Fleeing ISIL, Finding Haven

"The difference between Kurds and Daesh turns out to be that we consider the humanitarian aspect more than they do."
"Those Arabs whose homes have been destroyed can be safe here."
"They are not Muslims [ISIL]. True Muslims do not behave as they do. No matter what your differences are, you do not kidnap women or murder Christians, including women who are pregnant."
Mohammed Amin, 86-year-old Kurdish elder, Dibis, Iraq

Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News   Mohammed Amid says ISIL militants are not Muslims. The 86-year-old elder of the Kurdish Salaey tribe decried their violence and treatment of women and supported his town offering shelter to Sunni Arabs who have fled ISIL's savagery.

"I tolerated Daesh not allowing me to smoke, showing up unannounced at my home to rob and steal, planting landmines on my property and keeping lists that showed whether we had gone to the mosque five times every day and condemning us as non-believers if we didn't."
"But I knew we had to escape when they forced us to swear an oath of loyalty and fight alongside them."
"I had an uncle who was kidnapped and has not been heard from since and another uncle who was detained for 22 days for the crime of staring at them. What I feared more than anything was that they would try to touch our women, because if they did that we would have immediately had to fight them to the death."
"Their behaviour is barbaric."
Rabea Abd Awad, Dibis, Iraq

Now, it is not only Shiite Muslims, Christian Iraqis and religious minorities such as the Yazidis who have fled from the Mosul area. Sunni Iraqis are joining the flood of migrants desperate to escape the coils of the Islamic State jihadis. They leave all that they own behind them in their towns, their farming villages. And settle under the protective umbrella of Kurdish Iraq. "It's horrible. I know they hate us, but for what reason? We are all Iraqis", one young woman appealed.

The United Nations calls the floods of Iraqi refugees IDPs. They migrate from areas in Iraq and Syria that ISIL  has taken over, to places where the jihadists haven't yet arrived. And the strain of sharing resources among new arrivals by the hard-stretched means of aid agencies and locals to help those who have struggled to find haven, is showing. The fall of the city of Ramadi when Iraqi security forces once again abandoned their posts led to tens of thousands of fresh IDPs flooding the area.

It is estimated that over ten million Syrians and Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes, desperate to escape the conflict and the terror that Islamic State brings with them. Refugees International numbers the internally displaced in Iraq at 3.5-million. Rabea Abd Awad paid a taxi driver $800 to take him, his brother and their families on a 19-hour trip that used to take 30 minutes in their bid to escape Islamic State depredations.

The Kurds are succeeding where the Iraqi government, with all the aid it receives from the Islamic Republic of Iran and its associated Shiite militias, not to speak of the training and arms given them by the United States, has failed, dismally. The Kurds continue in their slow but steady push to take back land from ISIL. By contrast, central and western Iraq is becoming increasingly frail in its capability of protecting itself from ISIL onslaughts, slowly but surely closing in on Baghdad.

Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News   All is quiet a few kilometres from the front lines as an Arab man who fled ISIL rule buys food from a Kurdish merchant. Many Kurdish towns not occupied by ISIL teem with internally displaced persons who feared for the lives when ruled by the ruthless Islamic fundamentalists.