More shanty towns are appearing across Baghdad, adding a wave of
refugees to those already living in dire poverty
Friday 25 September 2015 11:30 UTC
Last update:
Friday 2 October 2015 18:16 UTC
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/poverty-iraq-promised-reforms-1887217637#sthash.aP3RIuvS.dpuf
BAGHDAD – Four-year-old Saja and three-year-old Huda were playing in their front yard. In one of the capital’s random residential compounds that have spread significantly in the past few years, the two barefoot girls, wearing dusty, threadbare clothes, ran around heaps of waste and debris and down an uneven mud road, covered with coarse gravel and glass shards.
Just a few miles away is Baghdad’s fancy al-Mansour neighbourhood, the country's largest mall, with expensive international clothing stores and high-end restaurants in which a meal for a couple will cost no less than $300.
"It’s a free place,” said Adnan, Saja's father, of their home in the al-Wishash area in the city's north. Adnan found metallic sheets in a dump and used them, along with bed sheets, to build three rooms off the side of an old Ba’ath Party government building.
“We have been living here since 2006 when we were displaced and forced to leave our homes, stores and everything that we ever owned.”
Alongside 14 family members, including two stepmothers and two sister-in-laws, Saja and her sister live in the shaky three-room house built of bricks and tin plates. The house is surrounded by mountains of garbage.
- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/poverty-iraq-promised-reforms-1887217637#sthash.aP3RIuvS.dpuf