Sami Yuhanna was making a decent living as a wheat farmer until a jihadist put a gun to his head and declared his land in Iraq’s Nineveh province the property of Islamic State.
An army offensive has since cleared the militants from the eastern half of the provincial capital, Mosul, and nearby towns and villages like Qaraqosh, home to Yuhanna’s fields.
But the terror and mismanagement that characterised their two-year rule after seizing Iraq’s agricultural heartland has devastated farmers and exacerbated the country’s food security problem.
Yuhanna, who used to sell about 100 tonnes of wheat per year, now lives in a small trailer and drives a taxi in the Kurdish capital of Erbil to barely survive. He is still haunted by the day armed militants arrived.
“We left everything behind, all our sheep and land, and ran away,” he said.
Farmers fear the agriculture sector could take years to recover, with tractors missing, unexploded mines in the fields and farm compounds damaged by air strikes on the militants, who sold commodities like wheat to finance their operations.
Nineveh was Iraq’s most productive farming region before the arrival of Islamic State, producing around 1.5 million tonnes of wheat a year, or about 21 percent of Iraq’s total wheat output, and 32 percent of barley.
An estimated 70 percent of farmers fled when Islamic State took over, and those who stayed — either to join the movement or out of fear — faced heavy taxation.
As a Christian, Yuhanna was particularly vulnerable to the Sunni extremists, who tried to build a self-sustaining caliphate and killed anyone opposed to their radical ideas.
”I had a cross freshly painted on the wall. I saw one (Islamic State militant) trying to erase it, so I told him not to bother and handed him some paint to cover it. They pointed their guns to my head. I told my neighbors—there were 11 of us here and we left everything behind, all our sheep and land, and ran away,” he said, adding that he knew all the people who turned on him after joining IS.
Reuters was not able to obtain official figures for agricultural output during Islamic State rule because the government had no access to areas under jihadist control.
Haider al-Abbadi, head of the General Union of Farmers Cooperatives, told Reuters in a telephone interview that he estimated output fell to around 300,000 tonnes, based on accounts of how much of the grain farmers had sold.
Fadel El Zubi, Iraq Representative for the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agreed the outlook is dire.
“It is extremely important to support farmers as their situation in newly retaken areas is characterized by extreme difficulty which keeps them from starting planting for this season 2016-2017,” Zubi said in written answers to Reuters.
“Seeds, fertilizers, fuel, electricity, sustainable agricultural equipment, as well as irrigation channels and wells and other essential supplies, are not available to enable farmers to return to their usual farming.”
The militants seized 1.1 million tonnes of wheat that was in government silos, according to Zubi. In addition, about 40 percent of agricultural machinery was sold as parts or smuggled into neighboring countries to raise money for militant activities, Abbadi said.
Ensuring food security has consistently been one of the central government’s biggest — and most pressing — challenges.
Even the late dictator Saddam Hussein was cautious when it came to food. A rationing program for flour, cooking oil, rice, sugar and baby milk formula, the Public Distribution System (PDS), was created in 1991 to combat U.N.-imposed economic sanctions.
Impoverished Iraqis continue to depend on the system, which has become corrupt and wasteful over the years as well as severely curtailed in conflict zones.
The FAO estimates there are around 2.4 million people in Iraq who do not have access to nutritious food that meets their dietary needs.
Islamic State set itself apart from militant groups like Al Qaeda by holding territory and attempting to create an administration that could deliver basic services in order to win public support. But the group failed in areas such as farming.
For one thing, the militants did not match government prices, farmers said. While the state used to pay double the market price for commodities such as wheat, for example, Islamic State paid below the global average.
Islamic State’s failure to meet the basic needs of Iraqis would likely undermine any bid to make a comeback in the country as it tries to recover from losses in Syria and Libya, farmers said.
But the government is not offering much hope either, they said, with most of its resources directed at driving the militants out of Mosul.
Farmer Abdel Hakim Ali, 45, used to sell 50-100 tonnes of wheat and barley annually to state-run silos before Islamic State arrived. He and other farmers have contacted the government to see if the old arrangements could be revived.
“They are telling us wait, we have no budget, we have no money—our government is broke, where are they going to get the money from? They can’t buy or sell or do anything. This government is a failure from top to bottom,” said Ali.
This is a familiar story to farmers. When Islamic State took over Mosul in June 2014, farmers in the region had still not received government payments for the wheat they had sold that year.
Kadhum al-Bahadli, the government’s advisor on agricultural affairs, said efforts were underway to compensate farmers and offer loans for seeds despite low oil prices and deteriorating state finances.
Aref Hassan, head of a farmers association in Basheeqa with 1,100 members, showed Reuters photographs of a town once surrounded by green fields that was reduced to rubble in the effort to dislodge jihadists.
Only a few families have returned.
Hassan walked through an olive grove, despairing at the sight of one tree after another burned by militants in an apparent bid to create smoke to evade air strikes.
Reviving the grove could take a decade, he said. For now, there are more pressing concerns.
“We hope international organizations and de-mining organizations will clean up the farming areas of explosive devices and landmines. This area was the first line of fire against Daesh and it is full of landmines,” he said.
“Farmers cannot go back to their land.”
(REUTERS)
