Uncertain Future

I have no idea what you're hearing in the west about Iraq at the moment. I don't manage to keep up that well with other news except what I get from reading The Week. But here, the battle for Mosul continues. ISIS still control a handful of neighbourhoods in Western Mosul, in the old part of the city. These are densely populated areas and it's estimated that over 100,000 people are still trapped. Both sides have shored up their defences, and it looks like this could be a grim slog to free the last areas. The battle progressed pretty fast until this point, but now it's almost at a standstill. The army are literally fighting metre by metre. The number of people managing to escape has shrunk to a trickle and the stories they can tell are harrowing. ISIS are using people as human shields in many areas, and I won't repeat here what we hear about other atrocities. Just know that the more desperate ISIS get, the more horrendous their crimes.

As they are battling in Mosul, ISIS are also ramping up attacks elsewhere in Iraq. Our teams in Baghdad are under tighter security restrictions as the number of car bombs has spiked. I have had to put an entire new programming area to the west of Hawiga off limits as ISIS have started to use drones to drop explosives, and over this weekend launched an assault on the area - there were at least 30 suicide bombers detonating themselves on Saturday.

I know I've said it before, but the battle for Mosul really isn't the end here. This country is facing a lot of uncertainty ahead. This kind of ideology doesn't disappear with geographical boundaries. It just goes underground and hides. It leaves it's legacy behind in traumatised people who live in fear. It leaves widows and children who are shunned by their communities, because of what their husbands and fathers have done. It contributes to a society where weapons are normal, and solving problems through violence is standard. And then, as it goes underground, we are left with the same issues from before, the same sectarian divides, the same power plays, the same economic mismanagement. We have to find other ways to fight this at it's roots. If you pray, please continue to pray for the Middle East, particularly Iraq and Syria.

Mourn with those who mourn

This week a close friend here lost one of her team in a car accident At the same time a close friend at home lost an aunt suddenly, just a couple of weeks after another close friend had lost her aunt unexpectedly. Add to that my staff member who has just come back to work after an absence he took to mourn his wife and child who died from burns sustained from an exploding gas bottle. Another staff member who had to fly back to Denmark to bury his father. Then Manchester and London. The multiple times a day my phone pings to tell me about another attack in Iraq. The massive attack in Baghdad a week ago, and one in Kabul. The old Iraq house-mate who is working with Operation Mercy and part of their team responding to the attack on their Kabul office where staff were killed and abducted. This morning I heard about 15 families who arrived at our camp last night with multiple injuries, including a child who was hit by a sniper. Sometimes the bad news just feels a bit unrelenting.

In this part of the world this level of tragedy is just part of life. It's so normal to everyone. And maybe that's why they are actually good at mourning with those who mourn. There's no awkwardness. There's no ignoring what's happened. There's no empty platitudes. There's a lot of tears. There's a commitment to visiting bereaved family and friends and entering in to their sadness with them. There's an openness about grief, it doesn't get hidden away like something awkward.

And of course if you know how to mourn with those who mourn, you probably also know how to rejoice with those who rejoice. My Mum, whom none of my staff have met, has a birthday in May and so suddenly at the May birthday celebration her name is on the cake, along with another expat's new baby who is back in Holland with his mum. It's why we all eat baklava every time someone gets engaged and celebrate with them. It's why when you get married you invite everyone you know, and everyone they know.

As a Brit (we are an awkward species), I can learn a lot from my friends here in this respect. Mourning with those who mourn and rejoicing with those who rejoice is actually about loving that person first and putting their news, their needs above your own. It's about not caring that it's uncomfortable to sit with friends who are grieving, struggling with depression or disappointment, because somehow your presence shows your love for them even if you have no words to offer. It's about rejoicing with friends who have wonderful news, even if what they are celebrating is something that you yourself have longed for. If necessary you put a mask on to rejoice with them, because in their moment of happiness it needs to be about exactly that. (Then you go home and have a good cry if you need to). It's always about putting others before yourself. If my time here in this corner of the world helps me to grow in that respect then it will be worth every sacrifice it has cost in other ways.

Grapes

I live in a flat in my city, the ground floor of a two storey house which means I get the little garden. When I first looked around it before I moved in, it had this crazy grape vine over the outside of the house, providing a lot of shade. I loved it and it was one of the main reasons why I said yes to the house - I had images in my head of sitting outside in the spring and summer (and autumn and winter) under that vine, enjoying the dappled sunlight coming through.

