Looking Through the Pinhole: 2013 Reflections of a Woman Living and Working in Iraq

I started to draft this post about a week before leaving Iraq (end of August). It is a reflection of my three years in Iraq, how I was transformed by the people, the country and all the experiences that I had. 

This is a picture I really love because it reflects the diversity of Iraq. This is Baba Sheikh, the Yezidi's version of the Pope. Yezidis are one of Iraq's religious minorities that are part of the mosaic of Iraqi society. We went to visit him to Lalish, the Holy place for the Yezidi's during their  new year in Mid-April.

The Journey

Almost 3 years ago, to be exact, December 2010, I arrived here to work as a volunteer in a local women organization. I didn't have any plans as for how long I would be staying. I was supposed to go back to school anyway by the fall of 2011, to start a new Masters Degree (after kind of postponing my Ph. D in Pharmacy). I thought a few months in Iraq will do a service to my CV, I would improve my Arabic, and I would have a chance to tell Iraqis that not all Americans supported the war in Iraq. After three years, what I thought I would achieve is completely different to the course things took for me in Iraq.

Iraq, (and Israel/Palestine) have been the most amazing three years of my life, both professionally and personally. I thought I came to give something, but it turned out that I was the one who received the most. The kindest hospitality, as I have been received as a colleague, a friend, a sister, a daughter and much more. I have become part of the family and Iraq and Kurdistan have become part of me. I have learned so much from Kurdish and Iraqi activists as well as from activists that work on international solidarity. I had the opportunity to visit Iraqi and Kurdish villages,  meet fishermen, academics, activists, with ministers and government officials, and religious leaders from Iraqi minorities like the Chaldean Patriarch and the Yezidi version of the pope. To experience the real Iraq, the diverse mosaic  of peoples and the cradle of ancient civilisation, I was in Babel and in the Sumerian capital of Ur.

The Ziggurat of Ur, the ancient capital of the Sumerians, Nasriya, Iraq. 

Working with internally displaced children

It is hard to summarize what I have been doing in Iraq for the past 3 years, but I will attempt to lay it down here, as it also helps me in the reflection process, in sinking in what I have been living, and in realizing how I have been transformed.

For the first months, I was living in Erbil and working with a local women organization. The usual struggle was adapting to a very different culture, finding a place to live and establishing my social networks. That was a big challenge. Then, I moved to Suleimaniya, and was working with internally displaced Iraqi children in a camp for those who fled the sectarian violence in Iraq in 2006. The camp was called Qalawa camp. There we had weekly psychosocial activities with the children, ranging from art, music, theatre, journaling, and games to stimulate teamwork, inclusion, and participation of all. I had come from working with Palestinian kids, so I thought this was going to be similar, but it was different in many ways. As we worked with the children for an extended period, we could see the changes, the transformations happening in these little people. Respect, and discipline were evolving through the different themes that we explored with the children. In Qalawa, I learned to feel at home in a place that many would call miserable. I came to teach the IDP children, but they became my teachers, and taught me that unconditional love is above all things, and that love can be the difference between giving all and giving nothing. Love is also discipline. We were giving the children something they didn't have; the space to be heard, to express their feelings and above all, the space to be children. That had a transforming effect although it was extremely tiring. Often times it took hours to get one task done, but the most important thing was that everyone counted. When we went to Qalawa, we didn't look at the poor and ill equipped tents, dirty clothes, and trash all over the camp, or the lack of infrastructures, or the mud that would get to everyone's knees during the winter, or the extreme cold or hot conditions, the lack of toilets, or the lack of basic home appliances. We looked at parents and kids' humanity. We were not there because we had pity on them. Nor be cause we were doing charity works, because we never gave them money (they never asked), or food, or any material things. We were there because of our commitment to change those kid’s lives. We gave them our time, our love and our knowledge.

