Field Days & Earthquakes

What a difference a field day makes! This week I got out on two field days - one to Kirkuk and one to Qayyarah. Result - I have my work mojo back :-)

When I spend all my time in an office, problem solving for projects I don't see I get pretty grumpy. I start to wonder why I'm here. When I get out to the projects and the field offices, spending time with the amazing staff, meeting beneficiaries, problem solving at the site of the problem - then I know why I'm here.

As I've shared recently, political developments here have had a big impact on our ability to reach project sites. We've been experiencing both regulatory access issues - actually obtaining the various letters we need to pass through check points, but also physical access issues as check points have been closed preventing road travel across political lines. This has meant that field days have been less frequent and often only confirmed at the last minute; and I have had to wait until the much more useful staff have space for me :-)

This week everything finally seemed to fall in to place for a day in Qayyarah - we received our last letter which had been delayed; and we had managed to scout out a couple of roads that circumnavigated the one particular closed check point which had been preventing our movements. So we set off - there were two routes to choose from - one which was a better quality road but longer, and one over a mountain pass. We set off on the longer route and as we went we noticed that some trenches had been dug and we were having to off road now and then to bypass them. But 3 and a half hours later we finally reached the camp. I then decided that on the way back we should try the mountain road out - it was a lot of fun (the drivers may disagree with me) as it went through some beautiful scenery and also a weird kind of self-governed area of Turkish refugees from the early 1990s who are part of a specific military group. What had been a refugee camp is now a town that they control independently, and even kept control of when ISIS took the entire surrounding areas. The route was shorter but won't be appropriate when the rains start. Frustratingly when the team went the next day without me on the longer route, they discovered that our little ruse to avoid the closed check point has been discovered and so that route has now been blocked off also (those trenches we noticed being dug have been put in place to prevent use of the road) - so we are only left with the mountain route which remains open as it is held by a different military group.

I also went to Kirkuk this week - again the route is now beautiful through the mountains and some pretty villages, but we've gone from a 90 minute journey to 3 hours each way minimum. This makes the time you actually get at project sites pretty short - we don't want to be traveling outside of the city limits in the dark as roads are not lit and the risk of having an accident is much higher. So this means you might get 3 hours at a field site for 6 hours in the car. Not great statistics.

The teams are going to get pretty fed up of these travel times very quickly, and I've already put in place some recommendations to try and avoid burnout. But for me, one of the things I like about field days is the opportunity to chat with staff on the journeys. In the office I have my own private office which people are always popping in to, but I miss out on the general chit chat that happens in the team rooms. So being stuck in a car for 3 hours with staff is fine by me (most of the time!) - it's precious time for getting to know them. This week I traveled to Kirkuk with colleagues from Iraq, Syria and Sudan - conversation was so interesting - talking about Syria and the numbers of Syrian refugees now in Sudan, the situation in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, learning more about why my Syrian colleague is not able to return home yet. Traveling to Qayyarah I was with two Iraqi colleagues and a Syrian colleague and again conversation was so interesting - they told me all about the self-governed area we travelled through, joking that we had been in 3 countries that day - Iraq, Turkey and Kurdistan. If I hadn't been with them, I never would have known that little bit of history.

I can't write a blog post this week and not touch on the earthquake. What an experience. I have felt tiny tremors in other countries before but nothing like this. The walls of my house literally swayed and the floor felt like jelly. But thankfully in my area there was no real damage. We were all just quite freaked out - including the local staff who say they have never felt such a large earthquake before. Sadly on the border areas and Iran, it has done some damage and we have spent some time this week looking at how we can support our colleagues in the DRC Iran programme with any response they may do.

I also celebrated my 3 year Iraqiversary this week. Crazy. When I look back I can't believe it's been 3 years already; but at the same time I feel like I've been here forever. This week kind of summed up what the last 3 years have been like - full of highs and lows, new experiences and challenging work. No two weeks have been the same, I have never felt like I have hit the point where life and work is stable. There is never a dull moment, you never know what the next day will bring. And while that is amazing in many ways, it is also tiring. And so I have put a time limit on my life in Iraq - I will be finishing my assignment here in March in order to take a break. I don't know what's next beyond taking that break. I'm looking forward to my final few months in this country that has stolen part of my heart - let's see what other new experiences I have before I leave!

Traditions

I am so aware that I haven't blogged for a few weeks. I keep thinking about it but am totally uninspired as to what to write about! Then I realised I should write about why I'm uninspired.....

