By NNN-KUNA,
Washington : Iraqi militia groups are now the “main service provider” for the vulnerable 2.7 million Iraqi civilians displaced inside Iraq, in absence of humanitarian aid from the Nouri Al Maliki government or the international community, a leading humanitarian report said.
Refugee International’s report Tuesday entitled “Uprooted and Unstable: Meeting Urgent Humanitarian Needs in Iraq”, outlined that militias and armed groups “of all denominations” are offering urgent assistance, to address the daily problems facing Iraqi civilians forced to leave their homes and neighbourhoods in war-torn regions, many of whom cannot find work in their new locations or access to food and health care, the report said.
“The United States, the government of Iraq and the international community aren’t doing enough to address the daily problems faced by the 2.7 million internally displaced Iraqis,” the report states.
As a result of the vacuum created by the failure of both the Iraqi government and the international community to act in a timely and adequate manner, militia groups now play a major role in providing assistance to vulnerable Iraqis as leverage to recruit an increasing number of civilians to their militias, particularly Shiite and Sunni groups who by providing basic goods of food, oil, electricity, clothes, and money to civilian have created a “quasi-monopoly” in the large-scale provision of assistance in Iraq.
The report said Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi army is aiming to set itself up “as the main service provider in the country” and has resettled displaced Iraqis “free of charge in homes that belonged to Sunnis, and provided stipends, food, heating oil, cooking oil and other non-food items to supplement the Public Distribution System rations which are still virtually impossible to be transferred after displaced Iraqis have moved to new neighbourhoods, though it is easier for Shiites to do so,” the report says.
Sunni groups have offered similar assistance to displaced civilians within their fiefdoms though distribution of goods is limited to very necessary goods like heating gas.
In Baghdad, civilians have grown increasingly dependent on the goods and services offered by local militias and warlords, due to “virtually no electricity or other services from the government,” according to the report.
Other displaced have joined mostly Sunni US-backed “awakening” groups, which manage security at checkpoints and are paid by the US.
The report is especially critical of the Iraqi government’s role as being “unwilling and unable” to respond to the needs of Iraqi displaced, although “it has access to large sums of money, it is divided along sectarian lines, lacking both the capacity and the political will to use its important resources to address humanitarian needs,” which has shot its credibility with the Iraqis, as bias in favour of the Shiite population, the report said.
The report called the international community “in denial” over the disastrous humanitarian situation in Iraq, which according to the United Nations refugee agency, is one of the largest refugee crisis in the world. With the 2.7 million internally displaced people, there are more than 2 million Iraqi refugees, mostly in Syria and Jordan, and the rest of the Middle East.