July 20-26, 2010

Dear Friends and Family,

Hello! Today (7/20) is my 40 th birthday. This morning the team gave me a card and a gift of locally made soap. As I was writing this just now, someone brought in a cake with a candle on it and the team sang "Happy Birthday". I appreciated that. Tonight we're going out to eat.

Though I write you about my travels, most days I stay at home and work on a laptop. That's what I did today, with the exception of walking to the offices of Kurdistan Save the Children. My teammate, Garland , and I talked with the director there about a young man I met at one of the camps. The director said they would look into the young man's situation and see if there were any services they could offer him.

It was Wednesday, July 14, that we visited two new camps that had formed in the past month and a half. For the past three years Iran and Turkey has bombarded the village areas along the border with Iraq . People leave their villages, return when the bombing and shelling stops, then leave when it starts up again. In the beginning of June, the bombing became intense. Many vacated their villages and moved to these new camps.

Doli Shahidan was the first camp we visited. The camp is in a desert valley by a stream. Mountains without noticeable vegetation are on either side of the camp, but provide no shade at midday. This was the largest camp I'd been to: 408 families. We decided to start by visiting the leader of the camp to get general information and get his permission to interview people. (It seems that every village and camp selects a leader to represent them.)

The leader gave us permission to interview people in the camp. We had two translators with us this time so that we could split into two groups and interview more people. I went with Mohammed and Marius to the tents up a slope, where we greeted a woman, who invited us in. The team had talked about how it would be good to interview women and children, not only men, who tend to be the ones to do interviews.

The woman answered our first question, then left, leaving a young man of about 13, Twana, to answer the rest of the questions. We asked why she left her village to come here.

"Because of the bombing we left," she said.

"We left because of the bombings and shelling and came here," Twana pitched in. "Our life is very different here to live under the sun. The government brought the water for us, but in the tanker the water becomes warm because it's under the sun, and every day we have to buy ice to make the water cold so we can drink it." He said there is a big difference between life in the village and life in the camp. Life was wonderful in the village.

"You are here in the morning," he said. "Noon or afternoon is very hot. You can't stay under the tents. People go to the river."

We walked down the slope to the road where two soldiers were. (A group of soldiers came with us to the camp because it was a restricted area.) Twana and a young man about his age were with them. This is the young man that I later spoke to Save the Children about. He lived in the camp alone in a tent by himself. His father had died and his mother left him. He preferred to live in the camp than with his older brother. One of the soldiers told us that he almost didn't receive the food that was distributed since he wasn't a family. But soldiers explained his situation to the aid workers, so they gave him the food.

The young man, Khidr, was very emotional as he answered our questions. He said Save the Children had talked to him, but he hadn't seen them lately. I told him he was very strong.

"The hills around the camp have landmines," Twana said. "A donkey was blown up. Some people came to teach about landmines. One child found a mine and brought it home – we told him to get rid of it, so he threw it in the river. It didn't go off. There are also scorpions."

Soldiers accompanied us to another camp, Gojar, that was also in a restricted area. The soldiers followed us in their vehicle that had a gun on its roof. We drove through the mountains to the camp.

We searched out the leader of the camp then sat down for water and tea. He told us there are sixty-four families in the camp from three villages.

"If there is any guarantee that the bombing will stop of course we will not stay here another hour – we will go back to the villages," he said. "Even though in our villages there are no good services it's still our land and we want to go back. We don't have a school, we don't have a hospital, we have a very bad road there, but we agree that we want to go back."

He explained that they never see PKK or PJAK soldiers, the ones Iran claims it targets with its attacks. He said Iran uses that excuse to bomb civilian people. They received some aid from NGO's and some money from the government when they first came to the camp a month-and-a-half ago, but not since. No latrines were built. They had to build their own. A truck comes each day from town selling water and other items.

"In the village we grew all the crops," he said. "We didn't need to bring anything from town. But right now our crops became dry because no one cares for them. We had everything in our own villages; we had fruit, we had vegetables…We sold all our sheep at a very cheap price. We lost this year's crop. Men sometimes go back to the village to work the land."

