Dateline ACT

Iraq 1803

Working together to build a better future

By Guy Hovey, ACT field communicator

Kirkuk, May 9, 2003--As the situation in Iraq remains fluid and uncertain Christian Aid (CA) - a member of the global alliance Action by Churches Together (ACT) International - and its local partners are working together to address immediate needs, whilst looking towards and planning for the future.

During the war, one of CA's local partners, REACH (Rehabilitation, Education and Community Health) provided management of refugee camps in the Kurdish controlled areas of northern Iraq, where 100 families had sought refuge, escaping the bombing of Baghdad. Although REACH had the capacity to assist far more people, the anticipated flood of displaced people never materialized. The last families who had left Baghdad returned home at least two weeks ago. The coordinator of REACH, Dana, said that everything had happened so quickly when people started returning that many families had problems finding transport for themselves and their belongings.

As the war drew to a close CA’s local partners identified other immediate problems in the north and have since successfully initiated solutions. The water and sewerage system in Kirkuk had virtually collapsed. The end of the war saw severe problems for the Department for Water and Sewerage (DWS) as management level staff who were Ba’ath party members left and the population looted the department’s premises. Services collapsed, water contamination from sewerage rose to dangerous levels and there was a very real danger of water-borne diseases, which can be deadly to the young and elderly. REACH approached the former DWS employees and helped them return to work and helping them set up a joint plan to bring contamination levels down.

Whilst the DWS re-organized itself, an agreement was brokered whereby REACH would take over the running of the DWS for a month, thus providing much needed breathing space for the DWS to re-establish itself. During this time an appeal for the return of looted equipment was launched, which resulted in over 60% of the stolen items being returned. Dana said that once people could see that there was an honorable way to return the equipment they had looted, all sorts of things were brought back - from computers to excavators. "People realized they could become heroes if they returned equipment and that’s what they became, and we are grateful for that," said Dana.

And by the end of the month the DWS was ready to resume it’s work, water contamination levels had been cut by 50% and potable water restored to around 660,000 people in central Kirkuk.

REACH will now continue to work with the DWS in order to build it’s capacity so that it can operate effectively and ethically in the new reality which is Northern Iraq. "There are still problems with the water supply," said Dana, and "we are concentrating on working with the DWS management on building the capacity of the most important aspects of the department, such as management systems, water quality control, repairs and contamination reduction. REACH and the DWS management team hope to be able to restore clean water supplies to the 750,000 people in Kirkuk who do not have access to clean drinking water and sufficient sewerage systems at the moment. The cost is estimated at 100,000 USD.

REACH also organized rapid response deliveries of clean water to areas in Kirkuk to communities whose connections to the city’s water system had been cut.

Saman Ahmed, the REACH Water and Sanitation Program Manager, said that many families had returned to their homes in the city after seven years of forced displacement by the Saddam regime. When people came back after hearing that their homes near the central air force base in Kirkuk had been abandoned with the collapse of Iraqi Government forces in the region, they found that water supplies had been cut or systems completely destroyed.

One of the families who benefited from the clean water is Jabar Mohammed, his wife Bushra and their two children. They had been forced from their home in 1996 following constant harassment and assaults by the Iraqi military. Upon returning two weeks ago, Mohammed and Bushra said that they had no water, gas or electricity and although the houses had been connected to the water system previously, the pumps and other components of the water system had been looted. "Water was very hard to find when we first arrived and we had to walk many kilometers to find a safe supply," said Bushra. With temperatures hitting 35 degrees and rising rapidly it is not surprising that heat-stroke and related ailments were common. CA and REACH now conduct regular deliveries of clean water, with five tankers making two trips per day to areas within the city, on a rotation basis. This ensures that people can receive at least one delivery every three days. Each family has also been supplied with a large 1,000 liter water container. "Without these water supplies, life would be extremely difficult and dangerous," said Jabar, who went on to explain that the Iraqi Air Force also left behind huge piles of rubbish and pointed to that and the open sewerage system running in front of his home that had already caused childhood illnesses in the community.

As is the case with many things here in Iraq the question of sewerage and it’s disposal has been inextricably linked with ethnic politics. Saddam Hussein’s regime from the 1960s onwards ran a system of ‘Arabisation’, whereby Arabs from southern regions were actively encouraged through incentives of cash payments, houses and other Government assistance to move into the northern Kurdish majority areas. There were also radical discrimination policies against Kurds and Turkmen which meant that they were not allowed to buy property or land and that they were not allowed to improve their homes. This created a cycle of poverty and disease. It also ‘encouraged’ people to move away. A tour of the old Kurdish part of Kirkuk bears witness to decades of discrimination and lack of development, as stinking open sewers, which contaminate water supplies and breed disease, run between crumbling houses where children play in the filth.

CA and REACH are working with the authorities to bring fresh and safe water supplies to these areas too and are active in the old town where a newly laid pipeline will possibly save the lives of many children and elderly. As CA and its partners work to untangle the web of discriminatory politics, it is refreshing to see rapid and pragmatic solutions being turned into immediate and effective action, which are helping to save lives and help build a better future.