Women Rights Advocacy

Iraqi Kurdistan might look as a progressive country when you compare it to the rest of Iraq. You see women without the hijab, wearing short sleeve t-shirts and working outside home, but if you scratch the surface, you get to see another layer. Early and force marriages and honor killings are issues that reflect the patriarchal nature of the society, where women are removed from public life and have little or no legal rights. Another aspect of my work was women's rights, working on an advocacy campaign against honor killing organized by Zhiyan Group, with members from 60 different local human and  women rights groups demanding that the government enforce a new domestic violence law, following up cases of honor killing, and exposing the issue to the media and the relevant government and ministries. My role was to document their work, via research and reports, and be an international observer, re-affirming their work and providing strategic insight.  I helped to write a report titled: “No to honor killing in the name of tradition and culture”. In this report, Zhiyan group documented public opinion about forced marriages, honor killing and the domestic violence law in two areas of Suleimaniya, where these crimes are prevalent.

Through this advocacy work I learned that democracy is a process that does not only requires having laws on paper only, but that needs to challenge institutions to get laws implemented and above all democracy requires mobilization. Along with local women activists, we went from the village, to the police station, to the court, to the streets, to the Ministry of Interior and Ministry of Justice, and even to the Parliament, knocking every door unceasingly, raising the voices of women. We learned the important role that the media plays in enforcing democracy. Even when media is not completely independent in Iraq (it is affiliated to political parties), there is an opposition that brings alternate voices. I have seen a women's movement start to gain momentum in Kurdistan, united despite their different approaches; they have understood that they have a stronger voice if they work together. There was a big difference between International Women's Day in 2012, and the one this year. From a small rally of about 30, this year, the demonstration hosted more than a hundred people and delivered demands to the Suleimaniya office of the Parliament. 

I worked with very passionate and committed activists dealing with very delicate cases and risking their lives daily, some of my colleagues were attacked physically and threatened because of this work, but that didn’t persuade them to stop their work, instead they were more convinced that their work was being effective.

Demonstration on International Women's Day 2013 

Water rights and transboundary water issues between Turkey and Iraq

For the last year, I was part of a regional advocacy campaign, working to raise awareness about the negative impacts of Ilisu dam, one of 22 dams built in Turkey on the Tigris River. The campaign gathers people form Turkey, Iraq and internationally to raise awareness about the negative impact of the Ilisu dam, the biggest to be built on the Tigris River and that will have disastrous cultural, socio-economic, and environmental impacts on the population of Iraq. 

The urgency of this campaign is shown by the deterioration of the water quality in Iraq and the risk of disappearance of the Iraqi marshes, an important wetland in the Middle East. The Iraqi marshes have important cultural, natural and economic value to the communities that surround it. The dam issues is a political as well as a resource issue, as Iraq depends on the water of the Tigris for much of its water needs and the construction of this dam will reduce significantly the water available in Iraq. The problem cannot be reduced to this dam. The real problem is that there is no transboundary water agreement between the riparian countries that guarantees reasonable and equitable access to water to Iraq, and Iraqis feel that this dam could give Turkey control over much of Iraq's water and that Turkey could use it as a political tool whenever it wants to get something from Iraq.

I coordinate local and international activists in a campaign to raise awareness inside and outside of Iraq, and to join our campaign to the global movement to protect rivers and people who depend on them. In 2013, I traveled to represent the campaign in Tunis at the World Social Forum. I had the opportunity to organize a session on water grabs and global solidarity. In that session, we gathered activists and local community organizers from Mexico, Peru, India and Europe working against water privatization, mining construction in indigenous communities land and dams that displace people and damage river ecosystems. We shared experiences, strategies and lessons learned from all the movements. In Jordan, the campaign organized a seminar with Iraqi scholars and water experts that made recommendations on how to work with the transboundary water issue at the national and international level. In April and May, members of the campaign visited the Ilisu dam site Turkey, and Hasankeyf, one of the many communities that will be displaced by the dam construction.

