Rojava and Syria refugees struggle to make ends meet after year-long suspension of government aids

PEREGRAF– Amar Aziz

Jwan Luqman fled Syria to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq over eight years ago, a place he calls "heaven" compared to his war-devastated home country, but in this heaven, he can barely make ends meet for his family in the camps after a year-long suspension of government aids and lack of work.

"The Kurds of the south respect us very much, and we don't feel like we are refugees," thirty-three-year-old Luqman from Damascus, told Peregraf, referring to Kurds of the Kurdistan Region.

"We don't have problems in terms of health, water and electricity, and most importantly, security. We go around as we please, and they don't ask what we’re doing and where we're going. The Kurdistan Region is heaven for us compared to Syria," he added.

Luqman has been in Duhok province’s Domiz camp for more than eight years. He got married in the camp in 2014 and is now a father of four children. He provides for his family through construction labour.

"Our main problem is not having job opportunities, I haven't worked for more than a month, and if don’t go to work for one day we will not have money, because we're not employees, and we haven't received food for a long time," he said.

People from Syria and the Kurdish parts of north and east Syria (Rojava) fled the country at the start of the civil war to the Kurdistan Region in 2011.

Luqman says the situation in Syria is not yet stable and that he will stay in the Kurdistan Region so his children can also pursue their education. "It was our destiny, it happened, and whenever the situation in our homeland is normal, we will move back," he said.

There are more than 70,000 Syrian families in the Kurdistan Region’s camps of Erbil, Duhok and Sulaimaniyah provinces, which is more than 240,000 individuals.

Askandar Muhammad Amin, the director of the Iraqi Department of Migration and Displacement in Dohuk, told Peregraf that Iraq has cut off aid to the refugees since February 2021.

"After the arrival of refugees, the Ministry of Migration used to provide each family with a box of dry provisions and a box of detergent every two months, but this aid has been suspended since February 2021 with a ministerial decision, and no similar aid has been sent since," Muhammad Amin said.

He added that they "don’t know" why it has been suspended but noted that priority is the internally displaced people. "It seems that the ministry cannot provide support to refugees at this time. Only oil distribution has not been stopped, but it has been delayed this year and not distributed for refugees and IDPs."

Apart from Syrian, Turkish, Palestinian and Iranian refugees, there are more than 600,000 internally displaced people in the Kurdistan Region.

"At the beginning they gave us everything in Duhok, but since 2020 and 2021, aids have decreased a lot. We haven't received food for a year. Instead of food provisions, each person was getting $33, but then it was reduced to $30, then to 24,000 [Iraqi] dinars, and then that was stopped too," says Hussein Saadun Jambali.

Jambali, from Rojava’s Derik, has been at the Domiz camp since 2013. He now has a Tambur shop in the camp and says he doesn’t want to return. "We like to work, we do the job done it doesn’t matter how much we get paid, but people of the area don’t do everything and ask for a lot of money," he told Peregraf.

"In terms of cooperation, we only received oil money, which is 480,000 dinars [about $325] for each family to buy oil," he said.

Making money for Hishyar Mustafa from Afrin is also not easy. Mustafa commutes from Domiz camp to the city’s bazaar to sell coffee every day, where he makes up to 15,000 Iraqi dinars per day. "I am using some of the money to pay Taxi fares, I’ll be left with 5,000 [$3] in the end," he told Peregraf. "I have to do it because there's no other job."

"We would like to return, but there is still conflict, that’s why the Kurdistan Region is heaven for us. We are free to do whatever we want and that peace is everything for us," Mustafa added.

There are ten camps in the Kurdistan Region; five in Duhok, four in Erbil and one in Sulaimaniyah. More than 19,000 families live in Duhok only, over half of them live in the camps, according to Karwan Zaki, head of the Kurdistan Region’s Joint Crisis Coordination (JCC) center’s media office.

He added that 950 refugees from Syria arrived in the Kurdistan Region in the first nine days of January.

"It is true that we do not have the same aid for refugees as before, for example, the Iraqi office for migration and displacement distributed aids for only four months in 2021, and for this year it is still unclear whether it will be the same as last year or not," Zaki told Peregraf.

According to Zaki, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) gives each family 480,000 dinars annually, but the Iraqi government has not yet started distributing heating oil.

Official statistics from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) show that the daily expenses of internally displaced people (IDPs) and Syrian refugees are more than two million dollars, but they need an additional $70 million annually to fully meet their needs and services.

There are 220 local and international humanitarian organizations, including UN agencies, working for the refugees and IDPs in the Kurdistan Region, according to official statistics.

Wahid Amin, head of Barzani Charity Foundation’s Duhok office says "The situation of Rojava refugees in Duhok is good, with national electricity, water, and services such as schools, hospitals and many other things that are provided for free, and the UNHCR provides them with dry provisions each month."

Some Rojava refugees living outside of the camps want to move back into the camps where their basic needs are to be met. "All the camps are full and we can’t bring them in, except for the Bardarash camp, which is far from the bazaar and the center of Duhok, but new refugees will be settled in that camp," Amin said.

"The refugees are certainly a very difficult situation for the government and the people of Duhok, but no refugee likes to leave their homeland, the situation is like this, we have to host them," he added.