Makhmour district villagers mull abandoning home amid electricity, water shortages

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Villagers have told Rudaw that a lack of water and electricity is forcing them to consider leaving their homes and fertile farmland in the Qaraj plains of Makhmour district.

“If we don’t have water or electricity – and it hasn’t rained this year – there will be a drought, and if there is a drought, what do we do here in the village?” Mohammed Ali, a Qaraj plains farmer told Rudaw’s Payam Sarbast on Sunday.

Although in Erbil province, Makhmour district lies in territory whose control is disputed by Erbil and Baghdad. Villagers say they fear their land will be repopulated with Arab residents if they leave their homes.

“We don’t want this district to be Arabized again if we evacuate it,” Ali said.

Farmers say they are unable to best use their land due to electricity shortages.

“The land here is suitable for everything, from vegetables to wheat. Even for fish farming… but we can’t do them due to a lack of electricity,” farmer Shwan Sadraddin told Rudaw.

“We have 10 hours of electricity over four days,” Sadraddin said.

Farmer Arif Karim also complained of the severe shortage, estimating that he gets just “20 hours of electricity a week” – no way near a sufficient amount for him to maintain his “1,300 dunams” of land, he said.

Infrastructural issues are to blame for the lack of electricity, local and provincial officials told Rudaw.

“The power station in Qaraj is very old, as are the transformers”, Makhmour’s mayor Rizgar Mohammed told Rudaw’s Shaho Amin on Sunday.

The power travels a long distance and through other power stations in the province to the Qaraj plains, causing a “voltage drop” as it reaches its destination, Mohammed said.

Erbil province’s electricity directorate will be providing Makhmour district with five new transformers in an effort to solve the problem, directorate head Hussein Mohammed told Rudaw.

Two dozen villages across Makhmour district have already been abandoned, mayor Mohammed confirmed to Amin, in part because of water and electricity shortages.

However, residents of the district have also abandoned their homes because of the presence of militants belonging to the Islamic State (ISIS) – a danger in areas across the disputed territories.

“The people don’t feel safe going back there,” the mayor said.

ISIS militants seized Makhmour and its surrounding villages in 2014, but were routed in a joint operation conducted by the Peshmerga, Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) guerillas, and Coalition forces.

The Peshmerga were forced out of Makhmour and other disputed areas in October 2017 by the Iraqi Army and Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi) after the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum.

Though ISIS was declared defeated in Iraq in December 2017, it is still active in some parts of the country – especially in disputed areas, where a lack of coordination between Peshmerga forces and the Iraqi Army has given the group a chance to carry out attacks, explosions and kidnappings.

In October 2020, an improvised explosive device suspected to have been laid by ISIS sleeper cells killed four members of a Kurdish family as they travelled on an unpaved road to their farm in the Qaraj plains.

Makhmour district villagers mull abandoning home amid electricity, water shortages

Iraq seeks US exemptions to resume Iranian flights

Iraqi premier pledges reforms, security shift at UN assembly

Iraq says dismantled crude oil smuggling network

Related Articles

Iraq seeks US exemptions to resume Iranian flights

Iraqi premier pledges reforms, security shift at UN assembly

Iraq says dismantled crude oil smuggling network