When I moved in to the house I was gutted to see that the owner, in between tenants, had pruned the vine to what seemed an unbelievable level. It had been pulled off the walls it was climbing, and stripped right back to it's most basic branches. I was so sad. All through the autumn and winter, friends and I would sit on my patio and sadly comment on the vine. About how unutterably dead it looked. It seemed totally hopeless. We couldn't imagine it having any chance of growing leaves. And if I can be completely honest for a minute, without sounding too dramatic, it kind of echoed what I felt deep down too. I found this winter in Iraq my hardest. I was struggling with my job which no longer felt exciting and instead just felt overwhelming. I felt like all I did was work, eat, sleep, repeat. I struggled to find time for friends, and if I didn't do incredibly high levels of overtime I felt like I was failing the staff working for me and the people we're trying to help. Basically I just got in to a bit of a sad rut.

Spring arrived and a few leaves started to bud on the vine. I couldn't believe it. There was a tiny bit of life coming out of no where. And guess what? At the same time my own spirits began to lift. I made some personal decisions around what I wanted my life here to be like, about how to look after myself (remember that blog I wrote on self-care?); and slowly I started to feel like I was coming back to life.

Summer has now arrived, seemingly overnight. And suddenly my vine has bunches of grapes on it. Where did they come from? I can't believe how quickly it has gone from bare branches to this beautiful, green plant with fruit hanging on it. It has started to re-climb the walls, and the sunlight is dappled as it shines through it. And, you've guessed it, I feel back to normal too. I'm enjoying my job again, and my life outside of work too. I went away with my prayer trio this weekend, we just took a couple of nights away in a different city, far from the fighting and gave ourselves a break. We talked about work but we didn't open laptops. Instead we shopped in the bazaar, went up a mountain, ate good food, swam, chatted and prayed. When I got home from the weekend and looked at my vine, for the first time in months I felt properly anchored. I felt the presence of God. But I know that He was with me in the time when the vine looked dead. He was there, working on the unseen. Even when I didn't feel connected spiritually He was faithfully sustaining me. He has used this place, this work, to shape my faith, to mold me in a new way. It's not always easy. But just as the farmer will prune his vine to a degree which seems crazy to the untrained eye, in order to strengthen the new growth; so living here this last winter was a kind of pruning for me. Those grapes are a reminder that no matter how hard or how long the winter, it will end. Summer is coming with all it's goodness.

Prejudice

I've been in Amman this week for a workshop (and now at the Dead Sea for a treat day) and it got me thinking about my first visit here back in 2013. At the time I was working in London on the Tearfund Syria response, and I was part of a team that came to Jordan and Lebanon to assess the first projects we undertook through local partners to see if we agreed that our strategy was appropriate, to assess whether Tearfund was adding value to the general response to the refugee crisis in the way we thought we were.

I had never been to the Middle East. Growing up, I remember finding the whole concept of the Middle East or the '20/40 window' quite terrifying. I thought it would be the last place I would voluntarily travel to. I'm pretty ashamed of my ignorance now. In the Christian community in the UK at the time I think there was a mystery around the Middle East, a feeling of fear of the unknown and of Islam. To an extent I think this continues today, although I have many friends who are working hard to change this.

So even in 2013, when I traveled to Jordan and Lebanon for the first time, having mainly worked in Africa and Haiti up to that point, I was excited but nervous. Looking back I think that trip is what started me on this particular journey in a way. It was my first experience of working on a refugee crisis, the first time I sat with people displaced by war and heard their stories. The cultures I was visiting were completely foreign to me. So different to anything I had seen before. I remember finding Lebanon significantly easier than Jordan, and on the inside thinking that I didn't think I could live in Jordan - it was a touch too far on the Middle East spectrum for me at the time. But that trip broke me. I can vividly remember visiting refugee families living in what had been a large factory-scale chicken coop, and thinking how unutterably sad it was that a farmer was making more money renting out his space to people than rearing chickens. I remember being blown away by the teams I met in Jordan working with highly traumatised children, providing safe spaces for them to start to process what they had been through. That trip was the first time I understood that in this part of the world war is broadcast live on TV, and that entire families will sit transfixed watching the battle progress in the land they have fled. I came back to the UK incredibly unwell physically, and without fully realising it at the time, I was pretty unwell mentally too. A few weeks later I had a counselling session at work and just broke down - everything I had bottled up came flooding out on this poor woman across the room from me.

