expensive and time consuming, leaving women-headed households particularly prone to exploitation and abuse. In effect this means women are more likely to be left behind and more likely to slide into food insecurity and poverty.”
There is also an increasing risk from climate change. Summer temperatures in Iraq have been exceeding 50 degrees. Some 130,000 Iraqis were displaced by climate change in 2016-2023, according to the UN. Last year, in areas including Kirkuk, Nineveh and Salahaddin, 60 per cent of farmers told the Norwegian Refugee Council they had to cultivate less land or use less water because of weather-related issues, Islam says. In Sinjar and Ba’aj, one in four of the small-scale farmers interviewed said they had been forced to give up farming altogether.
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