Hundreds of squatter families ordered out of public building in Baghdad
With their homes destroyed during fighting, many have nowhere to go, vow

to remain despite evictions

BAGHDAD: Some families packed their bags, others vowed to stay as
private security contractors came Monday to evict them from Iraq's
former state television building where they had been squatting since the

end of last year's US-led invasion.

Foreign security contractors working for the publicly owned Al-Iraqiyyah

satellite channel told 300 families to leave their homes, one of the men

being evicted told AFP.

"They told us to get out. We'll give you $100, or we'll force you out,"
said Sadeq Nadhi Mahmoud, 42, who stood with a bag of his clothes
outside the building.

"They told us to leave by 1.00pm," he said. "I don't know where I'll go.

This is where I live." Thousands of families live in abandoned state
buildings and military camps around Baghdad, but now, over a year after
the start of the invasion, Iraq's caretaker government is pushing to
reclaim property.

As one of its last acts, the now dissolved US-led occupation
administration rescinded a legal order on June 28 that had allowed
individual US Army commanders to determine whether or not people could
camp on public property.

Iraq's new-found independence has left people like Mahmoud hanging by a
thread. They fear there is no safety net to catch them as they are
thrown out of empty public buildings by the new US/Iraqi government.

Inside the courtyard of the crumbling yellow brick buildings, heaped
with trash, families wondered where they would go.

Saad Hamid Ali, a father with seven children, thought he would move his
family into Baghdad's bombed-out Defence Ministry where hundreds have
been squatting.

But he dreaded relocating to the crumbling government complex which he
said was rife with criminals and prostitutes.

Before the US invasion, Ali said he lived in the Alawi Hilla district,
but his home was bombed during the war.

He said had been frightening Monday morning when security guards and
police ordered him to leave by the end of the day.

No one seemed to know where to go, and their stories were snapshots of
the chaos and upheaval of the past 15 months.

Mohammed Ali al-Lakun showed the windowless white-tiled room where he
slept on the floor. The former ballet instructor, who moved to Iraq from

Cairo in the early 1970s, wondered where to go next.

He sent his wife and son and daughter back to Cairo last June after his
ballet school folded.

"The old regime was paying me 100,000 dinars a month and now I get
nothing," he said.

After the war, Lakun, who has Iraqi citizenship, said looters robbed him

twice.

If the government expels him from the building, it seems he may drift
and sleep on the street.

"I have nothing to pay for the trip to Egypt," the man said.

Twenty-five-year-old Hamid Majid, along with his mother and father, a
crippled veteran from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and seven siblings,
moved into the building after their home was destroyed during heavy
fighting in their native city of Fallujah in April.

Majid, unshaven and wearing second-hand clothes, said: "We can hardly
live. We have too many troubles," and added that he plans to stay in the

building until they physically throw him out.

Hundreds of squatter families ordered out of public building in Baghdad
With their homes destroyed during fighting, many have nowhere to go, vow

to remain despite evictions

BAGHDAD: Some families packed their bags, others vowed to stay as
private security contractors came Monday to evict them from Iraq's
former state television building where they had been squatting since the

end of last year's US-led invasion.

Foreign security contractors working for the publicly owned Al-Iraqiyyah

satellite channel told 300 families to leave their homes, one of the men

being evicted told AFP.

"They told us to get out. We'll give you $100, or we'll force you out,"
said Sadeq Nadhi Mahmoud, 42, who stood with a bag of his clothes
outside the building.

"They told us to leave by 1.00pm," he said. "I don't know where I'll go.

This is where I live." Thousands of families live in abandoned state
buildings and military camps around Baghdad, but now, over a year after
the start of the invasion, Iraq's caretaker government is pushing to
reclaim property.

As one of its last acts, the now dissolved US-led occupation
administration rescinded a legal order on June 28 that had allowed
individual US Army commanders to determine whether or not people could
camp on public property.

Iraq's new-found independence has left people like Mahmoud hanging by a
thread. They fear there is no safety net to catch them as they are
thrown out of empty public buildings by the new US/Iraqi government.

Inside the courtyard of the crumbling yellow brick buildings, heaped
with trash, families wondered where they would go.

Saad Hamid Ali, a father with seven children, thought he would move his
family into Baghdad's bombed-out Defence Ministry where hundreds have
been squatting.

But he dreaded relocating to the crumbling government complex which he
said was rife with criminals and prostitutes.

Before the US invasion, Ali said he lived in the Alawi Hilla district,
but his home was bombed during the war.

He said had been frightening Monday morning when security guards and
police ordered him to leave by the end of the day.

No one seemed to know where to go, and their stories were snapshots of
the chaos and upheaval of the past 15 months.

Mohammed Ali al-Lakun showed the windowless white-tiled room where he
slept on the floor. The former ballet instructor, who moved to Iraq from

Cairo in the early 1970s, wondered where to go next.

He sent his wife and son and daughter back to Cairo last June after his
ballet school folded.

"The old regime was paying me 100,000 dinars a month and now I get
nothing," he said.

After the war, Lakun, who has Iraqi citizenship, said looters robbed him

twice.

If the government expels him from the building, it seems he may drift
and sleep on the street.

"I have nothing to pay for the trip to Egypt," the man said.

Twenty-five-year-old Hamid Majid, along with his mother and father, a
crippled veteran from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, and seven siblings,
moved into the building after their home was destroyed during heavy
fighting in their native city of Fallujah in April.

Majid, unshaven and wearing second-hand clothes, said: "We can hardly
live. We have too many troubles," and added that he plans to stay in the

building until they physically throw him out.