The last few weeks have continued to be a frustrating time of being stuck in the office. We have had odd days where teams have been able to travel, but it's essential project staff only and that, sadly, does not include the boss very often! When I add to the access issues the fact that I've been battling some sickness it's no wonder I have cabin fever. Last week I was off work sick for 3 days, during which time the only people I saw were at the doctor's! All this means I feel pretty out of touch with our work and am getting a bit bored in the office every day. I'm seriously hoping to get to Mosul at the end of this week to see our new office which the team have been working on getting set up. So no contextual updates for you all I'm afraid.

Outside of work we've been having fun though. The weather is at one of it's few sweet spots of the year, where it's still warm during the day but nice and cool at night. It is dusty though. Last week we had a 3 day dust storm which destroyed a number of tents and latrines in the camp, as well as causing breathing issues for people. But that's passed and we're back to perfect 'sitting outside' weather which is my favourite. So I'm making the most of it by hosting various mini parties - dinner parties, outdoor cinema on my patio, BBQs and this week Fireworks Night.

One of the things I love about the adventure of living overseas is the opportunity to bring those traditions from home to life, and to include others in that. I love fireworks night in England, I love going to a small local display with friends, watching the fireworks while drinking something hot, heading to the pub after for a beer. It's just so English :-)

This year, I invited my Brit friends and colleagues over and a few extras to celebrate. We had hot dogs (with real english pork sausages!), cups of soup, mulled wine, a fire pit to emulate a bonfire, sparklers and some 'fireworks' that were really birthday candles. We played classical firework music while we watched the 'display', and we educated our non-Brit friends on the history of Guy Fawkes. It wasn't the same as it would be at home, but it was just as fun.

Traditions are so important in our lives to give us that sense of identity that we can struggle to find in this work. It's like creating family traditions, which bring a real sense of belonging to kids. Bringing traditions to life overseas helps us to remember that we aren't alone - even if no one around us shares that tradition, by drawing people in to our memories we fight that feeling of loneliness. And it goes both ways, I love being invited to Thanksgiving for example and getting an insight in to a really important American celebration. Sharing in these traditions together brings a real richness to our lives overseas where we are often thrown together in to a complete mishmash of cultures. You might not envy me for much, but I hope you're jealous of that!

A Stand Off

I've been back from leave for a week now. Those of you that follow the blog will know that it was touch and go as to whether I would get out due to the issues in Iraq. Towards the end of my break, things heated up further, and as I had my 'blood test' visa validation in Baghdad (which interestingly requires no blood), it began to look like I wouldn't get back to Erbil and may be temporarily stuck in Baghdad. Thankfully I managed to get a flight up to Erbil which handily flew around Kirkuk avoiding fighter jets and landed safely if somewhat delayed.

Things in Iraq are best described right now as tense. The aftermath of the referendum in Kurdish-controlled areas continues to escalate as both sides try not to lose face and harden their stances. The 'border' between areas controlled by Federal Iraq and areas controlled by the Kurdish Government of Iraq has been shifting through force, and then reinforced by regulatory requirements for crossing. How does this affect us?

Well we are not particularly in any additional, imminent physical danger but the situation is impacting our work significantly. Some examples are:

• New and existing international staff being stuck outside of the country until new visas are processed, as we didn't used to need the visas for all staff.
• Delays in receiving our 'access letters' to enable us to pass through various check points to reach project sites. The teams which usually travel around have now been 'grounded' for 2 weeks and the cabin fever is palpable. Projects are continuing but not being able to access them increases the risk of things not being done to the highest quality.
• Increased travel times to areas we can reach as we have to navigate around new check points and routes. For example it was taking 90 minutes to reach our Kirkuk field office, it's now taking 3 hours.
• Issues with moving money between 'Iraqi' banks and 'Kurdish' banks due to the sanctions imposed by Baghdad.
• Not being able to move simple provisions between offices such as necessary paperwork, supplies, equipment etc. Many of my offices are in areas where markets are not functioning fully so we are usually trucking stuff around in order to keep staff supplied with stationary, cleaning items, tea & coffee, IT equipment etc, etc.
• Local staff feeling nervous about the situation and some are less willing to travel than they were.
• Continually getting turned around when trying to access areas. Today we tried to get through to Mosul only to get to the check points to find that during the time we'd been on the road they had closed again. Not only is this frustrating, but it carries the risk that teams get 'stuck' on the wrong side of the check points. We're prepared for this in terms of having places for them to sleep in each area, but it's not ideal.

Both sides in this need to come together for peace talks before things escalate any further, but at the moment that seems to be impossible. Please pray that the coalition is able to facilitate political talks to bring a peaceful end to this stand off, and for us to be able to do our work in the meantime. Please pray for the continued safety of the staff as they try and move around in tense areas, and for wisdom as we continually monitor the situation and make decisions on where to go when. There's certainly never a dull day!

