A Peshmerga unit ion the front lines outside Kirkuk. Boris Niehaus/Demotix. All rights reserved.In
near-freezing temperatures and a drizzling rain that had turned the
red earth to sludge, two colleagues and I trudged through row after
row of tents in a camp for displaced people in northern Iraq. “Qais,”
about 20 years old, welcomed us inside, where a gas burner provided
some warmth and a flashlight illuminated the tent for his family of
four.
By
the time of our visit in early December, Qais had been at the camp
for nine days. He said his family escaped in September from an
ISIS-held village only a few kilometres from the front line with the
Kurdish Peshmerga forces and finally made it to this camp. He is one
of a growing number of Iraqis who take immense risks fleeing ISIS but
face continued insecurity in government-held territory. We
interviewed a dozen people with similar stories.
Qais’s
family and about 30 other people fled after an airstrike killed the
village head and all eight members of his family: “ISIS guys kept
coming to his house and made wireless calls from just outside. They
had taken and tortured the village head in the weeks before,
suspecting him of informing government forces about their positions.
Through their calls, they succeeded in making the coalition think it
was an ISIS house, I think. If it were an Iraqi plane, we would have
seen it, but the coalition planes fly too high to spot.”
The
trek to safety was fraught with danger, especially the possibility of
detection by ISIS. Qais said he had tried to flee once before, in
mid-June. “I waited for three days in the hills for word that my
brother had made it through, but the Peshmerga turned him back. He
and I used secret channels to pay off ISIS with 1 million Iraqi
dinars [US$800] each so they would not execute us as escapees.”
The escape
Iraqis leaving their homes in Mosul. Joseph Galanakis/Demotix. All rights reserved.In
their September escape, Qais said, they reached a village a few
kilometres away, after five hours of hiding and moving along a
riverbed. The village was completely destroyed, with signs of booby
traps in some houses. “The Peshmerga had taken [the village], but
retreated the day before, and houses were still smouldering,” Qais
said. “We stayed hidden in my uncle’s house nearby at the foot of
the hills, and in the dark made our way across the hills.” He
walked for hours carrying his mother, who was ill. “On the
other side, we saw the Peshmerga positions, raised a white flag, and
approached.”
The
Peshmerga gave them food and water, but kept them in a no-man’s
land just outside their front line with over 100 others. Very
quickly, the Asayish, Kurdish political security forces, arrived,
Qais said, and confiscated their cell phones and identity documents.
“They kept us there for 18 days,” Qais said. By the time they
were allowed to cross, over 300 people fleeing ISIS had gathered.
“One of the last ones to come had to dodge ISIS shooting at him
from the hills. He told us that others in his group were not as
quick, and ISIS captured them, eventually releasing the women. He
didn’t know what happened to the men.”
When
ISIS took this region (not identified for Qais’s safety), a few
days after Mosul fell on 10 June 2014, only one villager from the
100 families pledged allegiance and joined, Qais said. ISIS imposed
its familiar restrictions on smoking, dress, and women’s ability to
move about, threatened lashes for transgressions, and brought their
own preacher. “I did not go to the Friday prayers, as I did not
want to hear their hateful sermons,” Qais said.
What comes next?
A Peshmerga unit outside Kirkuk. Boris Niehaus/Demotix. All rights reserved.After
the family’s escape and 18 days in the open on the front line, the
Peshmerga took the group of escapees to a nearby small town, and told
them to stay put. The only available shelter was a few unfinished
buildings: “We were not allowed to leave, and the Asayish were
watching us. We did not have our ID cards anyway, so we could be
arrested at any moment.”
The
escapees were as wary of the Asayish as of ISIS. The Asayish had
detained Qais’s uncle from this small town, charging that he was an
ISIS member because he had slaughtered a sheep for their fighters who
demanded food, Qais said. After 20 days in detention, the Asayish
drove him south to a Kurdish checkpoint near where militias
affiliated with the Shia-led Baghdad government exercise control.
These militias have arrested and even killed Sunni Arabs like
Qais’s family, accusing them of being ISIS supporters.
During
his month and a half in the small town, Qais said, two baby girls
died. One, the daughter of an acquaintance, “fell ill, she was
shivering and crying, and the Kurdish authorities took her to a
clinic but did not allow the parents to accompany them. The baby died
there.”
In
late November, Kurdish security forces ordered Qais and the rest onto
buses and drove them to this camp for displaced persons. Now they
feel safer, the tent provides better shelter than the unfinished
houses, but they and their young children still have to go out into
the cold rain to the shared bathroom and cooking shacks. Qais is
illiterate and before ISIS came, he had travelled to work odd jobs in
Kurdish cities. He wants to go back to his village if the Peshmerga
succeed in taking it back from ISIS without destroying the
houses. But what comes next, Qais said, he does not know.