Hasankeyf Ingathering 2013. Hasankeyf,  Turkey. April 2013. Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

Table at the Suleimaniya Green Music and Art Festival, April 2013. Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

Seminar: The Water Crisis in Iraq, Amman Jordan, May 2013. Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

International Activists Demonstration at hte Ilisu dam construction site, Ilisu, Turkey. May 2013.
Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

During June, the campaign organized awareness seminars in Iraq's south provinces of Basra, Missan, Thiqar (Nasriyah) and Diwaniyah, with the collaboration of Iraqi and international activists. The seminars were organized by local activists, and invited youth groups, community leaders, academics, members of the local government and local and national media. All these efforts gained support of youth and local activists and were building up to the campaign’s session on Iraqi Social Forum (ISF) organized in Baghdad in September 2013. The session brought together Iraqi lawyers and International activists to discuss legal strategies to protect the Tigris River. 

Awareness Session in Missan, June 2013. Missan Province, Iraq. Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

The campaign has been actively working with legal and water experts to develop a legal framework that includes diplomatic as well as international law perspective to solve the water issue and that could give Iraq the leverage to negotiate with Turkey a transboundary water agreement that will guarantee equal shares of the Tigris River. Mobilization has begun after the ISF, a statement from the Iraqi Jurist Union, demanding the government to actively engage with the water issue and with Turkey. In addition, one of Iraq’s most prominent religious leader demanded Iraq to take Turkey to the UN for arbitration on the water issue if the two states were not able to come to a solution on their own. 

Meeting with a representative of the Baghdad Provincial Council, Baghdad, Iraq. September 2013. Photo by: Johanna L. Rivera

This is just the start, and in the beginning I saw no big progress, but as I look back into these years I can see that things are moving, I can see that people are mobilizing. These are big issues that we are dealing with, and I have learned to see each achievement as a small victory in a long journey towards democracy. It didn’t take the west 10 years to achieve the improvements in human rights and democracy that we can see today, and it is easy to take for granted the work that others did to have the freedoms that we have. The same is true for Iraq and Kurdistan. It will probably take one or two more generations, but we have started. And we are moving steadily!  

Laying One Brick at a Time, Taking One Step at a Time

Suleimaniya, Kurdistan, Iraq, April 13, 2012

"People say: What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time." Dorothy Day

I when I feel overwhelmed by the things I experience here, I ask myself: What is the sense of my efforts?. Sometimes I cannot see that small bricks are necessary to build a wall.

Today at the [Qalawa] camp was very hard. It was hard to get the kids attention, they were not following instructions, and sometimes I get very frustrated when things don't come out as I expect. I forget that the real reason to be there is not to be successful.

Today, I spoke to one of the woman in the camp that has a disabled child. As she told me about the child's condition, my heart was immersed in deep sadness. The young mother was fixing a button in the boy's pants and telling me he can't see, or walk, or talk. I felt helpless at such a reality, and could just listen to her talking and looking at her child. The boy's hands were so beautiful and perfect, as if to compensate for the rest of his body's handicap.

I suddenly realized that every week we come, the kids are still there, living under the same deteriorating conditions as the last week. I had the thought that what we do is not changing anything in the lives of these children. What I cannot see is that everytime we go, the camp's air feels different; special. Every family welcomes us, greeting us with a smile. I like their simplicity and the respect they show us when they invite us to share whatever little they have. I find myself very close and comfortable around them.

As Robert Fisk said last week in a lecture in Erbil: "What people really need is not  democracy, but justice and dignity." And I think this is exactly what we have failed to do here in Iraq; while bringing "democracy", we have stripped the Iraqi people from justice and dignity.

In the meantime, and despite my own frustration, I echo the words of Mother Theresa: "The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it".

PS. I never put pictures of the kids in order to protect their identity and dignity, but thought these don't show their faces and wanted you to have a sense of what our days look like.

Amir explaining the rules of the game to the kids, actually this day was very successful and the kids enjoy this game that consisted of putting some dirt in a cup that had a small hole in the bottom, then running to the other side as fast as they could to bring as much of the dirt to the other side. The team with most dirt wins, actually both teams won!

After the day activities, everyone was full of dirt and fun!

The kids never want us to leave after the day activities are over, we are super tired and they ready to continue!!!

