The toll of war. The loss of home, friends and education

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Not long ago, Haneen*,16, dreamed of being a teacher.  Today, she simply dreams of returning to her village and seeing her friends again.  In August, Haneen’s family fled their town in Nineva Province when they heard from friends in nearby villages that armed groups were attacking. 

 “We heard gunfire in the distance,” says Ahmed, 22. 

 

“We heard gunfire in the distance,” says Haneen’s brother, Ahmed, 22. 

The family fled quickly, on foot.  They walked for three days, surviving only on bread and water.  They ate only once day.   Eventually they reached Mount Sinjar, where they and tens of thousands of other Yazidi people were stranded across a stone-strewn mountainside. For five days, the family remained on the mountain, where others had already been longer with no shelter, no food, no water. They faced searing heat during the day and cold temperatures at night.  Reports suggest at least 300 people died on that mountain, most of them children.

Haneen’s family eventually made their way north to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and to the Dahuk Province where they found refuge in a school with close to 70 other families. United Nations reports say that almost 500,000 displaced persons have sought safe shelter in Dahuk.  Across Iraq, there are at least 1.8 million who have fled their homes.

Although the local government provides families at the school with a simple breakfast each day and bread is delivered every two days, life is not easy for Haneen.  She knows that her family is fortunate as there is a nearby water tank where they can collect water in bottles and unlike families living in tents in the school courtyard and elsewhere along roadsides, they have the protection of a classroom with a roof and four walls.  Still the classroom is being shared by 26 people in the extended family and cannot compare with the home they fled.

“I miss my home... everything was beautiful,” Haneen says.

“I miss my home,” Haneen says quietly.  “Everything was beautiful.” 

“I miss my friends, too.  Only one of my school friends is here,” she says, remembering classmates from her ninth grade studies.

One of her closest friends, a 14-year-old girl, was captured along with other young women.  No one knows where they are or what has happened to them.

“The girls’ school was destroyed, too,” she adds, almost an afterthought.  It was reportedly bombed because militants were using it as a base.

Haneen’s older brother Ahmed, 22, received his university degree in biology.  He had hoped to work in a hospital, but as a displaced person he will have a hard time finding work in this region.  For now, the family must survive on the generosity of others. 

 

Like many living in this school, they have little and they fear for the future.  Winter is approaching and the government does not want to delay the start of school year much longer.  Families do not know where they will go if they are told to evacuate the state-owned building.  People in other provinces have already been transferred from schools to transit camps, where many are housed in tents.

For Yazidi youth, like Haneen, there is no consolation in the reopening of schools.  Even when they have been cleared of displaced families and rehabilitated, Haneen will not have an opportunity to attend one.  Most of the displaced minority Yazidis do not speak Kurdish, the language used to teach within Kurdish-controlled Iraqi classrooms.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of those involved.