As Iraq prepares to celebrate the grim anniversary of the first COVID-19 cases in the country, Iraqis are anxiously witnessing the rise of a new deadly wave in the country. For most people certainly, the virus is a threat, but what remains more troubling even is their government’s inability to address the pandemic. Iraq’s dysfunctionalities have often created turmoil and division. Yet, the Covid-19 have also given life to local initiatives and scenes of solidarity. From the darkness, came the light.
Since the pandemic brought Iraq to its knees, Maheya Adham Yusef has been supervising the distribution of food baskets to the poor and needy families in the Qadisiyah district of Mosul. “As soon as the pandemic spread, and a curfew was announced, I began distributing sums of money and food baskets I got from donations to the poor and needy families, especially to divorced or widowed women and their children.” said 55 years old “Umm Imad”, as Maheya is more commonly referred to by her relatives and closed one.
Umm Imad, is not wealthy, but already has more than most in Mosul. Triggered by the trials of life, this resilient woman from the Tahrir neighborhood in east Mosul decided to start a little business, employing widowed and divorced women after the city was liberated from ISIS in late 2017. Her decision came after her son Yaqeen had been killed by ISIS terrorists. This tragedy was following another one that had struck Maheya a few years earlier: “In 2006, my son Ameer had also died. He was 17 years old when he comitted suicide. At that time, he wouldn’t even listen to us when we would talk to him, his father and I. Our inability to understand him pushed him to immolate himself in front of our eyes one day. I was shocked after his suicide and I tried to overcome my pain for years, but the catastrophe of ISIS, and the killing of my younger son Yaqeen hit me so hard once again, but I refused to surrender.”
Indeed, after the death of Yaqeen, Umm Imad found enough energy to open a small kitchen serving typical “Maslawi” food to take away. In her little enterprise, about 20 women from Mosul worked alongside Umm Imad and were able to make a decent living. But the spread of the Corona epidemic prevented this activity from continuing.
Curfew restrictions
Umm Imad’s little project provided a wage of more than $30 a day to her employees. But the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to the adventure. “The project stopped working after the curfew was imposed on March 17, 2020. At that time, Iraqis stopped going to their jobs and did not rely on restaurants or delivery food as much as before. Thus our project was disrupted.”
Jobless but still eager to keep busy, Umm Imad’s started raising money to help needy families affected with the economic consequences related to the spread of the pandemic. The initiative was to collect money and food from the families generous and wealthy enough to provide it. She would then proceed to redistribute to the poorer ones. “I used to go out every day at dawn and return home before sunset. I did not find any governmental official that tried to provide assistance to the people of this grieving city”, she said.
Nineveh below poverty threshold
As the confinement and other economically restrictive measures were imposed across IRaq to quell the epidemic, poverty and unemployment sharply increased in the Nineveh province of which Mosul is the capital. Already before the pandemic, official statistics by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in 2019, showed that more than 112,000 people were living below the poverty line in Nineveh province itself. But it was about to get way worse. Amid the growing distress of the most vulnerable ones, local solidarity was the only available support.
Through the project of Umm Imad, many poor families were rescued, especially those headed by women. Umm Noor, a widow and mother of six girls whose husband died at the hands of ISIS terrorists during the battles to liberate the city, was one of the project’s workers: “The project provided an income for us. Without it we would have starved. We spent a long time without food after the war with ISIS and we were trying to reduce our meals. We would fast the whole day long, after one breakfast meal, until Umm Imad offered me to work with her in her cooking workshop.”
The situation returned to normal after the spread of covid 19, Umm Noor says, “after the cooking workplace of Umm Imad closed, we were thrown back to our initial precarious situation. Sometimes I get help to pay the rent and other times the landlord postpones the payments because he is aware of the poor situation we’re suffering from.”
Umm Imad did not forget the needs of her female workers. Um Nour says, “Whenever she gets some money or a food basket, she brings it to me and my daughters, because she knows about our difficult situation.”