Something to think about on Thanksgiving, Suleimaniya, Iraqi, Kurdistan

It has been more than three months since my last post. In that time, many things have happened here in this part of the world: the PA went to the UN to ask to be admitted as a member state, Arab Spring has become the Arab autumn and now the Arab winter, thousands of Syrians have been killed, Egyptian Christians have been massacred in Cairo, Gilat Shalit was exchanged by 1027 Palestinian political prisoners, 24 Turkish soldiers were killed in near the Turkish-Iraq border (Turkish territory) which led to air and land strikes in Northern-Iraq, Kurdistan, Muammar Qaddafi was murdered. It seems that violence is business as usual.

Perhaps I didn’t have the will to write, I was sick, very frustrated, overwhelmed or even disappointed. After a year in Kurdistan, nothing seems to have changed. Life goes on, people in the west and even here go to work, and they are busy with everyday things. In the meantime, I try to keep myself motivated and find a reason to wake up in the morning; to believe that there is hope for change, a reason to keep fighting for justice, in a far away country, removed from all the things that I love: my family, my friends, my country. Sometimes I find it hard.

Every morning and afternoon, I walk to work and pass by a group of old Kurdish men (Kakas) that greet me and invite me for a domino match, I have even beaten them a couple of times. I walk on the neighbourhood, absorbed on my own thoughts. I go to work and the day goes by seating between emails, reports, forms, meetings and trainings. Then the weekend comes and the story repeats itself. This doesn't make sense. Seems like if I were working for nothing, as things don't seem to change.

Suddenly, Friday morning, my day off, I go to a very special place. A place that is hard to explain, a place where love and misery coexist. Here, I realize why I am here, when I see the face of the children I get to work with every Friday, they are Iraqi children internally displaced by violence. Their eyes are so beautiful, full of laughter, full of joy, despite the hard conditions of living as refugees in their own country. When they come running and I hold them and see how full of love they are, I can’t but remind myself how lucky I am to be there and get to enjoy this time with them. We play, sing, dance, and learn together. The other day, I taught them the Macarena, I wish you could see how their small bodies danced to the rhythm of the music. For a single moment I lost sense of where I was, and just enjoyed their laughter. I forgot they are children of war and violence, displaced, fragile. I get back to reality, most of them must have spent the majority of their lives in this forgotten camp, a place of uncertainty and misery. Now every single week, they are asking to dance the choreography they learned. Even if we don’t have the music, I will sing for them and they do the steps. We have so much fun together. Then when is time to leave, everyone is sad, but we just look forward to next week.

Yes, this happens as you live a different life, go to do your groceries, to the salon, to the post office or for your daily walk. According to the UN Refugee Agency, there are 27.3 million internally displaced refugees around the world, the majority of them women and children, Iraq being the third largest country with internally displaced people (IDP), between 1.3-2.8 million, after Sudan and Colombia. Although internally displaced people outnumber refugees by more than two to one, no single UN or other international agency has responsibility for responding to internal displacement. As a result, the global response to the needs of IDPs is often ineffective. And guess who paid for the wars that created these refugees? You, with your tax dollars! And who is paying now, for programs to help refugees? Again, you with your tax dollars. And who should be accountable for these millions of people who now are homeless, I leave that for you to answer. Desmond Tutu said that those who are silent to injustice can be called complicit.

Last week, it rained on the camp, for a full three days, I could not think but how where the kids and if they were warm enough. When we arrived, there was mud EVERYWHERE, but the kids didn't care, they were waiting for us. We always take our shoes off to keep the tent clean, but this time it was needed much more. I found myself lifting up the smaller kids who where struggling to take their muddy boots off. It was a beautiful Friday, a beautiful muddy Friday.....

One of the kids pair of muddy shoes

So, when you are eating your Thanksgiving dinner, and are giving thanks, be thankful for all the blessings you have: a warm and safe home, food, water, electricity; think about the people: especially internally displaced women and children, who have nothing and yet are thankful for the little they have.

Amir's shoes on the tents entrance

My First Day in Suleymania: A visit to Qalawa Refugee Camp, Suleymania, Kurdistan--062911

It was noon and the driver arrived to pick me up. I had accepted a new job and was moving once again, this time to Sulaymaniyah, after 4 months living in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi-Kurdistan. The modern city of Sulaymaniyah was founded on 14 November 1784 by the Kurdish prince Ibrahim Pasha Baban who named it after his father Sulaiman Pasha. Because it was founded as the capital of a powerful Kurdish principality, Sulaymaniyah has developed into a large city with a population of about 1million people. It is the cultural center of the Sorani-speaking Kurds and an important economic center for Iraqi Kurdistan.

