Rubbish has been piling up on the main streets over the past few days; but groups of local young people have started a cleaning campaign because they’re convinced that if they wait for the municipal authorities to clear anything away, they’re going to be waiting for a very long time.
The Hawija district is also one of the biggest grain producers in Iraq, with around 4,500 farmers working here according to Kirkuk’s Directorate of Agriculture. However the granary doors in Hawija are currently closed and farmers cannot bring their crops there.
One farmer we met in the city told us that there were probably over 100,000 acres of grain waiting to be harvested. “If they [ISIS] don’t find a solution soon we will loose all our grain this year,” he complained.
And even if the granary does open again, the other problem facing the farmers is how to get their crops out of the district when movement between Hawija and Kirkuk remains dangerous and difficult.
Most of the people we talked to in Hawija said that they would never allow Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s army to rule over them again. But they also all expressed their doubts about ISIS; they just don’t know what is going to happen next and what the future holds, under the rule of this group.
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