Even with the latest successes of the Iraqi Army and the forces of the Kurdish regional government, known as the peshmerga, hundreds of thousands of refugees in Iraq are facing a harsh winter in makeshift camps.
More than two million refugees who have fled their homes in fear for their lives, are going to be entering winter with little to no supplies.
“People send us money. We know that there is help, but we are not receiving it,” says Munir, a refugee who decided to build his own modest concrete house after two years of displacement. “The government subsidized a room where we could barely fit a kitchen. We had to pay for the rest with our own savings.”
The refugees are pessimistic about their future.The circumstances of the Islamic State are still too fresh in the minds of the refugees. Some say they have lost faith in their government.
One man at the camp shows his scars all over his body but his afraid to share his name for the sake of his safety. He states that he is a former Iraqi solider. When the jihadists reached his village, he says, they set his house on fire while he was inside with the rest of his family.
Numbers of the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), published in January indicated that there were 2,047,700 refugees in Iraq alone.
Although most are feeling pessimistic about will happen next, they are grateful to be alive and be with their families.
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Photo credit IHH Humanitarian relief