Umm Imad was not the only one who began initiatives to help the needy in the Mosul crisis. Activist Sorour Al Husseini explained how volunteer teams and even individuals provided aid during the crisis: “In those moments, the local government was completely inefficient and indifferent to the needs of poor families. As this new tragedy is spreading across Iraq, we stand and face our troubles together. It is not only terrorism that we face, but a pandemic.”
Sorour used to go to the hospital every day where she would provide assistance to Corona patients. She chose the bicycle as a way to travel under the curfew. “At first, people were surprised to see me riding a bicycle because I am a woman in a conservative environment, but they quickly got accustomed to the situation, especially when they understood I was a volunteer in the hospital to help the doctors in treating covid patients.”
Public grants, but only on papers
Fatima and her children survive thanks to the aid they receive from volunteer teams assisting Corona crisis victims. She is widowed and has three sons, the youngest of whom has a birth defect, and requires special needs. “My husband was killed during the liberation operations in Mosul; he was a member of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces. We were not compensated nor was my disabled son granted any pension. My eldest son used to work in bus stations, collecting money from passengers. He gets about 8$ on a daily basis. That does not pay our monthly rent for this housing, but we are trying to manage.”
After the spread of the pandemic, Fatimah’s eldest son Abd al-Rahman, had to stop working, due to curfew regulations. At that time, the family had to survive with what could be collected from donations and assistance provided by the volunteer teams.
According to the Iraqi Minister of Planning Khaled Battal Najm, the spread of the pandemic increased the poverty rate in all of Iraq, which rose up to 31.7%: “The repercussions of the pandemic added 1.4 million Iraqis within the threshold of poverty, adding to the already 10 million people within that threshold, as the census of the population in Iraq was announced to reach 40 million people early 2021.”, while the number of poor families is still increasing.
The government seems incapable of finding tangible solutions regarding a special assistance to poor families related to the pandemic crisis period.
At the beginning of the pandemic in Iraq, conflicting statements were made by the government, where the advisor to the transitional government at the time, Abdul Hussein Hanin, announced the launch of a financial fund for Iraqi families amounting to 150,000 Iraqi dinars (125$ at that time, for each citizen per month), but these grants were never distributed. Additionally, the former Minister of Planning, Sabah Al-Dulaimi, announced last April yet another plan to distribute around 30,000 dinars, (25$), to all 10 million people living below the poverty threshold.
More official announcements surfaced later, claiming that the value of the grant totalled 300 billion dinars (250 million dollars), which were to be distributed at 25$ per person. The amount was later announced to be shared per family and not per person, as much as 125$ for each family of 5 people or more. The government’s shambles was met with widespread criticism and even got ridiculed by activists and journalists across the country.
As he came into office on May 7th 2020, the new Minister of planning, Mr. Khaled Battal Najm scared many Iraqis with a statement calling for the lift of sanitary measures to stimulate the economy: ” the high incidence of poverty and the State’s inability to provide financial solutions may push the government to lift the curfew permanently and to restore normal conditions in order to avoid a major economic crisis.” Yet this decision put thousands of Iraqis at risk of contamination for the sake of healthy economic results.
Volunteer teams
At every new stage of the crisis it faced, governments failed to show any concrete solutions. This pushed many people to take matters into their own hands to find solutions. depending on altruistic principle as a solution to confront crises.
Mustafa Al-Shaer is an activist and founder of one of the volunteer teams. Throughout his activities, he got a sense of Iraq’s level of poverty and distress. “The Corona crisis showed us the extent of poverty in Iraq. Many could not afford their daily bread, especially daily workers who couldn’t find work the curfew was instated.”
Al-Shaer says, “We committed as a team, in addition to the dozens of volunteer groups to provide food baskets in the poor areas of the capital. he team was also communicating on social media to find the needy families, and help them. However, Al-Shaer expressed his sadness because him and his team could not reach everyone : “I cannot say that we reached everyone there were people who had their lives turned to hell because of the pandemic, but we tried to offer what we could in a serious and diligent manner. We tried our best to save people’s dignity, by not filming them. In Iraq, being seen begging is susceptible to bring social stigma; it is culturally unacceptable. For this reason, Mustafa and his teammates paid extra care to avoid adding shame to the burden of the needy ones. “Our work was aimed at serving people, not humiliating them.”, he added.
