Refugees In Iraqi Camps Face Harrowing Winter

Despite the latest successes of the Iraqi Army and the forces of the Kurdish regional government, known as the peshmerga, hundreds of thousands of refugees in Iraq are facing a harrowing winter in makeshift camps across the country.

Numbers of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), published in January indicated that there were 2,047,700 refugees in Iraq alone. More than 300,000 of them are Syrians who have fled the brutal civil war in their home country. A majority, however, are Iraqis that have been internally displaced. Most refugees are now living in the Kurdistan Region, in the northeastern part of the country.

A group of young Yazidi refugees.

In 2014, when fighters of the Islamic State group crossed the Syrian border and conquered Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, ethnic and religious persecutions flared up across the country. The extremists mainly targeted Kurds, Shiites and other minorities, but thousands of Sunnis also decided to flee their homes in occupied cities rather than face the zero-tolerance doctrines of the Islamic State.

Now, more than two million refugees are confronting winter with few or no resources. International humanitarian assistance can’t cope with the refugees’ most basic needs.

His statements can help us understand the success of the jihadists in the Sunni provinces of Iraq. He says that this minority, who used to lead well-off lives in the times of Saddam Hussein, has been completely marginalized from power in the transitional government set up by the United States. The appointment of Al Maliki as Iraq’s Prime Minister in 2006 meant the dominion of the Shiite majority. His sectarian measures worsened the relations between his government and the Sunnis, who accused the new administration of corruption and of being under Iranian control.

He also says that the joint strikes between Kurdish security forces and the international coalition have wreaked havoc in his men. “The planes have destroyed us. They bomb vehicles, people, homes… We knew that the bombings would be followed by the peshmerga.”

Since mid-December, the Kurdish Army has recovered more than 2,500 km2 from the Islamic State in northern Iraq, blocking the main road that connects Mosul from Ar-Raqqa, the two main cities under jihadi control.

This post originally appeared on HuffPost Spain and was translated into English.

The Huffington Post