Little hope for Iraqi Turkmen who fled Islamic State

Thousands of members of country's third-largest ethnic group, both Shiite and Sunni, living in shelters with little international or government aid.

Thousands of Turkmen who fled Islamic State militants in northern Iraq are living in schools such as this one in Sadr City, a Shiite-majority district of Baghdad. Ahmad Al Rubaye / AFP / August 5, 2014Show less

BAGHDAD // School is out, but northern Baghdad’s classrooms are packed – not with students, but with people who have travelled further than most to escape the Sunni militant onslaught splitting Iraq.

While perils faced by members of the Yazidi minority fleeing the hardline fighters of the Islamic State have filled television screens for days, the fate of the Turkmens is less well known.

Iraq’s third-largest ethnic group after Arabs and Kurds, they include both Sunnis and Shiites and have a history of being targeted in previous conflicts.

Over the past two months, thousands of them have travelled hundreds of kilometres to the capital to escape Islamic State militants, crowding into schools run by volunteers and religious charities in the absence of government help.

“If you saw their situation when they came, the women and children, the dirt and mud, they were suffering,” said Saleem Sahi, 48, a volunteer managing a school where he said children panicked when they saw helicopters flying overhead.

The long journey has separated families that sometimes spanned sectarian lines. Almost all those who ended up in the northern Baghdad schools, near the sprawling Shiite district of Sadr City, are themselves Shiites.

Other Shiite Turkmens have been flown south by the government, which is led by politicians from the country’s overall Shiite majority, to spare them a perilous journey.

Ibrahim Hussein, 59, a Shiite government employee from the northern town of Tal Afar, said that while Islamic State militants might have killed him for his faith, sect had had little impact on local relations before the insurgency.

He pointed to Mohamed Saeb, a 22-year-old Sunni sitting across the room whom he had taken into his home after a suicide bomber killed the young man’s family in 2009. “He’s become like my son,” he said.

Volunteers said aid agencies had offered some food and mattresses for the displaced, but those officials who had visited had done so only in a personal capacity, leaving communities and charities to find their own solutions.

A charity affiliated with Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, oversees one school and Mr Sahi said food was provided largely by donors who would have given it to Shiite pilgrims in more peaceful years.

One 40-year-old Shiite woman from Mosul, northern Iraq’s largest city which was overrun by the Islamic State and allied Sunni militias in June, said she was forced to leave her Sunni husband behind when she fled.

Like others, the woman, who asked to be called Umm Abdallah, expressed a cautious hope Iraq’s new government might be able to do more to resolve the conflicts scattering them across the country than the outgoing prime minister Nouri Al Maliki’s had.

Mr Al Maliki, who after relentless pressure from domestic and international opponents announced on Thursday night that he was stepping down, had been accused of worsening the conflict by alienating Sunni Arabs and Kurds.

“We haven’t seen anything get better,” Umm Abdallah said, looking around the classroom stacked with gas canisters, sacks of flour and cooking oil.

One of the most pressing issues for the displaced is what to do when the school season starts in about a month. Volunteers say they have no idea what will happen. Everyone says the government should act, but no one expects it will.

Mr Sahi said he may try to set up tents in a nearby area. A local official had suggested moving the refugees to a desert area, but Mr Sahi said he was afraid this would isolate them from those providing support.

He said it would probably take at least a year before the government would be able to offer any solutions .

“We’ve been going backwards, it’s been getting worse,” he said as a television blared patriotic songs over images of men dancing in military fatigues.

“The government still needs to be formed,” he said. “I think it will take a while.”

Sitting in a bare concrete room in one primary school, Hashem Abbas, a 58-year-old Turkmen repairman, said he fled his hometown of Tal Afar in the middle of the night two months ago after shelling by the Islamic State levelled neighbouring homes.

Mr Abbas and his large family made their way first across the mountainous north and eventually to Baghdad, where a contact said they would find shelter. They arrived with little more than the clothes they were wearing.

“Our future isn’t clear,” Mr Abbas said as a fan rumbled to ease the baking midday heat. “We don’t know what will or won’t happen. We just ask that God returns us to our homes and our people.”

Those assisting them were not sure how that would happen.

“The government has passed away,” said Sadeq Sabah, a volunteer, pressing his hands together as if in prayer. “There’s no one.”

* Reuters