Relief kits arrive for Iraqi refugees

Every January, Macleans magazine tries to tell the story behind the story with the year in photos. Two images from Iraq stood out this time: one of a US soldier extending a hand to an expectant boy on the side of the road, and the other a mock execution of a boy as two of his friends hold fake pistols to his head. They’re smiling.

The story behind the story for MCC writer Gladys Terichow came on her December visit to Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, when she met Meeron, the son of an Iraqi refugee.

Missa fled Baghdad with her children but later returned, risking their lives for Meeron and Karaam’s education. Photo: Melissa Engle for MCC

“All of a sudden, as this man was explaining to me how he fled to Jordan and tried to start over in Iraq, his seven year old boy piped in with the details on how one day 16 kids were kidnapped from his school. They were returned, ‘but when really dangerous group kidnap they take money and kill kids,’ he said.” He wasn’t smiling.

Meeron is one of 2.4 million internally displaced refugees. His father took them to Jordan after he was attacked for selling air conditioners to foreign military in Baghdad. At great risk, they returned to Baghdad so Meeron could go to school. When his father was threatened after he refused to build explosives for insurgent groups, they fled to Kurdistan.

“What disturbed me was that the boy said it all with a straight face,” says Terichow, a grandmother herself. “It was almost matter-of-fact.”

Terichow’s visit coincided with MCC’s distribution of more than 4,000 blankets, some that had been made by Ontario women’s prison groups. With the help of a local NGO and local authorities, they also gave out more than 9,000 school kits and 900 relief bucket kits to the most needy refugees in surrounding villages.

The school kids, who made a grand procession for their special visitors, were able to take their minds off the war that day. Some of them would have warm blankets that night, protecting them from below freezing temperatures with no kerosene for their stoves.

“When I arrived in Erbil, it reminded me of the ’97 Winnipeg flood,” says Terichow. “Sandbags everywhere, only this was a war zone.”

Now Kurdistan is flooded with refugees, mostly Sunni Muslims, who are ready to hope for the future once again. Many left their homes on threat of death.

“When you ask them about the war, they say ‘which war?’ ” Iran versus Iraq in the 80s and the first Gulf war produced 1 million refugees before 2003. “Their hope is that their children will be brought up in a place without discrimination,” says Terichow, “All of them think it’s possible for Iraqis to live in peace.”

For Meeron, peace might come after trauma counselling, “which is what MCC does best,” adds Terichow. With an additional $400,000 pledged to the region for workshops on conflict resolution and further aid, “the authorities here trust MCC, because they know that we’re in it for the long term.”

The Winnipeg based journalist also met with mayors around Erbil, bringing her back to her days reporting on city council. “I was really impressed,” she said. “The leaders are eager to rebuild their economy, which is rich in natural resources.”

With the population in Kurdistan rising once again, simmering ethnic tensions that could spark at any moment will continue to threaten hopes for peace. Residents are just recovering from a wave of violence in February 2006, after a bomb at a Shiite mosque in Samarra.

Since March 2007, MCC has shipped relief supplies worth more than $1.2 million. But along with the supplies comes an ethic – the Anabaptist ethic – of peacebuilding, and peering into the eyes of a seven year old boy to look for the story behind the story.

—Andrew Siebert