photo: Eddy van Wessel

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Saturday, October 3, 2015

Eid under hardship for IDPs in Kurdistan

The annual Islamic celebration of Eid al-Adha finds many Iraqis who fled from Sunni areas to the Kurdistan region in a situation of hardship.

Not only have civil servants from Mosul not received any government wages for months, for some, UN food coupons were cut too.

"Just before Eid I finally received two months of my salary from Baghdad. Before that nothing for six months,” said Raed, a former policeman from Mosul. The 30-year-old now works as a barber. His shop in the Harsham refugee camp outside the Kurdistan region capital of Erbil is busy, even though it is Eid, one of the most important Islamic holidays.

His customers are mainly young men he attracted with his skills using the barber’s razor, as they are boasting partly shaved heads. They all originate from Iraq’s second city Mosul and the Shingal Region, both areas now in the hands of the Islamic State.

Read the story here

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