Author: Anthea » Mon Jul 13, 2015 9:25 pm
Author: Anthea » Tue Jul 14, 2015 7:30 am
Author: Piling » Tue Jul 14, 2015 7:36 am
Author: Anthea » Fri Feb 02, 2018 2:43 pm
Piling wrote:I think it is dangerous to let people coming back in Kobanî. That's too soon, they are exposed to any sort of attacks.
Author: Anthea » Fri Feb 02, 2018 5:08 pm
Winter in Iraq -- Sinking Families Deeper Into Debt
There are more than 250,000 mostly Kurdish, Syrian refugees living in Iraq - the majority staying in the Kurdistan
Some 94,500 refugees live in ten camps directly supported by UNHCR; but MOST live outside camps and can face great hardship during winter. UNHCR has assisted some of the most vulnerable over the winter with heating and cash assistance - including cash for rent in some of the most extreme cases. Caroline Gluck, UNHCR’s senior public information officer in Iraq, met one family struggling to get by.
These days, 40 year-old Syrian Kurdish father of three, Faruq Mohammed Hamo, tells how there are local shops where he dare not go and show his face
Faruq is deep in debt and is ashamed to go to stores where he can’t pay back the food items he’s bought on credit. His family fled conflict in the Kobane, Western Kurdistan, Syria, in September 2014. They now live in Qaladze, north of Sulaymaniyah in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, just a few kilometres from the border with Iran.
They fled with nothing and have been helped by neighbours as well as getting help from UNHCR. But, Faruq says, he has been unable to find regular work and things are going from bad to worse.
Faruq used to get work digging water wells. In Syria, he also supplemented his income farming, raising sheep and goats and selling crops in the market. But since he and his family arrived in Qaladze, work has been drying up. And ever since the onset of winter, he said, he has not worked at all. “It’s very difficult to make ends meet. We struggle with nothing.”
“We have one kerosene heater and also use an electric heater when there’s electricity - but normally, that is only available 10 hours a day. We just have to get used to the cold - but its much colder here than back in Syria”, he said.
“There are shops where I can’t go back because I owe them so much money. I’m so worried about what we’re going to do; I often can’t sleep thinking about that,” he said.
His wife, 37 year old Adla, says she’s at a loss to see how they can change their situation. “Our biggest need is cash...we need money to pay the rent, electricity, kerosene and food. We haven’t paid the rent for the last four months”, she confided. “We have absolutely no cash in the house. My husband wants to borrow more money, but I’m telling him no! We’re so much in debt - how can we pay it all back?”
The family are supposed to pay 150,000 Iraqi dinar (around $135) for their draughty two-room building which leaks when it rains. Faruq has fixed extra plastic sheets to the roof, held down by old car tyres, which has helped a bit, but it doesn’t reduce the draughts and cold, which has resulted in bouts of flu for the whole family.
The family have received assistance from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which has provided winter cash assistance, as well as extra blankets and plastic sheeting. But, they say, daily life is still a struggle.
And while Faruq’s children look forward to more snowfall this year and the prospect of snowball fights and winter games, Faruq is hoping for winter to pass quickly, for the weather to warm up which might bring with it more opportunities to try to find work and provide for his family again.
On 4 February in London, high level delegates from more than 70 governments, together with UN, non-governmental and other organisations, will be discussing the Syria conflict, about to enter its sixth year. The challenge is how to better provide humanitarian assistance to those affected, both inside Syria and in neighbouring countries, which are hosting more than four million refugees
Follow developments; .@refugees .@SupportSyrians @UNHCRIraq #SupportSyrians
Author: Anthea » Fri Feb 02, 2018 5:35 pm
REMEMBER THIS 7 October 2014
As ISIS Take Kobane, NATO's Second Largest Army Sits on the Sidelines
As the black flag of the Islamic State (ISIS) rose above the Syrian town of Kobane on Monday, the soldiers of NATO’s second largest army stood and watched only a few hundred metres away.
As gunfire and explosions echoed across the border, fears were voiced about the potentially devastating long-term price Turkey may pay for remaining ambivalent to the plight of the Kobane’s Kurdish defenders.
In Kobane itself, one of the town’s Kurdish fighters complained bitterly about their fate.
“We, the Kurds of Kobane, urged the international community including Turkey to help our resistance against ISIS by sending us weapons, logistics and ammunitions,” Delila Azad, a commander of the Women’s Protection Units, part of the Kurdish militia force defending the city, told Newsweek.
"We pleaded for help because ISIS threatens not only the Kurds but also the entire Middle East and the rest of the world… However, our call for solidarity has since fell on deaf ears in the international community and in Turkey.”
Analysts fear Turkey’s willingness to sit on the sidelines as the West’s ‘Public Enemy Number One’ moves in next door could badly damage a country that has been something of a bastion of stability in a troubled region.
Watching the fate of Kobane with horror and anger were Turkey’s own 15 million-strong Kurdish minority—nearly 20 per cent of the country—whose long history of insurrection against the Turkish state appeared until recently to be drawing to a close.
Many now fear the growing risk of blowback represented by the ISIS jihadist group, which thrives on instability and whose long term goal is to erect a Caliphate encompassing all the Muslim lands of the region.
“Turkey has helped create an environment in which it is in the first stage of ‘Pakistan-ization’,” says Halil Karaveli of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a security think tank, referring to Turkey’s alleged past toleration of the Islamic State, which Ankara denies.
He fears the next step is for the Islamic State, regardless of whether it is able to maintain its hold of the territory in Syria and Iraq, will be to turn its attention to Turkey in the same way as jihadists fighting in Afghanistan went on to wreak havoc in Pakistan.
Of more immediate concern is the anger among Turkey’s Kurds, many of whom are convinced that Ankara is aiding the Islamic State.
“Turkey’s Kurds have been given a front row seat to watch the destruction of their own people,” says Asli Aydintasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper.
“There will be serious repercussions. Strategically speaking Kobane is tiny, but it’s gained an enormous symbolic meaning for Turkey’s Kurds, and I don’t think the government realises that,” she added.
“Kurds are fighting ISIS tooth and nail with Turkey standing by. That’s the image abroad, and that’s the image for Kurds.”
The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish-Kurdish rebel group regarded as a terrorist organization by Europe and America, has for the past 18 months been involved in historic peace talks aimed at ending a three decade long insurgency that decimated Turkey’s southeast and cost 40,000 lives.
The strong conviction among many Turkish Kurds—and Syrian Kurds—is that Turkey has been actively assisting and arming the Islamic State, an assertion that is strenuously refuted by Ankara and which lacks substantiating evidence.
“The Turkish Government did not respond to our call because Turkey supports Islamic State against us Kurds,” said Azad, the commander in Kobane.
Author: Piling » Fri Feb 02, 2018 5:41 pm
Author: Anthea » Fri Feb 02, 2018 5:50 pm
Author: Anthea » Fri Feb 02, 2018 7:18 pm
Piling wrote:I think Kobani is waiting its turn, after Afrin… Only the Jazirah part with Qamishlo could hope to avoid a Turkish attack, because Syrian army is present there.
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