Iraqis flee Isis as army forces advance on Mosul

When Iraqi forces fought their way into her village, Asma and her family rushed out to greet the soldiers, celebrating their liberation from Isis. But as the army pushed on towards Mosul, the jihadi fighters re-emerged, firing on villagers and forcing Asma and her family to flee to Iraq's northern Kurdistan region.

On reaching an overflowing displacement camp in Debaga, they crammed into a school, joining hundreds of people who had escaped the fighting in Iraq’s campaign to recapture Mosul – Isis’s last urban stronghold in the country.

Families spilled out of classrooms on to mattresses into the schoolyard as women lined up to wash clothes in bathroom sinks. It was so chaotic when Asma arrived on Tuesday night – a day after the battle for Mosul was launched – she and her 10-year-old son spent their first night sleeping outside on the concrete floor.

“We didn’t just flee, we were humiliated,” said Asma, who asked not to use her full name to protect family members in Mosul. “The army told us to stay in our homes and we listened to them. They left us, and Isis fighters came out of their tunnels and attacked us, calling us traitors. We had to run for our lives.”

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi on Thursday said the offensive, which involves Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga forces and is deemed the biggest and most complicated battle in the two-year war to reclaim Iraqi territory from Isis, was progressing well.

“The forces are pushing towards the town more quickly than we thought and more quickly than we had programmed in our campaign plan,” Mr Abadi said.

But the troops are still some distance from the city, and aid agencies have warned that the operation could trigger a massive humanitarian crisis, with estimates that some 200,000 people could flee in the initial weeks of the offensive on Mosul and its environs. Aid agencies are urging Iraqi forces to secure corridors for civilians to flee, and dealing with the displaced people will be one of the sternest tests facing Baghdad.

At its height, Isis seized nearly a third of Iraq in 2014 when it over-ran Mosul, Iraq's second city and blitzed across northern regions of the country.

So far, the anticipated exodus aid workers have braced for has been limited to the villages near the city and the embattled town of Hawija to the east. It remains unclear what will happen when forces reach Mosul city, where an estimated 1.5 million residents are trapped.

Sanctuary

Aid workers estimate that in the first few days of the offensive, some 1,700 people reached the Debaga camp, which is already full to capacity having provided sanctuary for people fleeing Isis for two years.

Iraqi forces have instructed residents in Mosul and nearby villages – via radio and leaflets dropped by US planes – to stay in their homes if possible. The military hopes that would help prevent Isis from using people’s homes to attack in street-to-street fighting, while also easing the burden of mass displacement.

But Iraqis who fled and some still inside Isis territory say that as the campaign heats up, they have seen the jihadis force people out of some villages en masse.

“Some of them were sleeping out in the fields,” said one man near Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul. “Isis forces them out so they can use their houses to attack – and so people can’t stay and give information to the army.”

Most of those who escaped describe harrowing, nightlong journeys through fields mined with bombs.

“People who head out try to help each other and share information as they go. There was so much shelling in the area that everyone was in a panic, and hungry and tired. Isis shoots at people who leave,” said a woman from Hawija, who asked not to give her name. “Once you head out, it’s just you and your luck.”

Pressures

Another 8,000 refugees are believed to have fled over the border into war-torn Syria, according to officials running the northeastern Kurdish-held enclave across the border.

The UN refugee agency says another 100,000 people may head over the border towards Syria as well as Turkey – adding to the refugee pressures in a nation already hosting more than two million Syrians and which has become a conduit for hundreds of thousands who have crossed the sea to Europe.

At the Debaga camp, crowds of men are penned off in a corner for extra screening to ensure they are not Isis infiltrators. They gather around the chain-link fence to speak to people who stop to chat. One scrawny 19-year-old says he fled alone from his village Nimrod, and shrugs off the temporary embarrassment of being locked up.

“I’m trying to imagine what it will be like without Isis. There is nothing more bitter than what we went through,” he says. “We have something to hope for now.” – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016)