Grim camps for Iraqis avoid the "pull factor"

[Barrett808]

Source: Reuters

Grim camps for Iraqis avoid the "pull factor"
By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (Reuters) - Refugee workers call it the "pull factor" -- camps with conditions comfortable enough to attract people in a country where an average of 60,000 Iraqis a month are driven from their homes by sectarian violence.

So the challenge for aid workers is to provide safe havens that do not invite permanence. The Qawala camp on the outskirts of Sulaimaniya in northern Kurdistan, a haven of stability in a treacherous country, fits the bill.

Conditions are unlikely to pull in all but the most desperate.

You smell the camp before you enter it -- the stench caused by the absence of proper latrines and the lack of running water. There is no kerosene for cooking and no electricity.

A collection of huts made up of blankets and cardboard, it houses 97 families or 470 people, all Sunni Arabs who left Baghdad and Diyala and Babel provinces because they feared they would be killed by Shi'ites in the mixed neighborhoods that were home.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070801/wl_nm/iraq_refugees_camp_dc

[youngdem]

1. Heartless excuse to provide subpar amenities to victims of our own creation

[bemildred]

2. "We don't really care, but we want to look like we do." nt