Political Wranglings

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Bergen, Norway, writing this as the rain pours down outside. I wanted to give a little overall update for what's happening in Iraq as some of you will have seen bits and pieces on the news and via my Facebook feed.

1. Hawiga - this is the latest area of conflict near me in Iraq. It's a bubble of territory that is still held by ISIS. Over the last couple of weeks the military offensive to recapture the area has begun and with it has come some fairly significant numbers of people displaced. Displacement has happened quickly in waves which make it harder for the humanitarian community to keep up, but generally things seem under control from that perspective. My teams are slightly less affected by this as most of what's happening falls outside of my area of responsibility. However there is a specific town we've been trying to reach for months now. The one I wrote about ages ago with the river running through it with ISIS on one side. This town became inaccessible to us shortly after I wrote that blog post due to deteriorating security. It is now part of the frontline of the current military campaign. We know people are on desperate need there and we have supplies ready to go. The only reasons we have not been able to in the last two weeks is logistical issues. There are not enough bridges in this area across the Tigris - bridges were destroyed in the conflicts and so we rely on military pontoon bridges which are put in to place to allow access. However, because there are not enough the military sometimes has to move them to new areas. This happened in the last two weeks - we lost a bridge in Mosul as it was needed for Hawiga. Then the bridges are also struggling with the level of use and so weight restrictions get put in place making it hard to truck heavy supplies around. There also isn't enough warehousing available so storing stocks near populations in need is becoming a logistical problem too.

2. Add to that the current political climate. On 25th September there was a referendum in areas under Kurdish control for an independent Kurdish state. I won't get in to the politics here as that's not my job but suffice to say that the vote was not welcomed by the Iraqi Federal Government (or many international governments) and has been declared unconstitutional. The government has imposed various sanctions as a result, making travel between Kurdish controlled areas and Federal Iraq more and more difficult. We already had to have separate permissions for the different areas to get through checkpoints but it has got tighter and tighter. For my teams this is a very real issue - my most senior staff, both expat and national, are based in Kurdish areas but travel daily to project sites in Iraq proper or in disputed areas. Moving people and stock across those lines is suddenly much harder. As is leaving the country.

3. Sanctions - Until Friday 29th September international flights landed directly in the Kurdish areas at the two international airports - Erbil and Suli. From 6pm on 29th air space was closed to international carriers. What makes this difficult is that those of us living in Kurdish areas have a residency and visa related to that. Living in Federal Iraq requires a separate visa, and you cannot even transit through the airport in Baghdad without a visa. So there are huge numbers of expatriate staff across agencies who have got stuck either inside Kurdish areas, or are out on leave and cannot re-enter. Other sanctions that are being considered and/or implemented by Baghdad against Kurdish controlled areas are things like refusing to transfer money from the central bank to regional banks, refusing to pay civil servant salaries, asking diplomatic missions that do not have bases in Baghdad to leave etc. The ramifications of the referendum reach to neighbouring countries also. Turkey and Iran are both opposed to the idea of an independent Kurdistan and so have begun their own posturing - military exercises are suddenly being carried out in border areas.

What does all this mean?

Well, international staff and humanitarian work in general is not a target in all this. We are not under any additional threat. But our work has become much harder overnight. We are waiting to see what impact international talks may have, but are gearing ourselves up for a sustained period of trying to function in this political climate. We are putting together contingency plans. We are ensuring we have all the visas we might need. We are checking we have different options for banking in-country. And so on and so on. If you pray, please pray for resolutions to this political stand-off; we may not be a target but all these additional hoops to jump through ultimately impact our ability to provide assistance to those most in need.

The Realities of War

This week one of my field days was to Qayyarah. Just a regular visit. As we approached the area, we found ourselves surrounded in all directions by military vehicles. There were vehicles full of soldiers, there were pick up trucks with rocket launchers fixed in the back, there were flat bed trucks stacked with boxes of ammunition, there were tanks, there were military humvees, there were trucks stacked with food supplies. We knew it would be like this, we were anticipating the launch of a new offensive against ISIS in an area called Hawiga. And it's not exactly the first time I've seen this kind to troop movement. But as I watched all the movements, all these different armed groups (it's not as simple as the Army, RAF and Navy - we have all different ethnic factions with their own groups of fighters, their own flags, their own unique goal in mind) it struck me again what a truly dirty war this is.

