Residents of a village have begun the process of returning to their village after 50 years of forced displacement, but are living under tents and away from basic services.
Tal Bahlul, located in the mountainous areas of western Nineveh province, was evacuated in 1975 under pressure from the Iraqi government, and the people were resettled in forced communities.
"When ISIS attacked Shingal (Sinjar) and Nineveh in 2014, we were displaced from the forced communities in the camps,” said Shakir Khero, who has returned to his village few months ago.
“After 10 years of living in the camps for the internally displaced persons IDP, we decided to return to our villages. We are in our hometown, but still living under tents as we have been for the past 10 years."
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) took control of Shingal in August 2014; enslaved 6,417 Ezidis, of whom 2,700 are still missing, killing more than 1,000 accusing them of being heretics, and displacing 360,000, some of whom have not yet returned, according to the KRG’s Bureau for Rescue of Abducted Ezidis.
There are about 550,000 Ezidis in Iraq, over 100,000 of whom have migrated. Those who remain in displacement or majority are located in Sheikhan district (north of Mosul, partly under Duhok and partly on Nineveh) and Shingal district (120 km west of Mosul). and administratively belongs to Nineveh province).
Shakir has two children, both of whom were students in the IDP camp. Now, because the village does not have a school, he has to walk a long distance every day to get his children to school.
Currently, 100 families have returned to the village of Tal Bahlul. Some of these families want to rebuild their houses on their own, but others cannot afford it.
The village's roads are unpaved and have traffic problems, although the Nineveh local government claims to have rebuilt all the areas where people have returned from displacement.
"I was only 12 years old when we were moved from the village. Now I am 62 years old... The situation in the village has not changed at all," said Murad Hassan, calling on the government to restore prosperity to the village.
The Ba'ath regime, led by the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (1979-2003), implemented a policy of forced relocation in the 1970s and 1980s against thousands of villages in the disputed territories and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq KRI, including Tal Bahlul.
Ahmad Yousef, the mayor of Ba'aj district, told KirkukNow, "We are aware of the situation of the families who returned to their villages a month ago after 50 years."
“They do not have access to water so we provided small water tankers in coordination with an NGO.”
He stressed that they have sent a special committee to the villages to assess their situation and inform the local government of Nineveh.
