A story entitled “The Iraqi Via Dolorosa” was published last August in Al-Ahram Weekly when Iraqi president Fuad Masum named Haider Al-Abadi, then the deputy speaker of the parliament, as the new prime minister of Iraq. It was predicted then that the new government, established according to the power-sharing policy in Iraq, could not solve the country's complicated problems. Within months, Iraqis were still waiting for the changes the Iraqi media had called the “Al-Abadi era” after the change from the leadership of Nuri Al-Maliki, prime minister for the previous eight years. Not only were there no changes, but the deficit in the country's annual budget not only disappointed those who were hoping to find a job but almost stopped governmental projects entirely. However, the liberation of parts of Salahuddin province opened a small window of hope. Now this hope has been dashed as the Islamic State (IS) group takes control of Ramadi, capital of the Anbar province and causing Iraq to enter another dark tunnel and one apparently without an end. The new wave of displaced people from Ramadi has ushered in a new humanitarian crisis in Iraq, though the issue of the displaced has become an almost ordinary issue against the background of the many others the country is facing. “For the last three days we have been walking. We reached Amiriyat Al-Falluja, but the Bizibiz Bridge that links us with Baghdad is closed,” said one displaced person, Salman Aziz, adding that “we do not know where to go. Even if we try to reach northern Iraq, we do not know if we will be allowed to enter Baghdad.” Salman with 14 members of his family had stayed with other displaced families one night in the street and another two nights in the houses of families they did not know. He is trying to forget the painful scenes he saw during his family's long Via Dolorosa. He saw a young man carrying the dead body of his father, killed by a sharp nail, and not knowing where he could bury him. The young man carried the body for 20 km and then buried his father by the roadside. He saw a young mother who had lost her 10-month-old baby. She was insisting on returning, but her mother-in-law did not allow it while her husband was somewhere fighting inside the city. On Facebook pages hundreds of Iraqis have changed their profile and photographs to that of Nurhan, a three-year-old girl who was killed by a bullet after which her father Ali Talal and her uncles were killed in the fighting. Facebook has become the only way of publishing news of those displaced or trapped on their way between Ramadi and Baghdad. “Until this new wave of displaced people, there were 2,700,000 displaced people in Iraq, according to local and international organisations, among them the UN,” said one activist on condition of anonymity. He added that “almost all the displaced people have been forgotten. High-ranking officials and MPs have stopped talking about them, and we have not seen real efforts from the governmental relief committee chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Al-Mutlaq.” According to the activist, the new wave of Ramadi displacements might put this humanitarian issue under the spotlight once more and cause international public opinion to become aware of the thousands of children who have died or are dying because of the daily hardships, shortages of services and cold of the past winter and now heat of the summer. He hoped that the voice of a 10-year-old girl in the Arbat Camp in Sulaimaniya could reach out to inform world public opinion of the tragedy, this girl having no wish but to have somewhere to go with her family. Meanwhile, the agony of the displaced people is continuing without any real support either from the Iraqi government or international organisations. The Iraqi parliament has found another issue to engage with – the falling of Ramadi under IS control – and the results of the investigatory committee into the fall of Mosul in June 2014 have still not been announced.