Earlier in the week I was in my office listening to some new security information that staff had learned and we were trying to decide whether to suspend movements in an area based on these rumours. I was told in some detail (before I had a chance to say I didn't want to hear the specifics) of the torture that had been carried out on a captured ISIS fighter in order to try and glean information about sleeper cells.

As I watched all these men heading off to new frontlines this week, and thought about the treatment of those captured; I just kept thinking 'all of these men are sons, fathers, brothers, friends'. They are all leaving someone behind praying for their safe return. That's the reality of what is happening here and it's heartbreaking. If you pray, please continue to pray for peace in this country.

Mine Risk Education

I think I have mentioned on here before the issue of mines and explosives in this country. The years of different conflicts have left the land littered with unexploded bombs and mines. The latest conflict has seen a truly evil use of explosives hidden in children's toys, abandoned house, religious books etc; as well as the usual remnants of weapons that have failed to detonate. All of this puts populations at huge risk. I can't tell you how many stories we hear of children picking things up that then explode, or families returning to homes they have fled to find them booby trapped.

Part of my organisations work is highly specialised mine action work. This includes mine clearance, but in this post I want to tell you about Mine Risk Education (MRE). If you were returning home after fleeing during a conflict would you be able to spot potential dangers? Would your kiddies know how to stay safe? And how would you train them without scaring them?

This is where the incredible work of MRE comes in to play. We have teams that go in to pre-schools, schools, community centres, any where they can find groups of children or adults gathered regularly and teaches them about how to spot potential mines, how to report the sighting to the right agency, how to mark it so others are aware, and how to deal with an emergency. They do all this in fun, interactive ways that keep people's attention and helps them remember what they have learned.

Recently I went and watched an MRE session in a primary school and was astounded by the way the team made such important but difficult lessons accessible to kids. It reminded me of watching earthquake safety lessons in Haiti - children really are knowledge sponges. It's impossible to know what the true impact of this work is, but I really believe that it is a critical part of recovering from conflict.

P.S. Apologies for the awful quality photo - it's hard to get a photo of kids that doesn't show their faces when you're the foreigner in the room!

Water

Water - we all know it's the source of life. In Iraq, water is pretty scarce. You wouldn't know if from the amount of pavement watering that goes on in the summer months, but the reality is that in certain areas we suffer huge water shortages. Add to this the increased demand due to heat and the need for additional water for religious washing; and suddenly safe water provision is critical.

One of the areas that the Danish Refugee Council has developed expertise in within Iraq is water infrastructure. This means that our water and sanitation (WASH) teams not only work at providing latrines, showers, household water tanks, hygiene items and so on, as is standard in this kind of work; but we also take on large scale construction projects to develop the water infrastructure. The WASH team in my areas have been doing quite a bit of this recently. Last week, they triumphantly returned to the office from Western Mosul with a bottle of water from a pumping station which we have rehabilitated. It had just been turned on, and is now supplying about half of Western Mosul with water.

A few months ago, we took on a project to build from scratch a water pumping station and treatment unit on the banks of the Tigris to supply our camp with water, and the surrounding villages. This kind of work has the double whammy effect of assisting displaced people, but also helping the country as a whole to recover from years of conflict and damage. It helps to mitigate the tensions between those who are displaced and the communities they are taking refuge in; as all benefit, rather than just those who are displaced. We are currently operating this plant ourselves, but we are also training government workers who will take on management of the plant in a few months time. The team have put significant effort in to writing manuals in the local Arabic language, equipping the teams with the right kind of tools and doing hands on training so that when we leave the unit continues operating well.

A couple of weeks ago I took our Regional Director on a tour of our work, including the treatment plant. This was the first time I had seen it since it had been completed. I had hoped to visit earlier, but ISIS had made some territorial gains in the area meaning it was not safe for us to visit for a few weeks. We had to remotely manage our staff there, who incredibly were still working despite having to hide out in the office in the compound sometimes to avoid being caught up in cross-fire. Thankfully the area has been re-secured by Iraqi forces and so now we are able to visit, and our staff can travel freely between home and work again. Even more wonderfully, the local Sheikh was able to prevent any looting of the compound during the instability and so we had no repairs to do once we could access it again.

It really is quite an impressive piece of engineering. It pumps out 200,000 litres of treated water every hour, and runs for around 10 hours a day currently. The only way to describe it is to show you some photos.

The intake unit on the Tigris - draws the raw river water in to the water treatment unit. To the left of the foreground is the old intake unit for the previous water treatment plant which was destroyed by ISIS as you can see.

Overview of the water treatment unit showing multiple pipelines.

Looking down in to some of the holding tanks.

Chlorination system in the white tank, large blue tanks in the background are the holding tanks.