Fast forward a year and I was out in Iraq for the first time, and my heart towards the Middle East had already changed. I was in Italy on holiday with my good friend Becca when I got a text message to tell me that Tearfund had made the decision to respond to the crisis in Iraq. Becca regularly reminds me that I said 'I think they're going to ask me to go', and that to her amazement I was excited about that possibility. Sure enough, I got back to the office after our holiday and was immediately asked to consider joining the emergency response team. I said yes straight away and off I went.

After 2 and a half years in Iraq, I came back to Amman for this training. It amazes me that I previously thought I wouldn't want to live here. Now it feels so normal and like it could quite easily be home for me (don't worry Mum, I'm not suggesting that I move here). I tell this story as I'm feeling pretty ashamed of my ignorance, my fear and my prejudice I used to have towards this part of the world. In Iraq I have found a people who are incredibly hospitable, the most generous culture. I have found people who are proud of their ancestry, but tolerant towards others. I have celebrated Persian New Year, Coptic Christmas, Yazidi New Year, Islamic Eid's; and had gifts given to me by people of other faiths for my Easter. I definitely still don't understand all the dynamics at play, the history, the cultures (I never will); but along with Southern Africa, the Middle East has claimed a bit of me for itself. And I am a richer person for that.

Who needs cash?

Imagine you had to leave your home and flee to a different place for safety. Imagine you’ve already spent any savings you had, you’ve already sold your jewelry and spent what that brought in. You reach a safe place and find an empty building to squat in. You were given an emergency kit of food, water and hygiene items but this only lasted you a week. You have to ask for a line of credit in the local shop in order to get some flour to make bread with. You need to buy some basic medicines and some tarpaulin to try and seal off the empty windows in your house.

At this point, what do you need most? Cash. Cash is what you need. We could give you a pre-defined kit of something like cooking equipment and household items, but you may not need everything we would give you and so you would end up selling some of the items at a lower than market value in order to get the cash you need to buy the things your family really needs. We could give you a pre-defined food parcel, but this would not allow you to cater for the specific spices or ingredients that your family likes.

In a place like Iraq, where businesses and shops are the first things to re-open when areas are re-captured, giving people cash in some form is almost always the best option compared to giving actual items. It is a double-whammy of good programming – it gives people choice and dignity, and it supports the local economy. It is also efficient from the donor’s point of view – we don’t have to spend time and money procuring items, storing them in warehouses, paying to truck them to distribution sites etc. And even when we know what people need is warm clothes for winter, how much better it is to do what Tearfund did this year. Instead of giving bags of pre-selected clothes to families, hoping they’d swap them around between themselves to find things that fit their needs (as many agencies do), Tearfund invited a clothes trader to come and set up a mobile shop in a big tent. Then they gave each family a voucher to spend in the shop, and a bag to put their selected items in. How much more dignified to be able to go and browse and choose what you need. Of course, we can’t always work like this, but when we can, we should.

Last week we did our first cash distribution inside Mosul. It was quite a momentous occasion as highly vulnerable families received the equivalent of $400 each to help them purchase the essentials they need to help them get back on their feet following their recent displacement. As we listened to the mortars falling nearby, I was so humbled to see the respect with which my staff treated each individual, with how peacefully everyone waited their turn to receive their cash, and the clear relief when they walked away. People who had lost everything, who are living in such incredibly difficult circumstances now have a tiny bit of control back. Men can once again provide something of what their families need. Mothers can breathe a little easier. It’s not much, and it's not the only way we should be helping, but I’m convinced that it’s so much better than a box of stuff that we selected on their behalf.

All this is why I find it so hard to see the clothing collections going on in the UK at the moment for Iraq. I understand that it’s nice to feel a tangible connection with your giving. I understand that giving your unwanted clothes gives you the impression that you are avoiding waste (both because your clothes are ‘recycled’ and because you imagine that the costs associated with this kind of aid are low). But is it the best for the person you are trying to help? Is it the best for the country where you are sending it? And is it even financially savvy? The cost of trucking items all the way here is phenomenal. Clothes here can be inexpensive, they come from Turkey – they cross just a single border to get here. You have the opportunity to provide dignity to those who so desperately need it, as well as supporting the wider re-building of the Iraq economy by giving your money to agencies like DRC and Tearfund (and many others) who prioritise cash programming as much as possible. 

