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| Children of the camp: About 600 children, age15 and below, live in the Al-Manathra refugee camp outside Najaf, Iraq. Sam Dagher |
Aid shrinks as Iraq's internal refugee tally grows
Some 280 NGOs are caring for Iraq's 2.3 million displaced by fighting. But the international support is drying up.
from the November 30, 2007 edition
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Although the refugees in Al-Manathra are closely watched and guarded by Najaf authorities, they have been more fortunate than many other war refugees.
They have clean drinking water, the province is building them trailers to replace tents, and they are aided by the offices of the city's many clerics. The office of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls the Mahdi Army, has even donated a generator.
But while things here may be better than in other refugee camps throughout the country, its residents say that they are particularly worried about the children living here.
"The trauma alone from the violence they have been exposed to will have huge consequences for years to come," says Mr. Mofarah.
Abu Noor, the mayor of the Al-Manathra camp, says he has 600 children age 15 and below and that many are showing signs of malnutrition. Frail, disheveled, and barefoot children running amid puddles of still and muddy water are a common sight at the camp.
Numan Mahdi lifts the red sweatshirt of his 2-year-old daughter, Khalida, to show scars suffered from shrapnel wounds that she sustained when a mortar shell hit their home in Baghdad.
"There are still two pieces of shrapnel wedged in her lungs. She has difficulty breathing and walking sometimes," he says. "Our kids only smelled gunpowder and saw blood. We need a solution from our government: either help us find better lodging or return us home."
Ten-year-old Ghufran Muhammad, whose first name means forgiveness in Arabic, says she misses Baghdad and her bicycle and dolls. But her father, Muhammad Hadi, says it's impossible now to go back to their neighborhood of Al-Fadhel in eastern Baghdad after barely escaping the sectarian carnage last year.
"Where could I begin to forgive, we are just filled with wounds on the inside," he says when asked about the possibility of forgiveness.
Iraq's Ministry of Displacement and Migration says it has earmarked $100 million to help the internally displaced. The UN mission in Iraq said it would help the ministry repatriate both the returning refugees and the internally displaced and that, as a first step, it was providing blankets and kitchen equipment to 5,000 families.
But few at the Manathra camp are impressed.
"I have not seen a cent yet, just promises … they could care less about us," says Kleib Muhammad Abdul-Zahra. "Not even a visit by an official or minister to inquire if our children have enough food to eat."
Mr. Abdul-Zahra, a farmer, fled the town of Tarmia, north of Baghdad, with his five sons and a daughter after he returned home last year to find his wife killed and a note from militants warning them to leave because "he's an agent for Shiite militias."
His eyes well up as one of his chapped and cracked hands reaches into the pocket of his white baggy cotton pants and pulls out the crumpled and faded note. "This is all I have left to claim compensation from my government," he says.
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