The people in Iraq’s capital not only expressed solidarity between each other by providing food for poor families, but also provided medicines and oxygen bottles. Solidarity went all the way to provide medical assistance to covid patients, when hospitals were saturated with infected people.
One of the most prominent of these teams isTanafus team. Anmar Ali, one of the team’s volunteers in charge of Baghdad’s Shuala and Rahmaniyah areas shared his experience with The Red Line: “We noticed that the lack of oxygen bottles in Baghdad had led some pharmacy owners to start rising prices and speculate on the oxygen business. This led us to form a volunteer team.” The team provided all it could and treated covid patients while trying to follow up with them until they recover as much as possible.
The Breathing team would tour around the capital every day, advertising the services it could provide. Eventually, it split into smaller teals all over the city, providing services to the people, as cheering them as much as possible to help them to overcome the crisis.
The crisis continues
As a new quarantine started to be enforced across the country, all eyes are set towards the health ministry and its efforts to confront the crisis. Incidentally, Mr. Qutaiba Al-Jubouri, the chairman of the parliamentary Health and Environment Committee announced in October that Iraq’s government was trying “to avoid reaching the widespread level of epidemic found in neighboring countries, as a third wave is hitting the country.”
Al-Jubouri further stressed that the committee was trying to allocate the budget adequately in order to limit the spread of the pandemic. Despite the economic and financial shortcomings, the Ministry of Health achieved medical strategic achievements that are worthy of mention, especially in light of a weak medical infrastructure.”
Mr. Al-Jubouri also mentioned that more measures to accommodate the crisis are to come. These include adding more than 12,000 beds to the Iraqi hospital capacity system. In the future,an additional 4,000 respirators will be provided, as well as efforts to increase oxygen plants and provide high quality medical supplies to confront the pandemic.
According to Mr al Jubbouri, the government also plans to increase covid testing capacities to more than 30,000 daily thanks to the introduction of more than sixty specialized laboratories. The increase of scanner devices will help diagnose moderate and advanced cases of coronavirus diseases.”
Al-Jubouri also announced the statistics of deaths and the recovery between March and November 2020, saying, “The recovery rate from Corona has reached nearly 88%, while the death rate was low, which is less than 2.2%, while 10% of patients have not recovered yet ( the numbers include the Kurdistan region). This is a huge achievement if compared to what developed countries had to go through.”, Mr. al Jubboury argued.
In order to prevent the spread of the virus, the committee is still enforcing the suspension of working hours in schools, reducing it to one day per week instead, provided that no more than 50% of students attend. Additionally the teaching staff and students will be subject to periodic medical checks in order to ensure their safety. “
Pending Solutions
The Corona crisis is still spreading globally. It will remain the case until an efficient vaccine is distributed. Meanwhile, the Iraqi state is relying on the wishful thinking illusion that a partial curfew could solve everything. The recent imposition of a curfew in Iraq is likely to be reversed or turned into a partial curfew due to the economic collapse. Furthermore, the iraqi State is unable to provide financial grants for citizens who stopped working and were unable to provide for their daily sustenance.
At the same time, the Iraqi Ministry of Planning did not lay down its future plans to confront the crisis nor did it initiate a population survey to genuinely estimate the number of poor families. It did not come up with a plan to eliminate poverty.
While the number of people infected increases in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Ministry of Health, the latter is providing stopgap solutions, by reducing the official working hours in state departments by 50%.
Iraq seems to be stuck between two crises, one sanitary, the other one economic. If one starts getting solved, the other one deteriorates. The economic crisis in Iraq is exacerbated to the point that it affects state employees. The government’s budget deficit rendered the authorities incapable of delivering salaries to state employees. Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi himself also declared that the economic deficit may lead to further salary cuts in the months to come. Perhaps the mode relevant way to look at it is to consider that the only crisis there is is the one of the State institutions themselves. Across the world, there are many examples of governments that have managed to tackle the pandemic efficiently by implementing effective measures. Never was this the case in Iraq.