P.S. For the most part giving is giving. You are not actually doing harm to vulnerable people by sending second hand clothes here. I'm just trying to provoke you in to thinking it through a bit more, and putting the needs of the recipient before your need to feel useful. Not everyone will agree with me, and that's fine :-) 

Imagine

In this post, I have weaved together fragments of different stories I've heard over the last 2 years. This specific story is therefore fictional, but it is based on the reality of life on the ground for people here. I hope it helps you to put yourself in to the shoes of your fellow man. 

Imagine you live in a big city. You've always lived there, you grew up here, you married here, you started your own family here. You have a nice house, and because your parents are elderly, they live with you, your wife and your 3 children here. You work in construction, and are quite senior in the business. Or rather you were, until it went bankrupt because of the current crisis. You've been living under ISIS rule for almost 3 years. During that time you have had to make incredibly tough decisions for your family - how much should you go along with the new regime for the sake of relative safety? Should you continue to send your children to school and risk them being impacted by horrendous propaganda, or keep them home? Which of your neighbours can you really trust now? You used to know them all, and live harmoniously together but now you don't know who the informers are. You don't know how long this will go on for. You know now that you should have left before all this started. That's the benefit of hindsight. At the time you had no idea it would be like this. You've lived through so many different regimes and crises that you thought this would be ok. 

As supply routes become restricted prices escalate. Slowly at first, and then quicker. You have a small amount of cash saved in your house and you use this now to purchase the essentials you need to feed your family. But prices continue to rise and you are still stuck. So now you have to start to sell or trade your less essential belongings. Jewelry, sewing machine, TV, furniture, white goods. Whatever you can live without gets sold over time. As you get more desperate so do ISIS. They start to carry out house searches to try and find food for themselves. You know that hiding food is punishable by death - you have to choose to either try to find some genius hiding place, or to give up what little you have. It's been illegal to have a mobile phone since the beginning of this whole thing, but you have managed to keep yours by hiding it inside the TV. But now you need to sell the TV, so you need to find a new hiding place for the phone. You can't afford to lose it - it's your only link to the outside world, and if you ever manage to get out of here, it's how you will try and locate your wider family who have already escaped. You know that if you are found to have a phone you will be executed.  

One of your children becomes very sick. You think it's because the water that is coming out of your house taps is no longer treated. You have been boiling it for drinking, but now your youngest child, just a toddler, has horrendous diahhrhea. She needs medicine. You ask around to try and find a contact who might have something for her as the pharmacies closed months ago when stocks of even basic medicines ran out. You finally find someone who can get you what you need. But you can't afford the price. You speak to the neighbours you feel you can trust and between you, you manage to scrape together the cash you need. You daughter's health improves with the treatment, but she is not fully recovered.

As food supplies become more restricted you start to pool what you have with neighbours to try and ensure that at least the children are fed. Adults begin to intentionally reduce their intake so that the children can have what they need. 

You hear rumours that the front lines are moving. The fighting is getting closer to you. Leaflets are dropped from the sky telling you that liberation is coming but that you should stay where you are and wait. You don't know whether to trust what is written. As neighbours you discuss continually whether to risk an escape attempt. You've heard the stories of what happens to those caught trying to escape. You've been forced to watch the public executions. But you also know that if you stay you risk being used as a human shield as ISIS tries to defend itself. You know that ISIS has rounded up whole neighbourhoods when the army is approaching, and forcibly moved them further in to their areas of stronghold. 

Eventually, with the sound of war getting closer every day, you agree as a group to try to leave. But what about your elderly parents who can barely walk? They are already weak from hunger and stress. You are going to have to leave under the cover of darkness and move quickly. They will slow you down, possibly to a fatal extent. In the end you agree with them that they will stay 'to keep the house safe'. You are appointed the leader of your escape group of 30 people. You need to make various contacts in order to make your way out of your neighbourhood to safety. You need people at various points alerting you to potential danger. You carefully arrange things and agree a night to make the attempt. As a group you agree what to take with you - basically your phones and the clothes on your backs, along with any small items which have value and could be sold later and any ID documentation you have managed to keep. Small babies will be drugged to stop them crying out. One of the men in your group used to be an Iraqi policeman and is therefore wanted by ISIS. He agrees to dress as a woman for the journey.