Mohammed, Marius and I walked across the road to interview people in the tents there. There were women lying down in a tent. Mohammed greeted them and they agreed to talk to us. One of them, Bahar, had her young son with her. She and Rania spoke one after the other.

"During the bombing people were very scared, especially women and children. There were no places inside our villages to hide. We could only run during the bombing. It was a very bad situation. It is also a very bad situation here because it's very hot. We can't stay in tents. The children can't sleep - they get sick from the heat. It's terrible. There are snakes and scorpions. The children are scared. They can't sit or sleep on the ground. There are no toilets or showers. Right now people are using their own tents to wash in – especially women. It's very hard for us."

"I am pregnant," Bahar said. "I will give birth in twenty days…Yesterday was very hot – no one could sleep…I put water on my son to make him cool five or six times a day so he can sleep."

"Ramadan is coming," Rania said referring to the Muslim season where people don't eat or drink during daylight hours. "We can't fast in these conditions...If we can't go back at least the government should prepare a better place than here. Here there is no electricity or water. We have to buy ice each day…We get water in a container from Qaladza but it's not clean and it its just one tanker for the whole camp. The doctor tells us not to drink the water but what can we do? We buy bottled water for the children. A few days ago I went to the hospital because of a kidney problem. The doctor said it was because of the water I'm drinking. You can see it tastes strange." We notice a strange taste to the water we've been drinking. "Why hasn't the government done anything? We mainly need toilet and shower facilities, especially

the women, because it's hard to take showers outside.

"During the elections the government sent cars to drive us to the election booth. But now nobody asks about us. They don't need us now. We have to cook in the tents because of the wind but we're afraid they'll catch fire."

After interviewing another group, we met back up with the team. The leader of the camp had agreed to drive us to the nearest abandoned village, Sarkhan. We crowded in with others into his four-wheel-drive vehicle and drove down into the valley on an extremely bumpy dirt road, the soldiers following in their vehicle. In the valley we drove through a stream. The driver of the soldiers' vehicle stopped at that point, not wanting to get stuck. We drove on to the village.

When we stopped we had to walk across a rickety foot bridge across a stream. Several men come from the camp and stay in the village during the day, returning to the camp at night. An older man showed us his abandoned house. The windows were broken from shrapnel. A crater from a bomb or rocket was five or ten yards from the house. He showed us the Holy Koran in one of the rooms in the house.

"If you leave your home empty you have to leave the Holy Koran," he said. He told us a number of his children had lived in the neighboring houses.

The fields were black because they had caught fire from the shelling. We saw another crater caused by a bomb or rocket. We could also see an Iranian base on top of a mountain in the distance.

"Our neighbors are not our friends," the camp leader told us, referring to Iran and Turkey . "Maybe the US and Europe are our friends. It's because we're Kurds. The gods made us that we're Kurds."

Considering that Iran and Turkey have targeted civilian areas for the past three years, where the PKK and PJAK aren't present, it does seem that the governments of those countries have no regard for the Kurdish people along the border. Both governments discriminate against the Kurdish populations in their countries not giving them their civil and human rights. The US also supports Iran and Turkey 's attacks, since they claim to target the PKK and PJAK which the US defines as terrorist groups. Even the government of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq doesn't provide much support for the people displaced by the attacks. The prime minister of the region told the displaced people they should return to their villages.

The PKK and PJAK are fighting for the rights of Kurds in Turkey and Iran . If these countries would grant the Kurds more civil and human rights, the leader of the PKK says they would lay down their arms.

Friday, July 23, our team participated in a picnic. A member of our team and our team's translator came up with the idea of inviting friends mainly from Sulaimaniya, the city where we live, to make "dolmas" (rice and other ingredients wrapped in grape leaves) and bring them to the camp near Zharawa. We rented a bus and took two other vehicles and caravanned to the camp. A big tent had been set up and people gathered together in it when we arrived. Those of us from the city served a large group in the tent, including many children. Afterwards people visited. New friendships and connections were made. The media was also there. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and people want to do it again. The event wasn't just "material aid" but a picnic where people from the city were able to meet and eat with people in the camp. It was also a way to raise awareness of the people's needs. One of the people from the city commented that, "This is what religion should be."