Displaced Iraqis Live Under Stands in Soccer Stadium

[Hissyspit]

Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Displaced Iraqis live under stands in soccer stadium

By Nicholas Spangler and Mohammed al Dulaimy, McClatchy Newspapers
Wed Sep 10, 4:31 PM ET
KIRKUK, Iraq — Qader Abdullah Rasoul visited Kirkuk Stadium the day it opened and thought it beautiful. The lush turf was newly laid, and the stands were smooth concrete, steeply tiered to seat tens of thousands of soccer fans. Odai Hussein himself, son of Saddam, attended, and on that day in 1986 Iraq's national team thumped Saudi Arabia 2-1.

Now Rasoul lives in the stadium along with 2,500 others, mostly Kurds. They inhabit mud and cinder-block huts beneath the stands, in the parking lots and the luxury boxes, and it's no longer beautiful. It's a dirty, sewage-ridden slum and Rasoul is the unofficial mayor.

- snip -

So far, Rasoul said, he and his neighbors have been the only losers. "I blame the provincial council. I blame the governor. I blame the central government," he said.

Saddam's government pushed Rasoul and his family from their Kirkuk home in 1997, part of a strategy to assert central government control over the province. In 2003, in the first weeks after Saddam fell, they left a rented house in Ramadi to return. The radio was full of talk of a new Iraq , and hundreds of thousands of Kurds were doing the same. But Rasoul returned to nothing. "I imagined they would give us a piece of land and money," Rasoul said. "No one even said hello to us."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080910/wl_mcclatchy/3041636

[dipsydoodle]

1. Sounds a bit like New Orleans when Karina struck

I sympathise with both groups of residents.

[happygoluckytoyou]

2. HECK OF A JOB BROWNIE!!!! for the love of god send them water and food but dont call FEMA!!!!