On the appointed day you hear that ISIS have been moving sniper positions. The escape attempt must be delayed until your contacts understand more. You re-set the date for 2 days time. The day arrives, and this time you are given the green light to make the attempt. You say your goodbyes to your parents, and begin the journey. It must done in absolute silence to avoid detection. You move through the streets slowly, hugging the walls as you go, moving through alleyways. You have been moving for about 30 minutes when the tail end of the group is spotted by a sniper on a roof. He starts firing. You see 3, maybe 4 people fall including a child. There is nothing you can do. To approach will alert the sniper to your presence. You simply have to watch in silence. You allow the group to move past you, and as the end of the group comes through, there are 2 wounded people - one has a bullet to the shoulder and one to the hip. You have no medical supplies, but you use clothing to try and stem the bleeding. The human convoy must continue. You cannot stop. Eventually, 6 hours after setting off, having covered only 5km, you reach the mustering point set up by the Iraqi army to receive escapees. The relief is overwhelming. The soldiers search you to make sure you are not carrying explosives. You join a queue of hundreds of people awaiting processing. You check on your group. You lost 4 on the journey, and 2 are injured. You try to alert the soldiers that you have injured people in your group, they come and take a look. The injuries are stable and so they tell you that you must wait. There are only ambulances for the most emergency cases. After a few hours, you are given places on a bus which will take you to a screening centre where you will undergo fuller security screening by National Intelligence. 

The screening centre is huge. There are people everywhere. The staff separate your group in to men and adolescent boys, and women and children. The women and children are sent to a different area to wait for you. The men and boys are taken in to the screening area. Here your name is checked against a myriad of databases to see if you are suspected of terrorist activities. Even though you know your are innocent, you breathe a sigh of relief when you are found to be clear and released to re-join your family. Over the next few hours the group is gradually re-unified as the men and boys are released. Finally you are just waiting for one man. He doesn't appear. Instead the group is moved on to another bus and taken to a camp. His wife is distraught at having to leave him behind but there is no choice. You remind yourselves that at least you have your phones so once he is released he will be able to call you and find out where you have ended up.

You arrive at the camp. It's now 24 hours since you left your house. The camp management ask you all to wait in a large warehouse while they process you and allocate you a tent. Once again you draw attention to the injured people in your party, and the camp management team call the camp ambulance. Finally the injured will receive some treatment. It takes some hours, but you do get a tent. Despite it being the middle of the night, there is also a team giving out life-saving food and water rations as well as some hygiene items so you can at least wash. You also receive a coupon for a large kit of things like mattresses and blankets, but you cannot claim this until the following day, so for now you sleep on the bare concrete floor of the tent. You and your wife try to settle your children. Despite being exhausted, they have started to have nightmares and so the night is long as you try to calm them each time they wake up screaming.

The next day you offer to try to help the family of the missing man locate him. You go to the camp management office and ask them to help. They take the details down and say they will try and find out where he is, but that it's unlikely that they will be able to. You make your own inquiries around the camp. You start to understand the system and hope that he is simply being held for further questioning and will be sent to the camp as soon as he is cleared. In the meantime you assist the family in collecting their kit, and collect your own. You use some of your precious money to purchase some flour for your wife to make some bread with. You try to come to terms with your new normal. 

A week later you hear that a bus of men and boys has arrived at the camp from the screening site. The arrivals are kept outside of the camp unless they have families inside. You go with the wife to camp management to see if her husband is on the bus. It takes a while, but eventually, you hear he is and the family is reunited. 

As the weeks go on, you settle in to camp life. The children start to attend a kind of club where they get to play and be kids. You manage to get a few days of work here and there - sometimes doing garbage collection, sometimes doing construction labour in the town. You are bringing in just enough money to keep the family fed. You get to know your new neighbours. It's not home but it's safe. You have no idea how long you will need to stay here. As soon as it's safe you will try and go home, if you still have a home to go to. Thankfully for now, your network of contacts has managed to get news to you that your parents are still safe. Your wife has a full time job on her hands trying to keep the tent clean - 5 people in a small room is a challenge, and the family fed and watered. Life is different here, and it's a lot of change to get used to. But you are no longer woken by the sound of airstrikes and artillery; and that can only be a good thing.