A view from the Dukan Lake, Suleymania

I had a mixture of happiness and nostalgia, leaving Erbil, which I already considered home, even though it was very different from my home; language, culture, women’s place in society, but I had learned to accept it and love it, I had friends and had established many relationships. I was happy and ready to try Suli’s way; everyone I had talked to said it was better than Erbil, in terms of customs and traditions, they kept stressing the fact that people in Sulimania were more open and that I would feel better here.

Om Suli, I was invited to attend a puppet show in the Qalawa refugee camp and of course I was in, since I love anything that has to do with children. We arrived to the camp and were greeted in the entrance by a man. There was an empty, rocky and dusty lot and my first reaction was one of shock. I had only seen the Palestinian refugee camps which looked more like neighborhoods, with cements houses, being established more than 50 years ago. Blue tents served as roofs, held by big tires. I didn’t go inside the camp, since the children were practicing and anything could distract them; I perfectly new this from my experience working in a summer camp in Palestine. Instead, few girls came out to receive us and I greeted them in Arabic: Shlonish, How are you? Then I used a more colloquial expression: Shaku Maku, more like what’s up, and they replied; Kulshi Maku, Nothing’s up! This is a normal Iraqi response. We were all laughing!

Qalawa Camp was formed in June 2006 by a group of IDPs on an empty piece of open land southeast of Sulaymaniyah center. It is located in Sharwani area, near the Rizgari fuel station. We were told there are around 59 families living here. I approached two women that were near and asked them how long they were living in the camp, one of them said that she was from Baghdad and was living there since 2009. She said that there were no jobs and that they had problems with electricity.

According to a 2008 report from the International Organization of Migration (IOM), camp residents face poor conditions, as they have no sanitation, loose garbage around the tents, no electricity and no toilets. In addition, there have been cases of typhoid reported. IDPs have access to a mobile medical unit and water is being trucked in. The camp was formed when a large number of families fled sectarian violence in Baghdad and Diyala. During our visit we were told that the children from the camp do not attend school. According to a report from the Danish Immigration service from their visit to the camp in 2010, there were 27 children of school age in the camp in 2009. They were not enrolled in school, particularly if engaged in begging and lacking alternative sources of livelihood, declined UNHCR supported transportation to schools in the neighborhood. Only few of the camp’s children can read.

The children’s messy, untidy hair reminded me of their reality as refugees, but their smiles and beautiful eyes lifted me up. I started to ask their names, and they all took turns to tell me their names. One of them clung into my arm and kissed it, my heart wanted to melt but I smiled and kissed her head back. It was very hot and dusty, and we were trying to set up the stage for the puppet show. It was just a colored banner in Arabic and English welcoming everyone, but it was meant to serve as an interface between the public and the actors. We laid some blankets in the dusty ground for the audience to sit overlooking the mountains.

After some running around and playing, we were able to gather the children in a circle, to get ready to start the show. Then one of the AUI professors, who have been working on the camp arrived and our circle was destroyed. They all gathered around him to welcome him. The roles were reviewed by the volunteers and the children took their puppets and gathered behind the improvised stage. The show started and the puppets as well as the children’s heads were coming up and down. The narrators, a boy and a girl, who were able to read, took turns in telling the story and the children came on stage often times delayed, but we laughed and clapped and enjoyed the performance. The children were happy and full of energy despite the burning sun. It was the first time that they had the opportunity to show their abilities in public. The event was very simple, and yet empowering. It was a symbol of what can be achieved if we can give time, love, solidarity and hard work.

I can’t wait to go back to Qalawa, it reminds me how blessed I am and why I am here; to share what I have with others and to make these children hope for a better future. It reminds me that I CAN do something to change the world by changing peoples’ lives, one at a time.

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.” A. Roy