Tigris-fun

The Tigris River in Iraq flows from Turkey and Syria in to Iraq and all the way to Basra on the coast. Throughout this conflict it has played a significant role. Bridges crossing the river have been blown up by both sides over the last few years, initially to halt the advance of IS and more recently by IS as they have sought to halt the Iraqi army progress.

As areas on the western side of the Tigris were re-captured, the various military forces have put in temporary pontoon bridges to allow access from the east to west initially, and now freedom of movement in both directions. These bridges are few and far between, and single file. They are quite a bottle neck for all of us trying to work on the western banks. Due to security concerns, until recently, agencies have been reluctant to have staff staying on the western side. The bridges have pretty early curfews, making it fairly impossible to get out and across to the east in an emergency. As the western banks have been obliterated by conflict we are talking about areas where there are no functioning hospitals, no clear system of security – lots of different militias are still present, no electricity, water shortages etc, etc. So you can see why we didn’t want to face a situation of stranded staff.

More recently things have improved, and we have made the decision to allow expats to overnight in the area in the week. Travel times are a bit insane and so it means that their working days are currently fairly short. However, in order to get to this point we needed to identify a suitable house, and make the necessary safety upgrades – things like putting in CCTV, raising walls, hiring guards, creating a safe room for staff to retreat to in an attack etc.

Meanwhile, we have been having a LOT of rain. This is excellent for the farmers, less good for those people living in tents, and fairly difficult for us. Pontoon bridges don’t cope that well with significant rises in water levels. Over the last couple of weeks we have had many frustrating days where we have either heard in advance that the bridges have closed, or have got all the way to the bridge to find it closed. This has massively impeded our ability to operate smoothly, we have had to delay assistance to families simply because we couldn’t reach them.

The rain has stopped now, but yesterday we heard that the water in a big dam up-river just north of Mosul city is dangerously high and so the military are planning how to open the dam to allow the water to flow out. Of course this is a potential nightmare. Either they release the water quite quickly, with the bridges removed before hand to avoid damage, but cause some flooding; or they release the water slowly and leave the bridges in place risking damage and periodic closures. So yesterday we started to make contingency plans. Despite it being a weekend the team pulled together marvellously. We have a huge number of ‘critical relief item’ kits (think mattresses, blankets, stoves, kitchen sets, hygiene items) which we are planning to distribute to some newly displaced people on the west bank. On the west bank we have a warehouse but the contract was ending today. So we quickly decided to move our kits from our warehouse this side to our warehouse that side and pay for an additional month of storage. If the bridges close again we won’t be able to get the kits trucked over. The team worked in to the night last night loading up the trucks and today they successfully delivered the kits to our warehouse on the west bank. This is no mean feat when it also involves multiple check points and various different permissions letters.

Today I went with the team to the west bank to do what we could to get our new guesthouse (for which we literally just got the keys) up to a good enough standard for expats to camp in it for the odd night or two if the bridges close again. This meant taking fire safety equipment with us and installing it, changing all the locks, purchasing locally a load of things like foam mattresses, blankets, drinking water, dry snacks (there’s no kitchen in the house yet to cook), toilet paper etc etc. We also rapidly hired 3 temporary guards and trained them in their roles. The other safety upgrades will be done in the next week or two, along with kitting the house out with proper furniture and equipment. We also agreed to try and hire a boat in order to move staff across the river in an emergency. There are a number of fishermen in the area so we found a contact and went to see his boats and test them out – checking where the boat will dock each side of the river (I say dock, it’s really just wedging it on to a muddy swamp area). We quickly contracted his boat to move our staff from one bank to the other whenever needed. The hunt continues for lifejackets and/or life floats – these are fairly unusual items here.

We had a mere 4 hours on the west bank today, so I’m coming away pretty chuffed with what we achieved. Should the bridge close again tomorrow, we’ll now at least be able to continue our activities without further delays. Days like today remind me that there is no other job as varied, as crazy and as fun as this one. Now we just need to provide some wellies for the staff using the boats so that they can squelch through the mud from car to boat J

Enjoying 'testing' out the boat