Walled out

Shatha Talib, 30, her husband and five children, are among about a thousand struggling Iraqi families that have taken up residence in the bombed-out remains of the former Iraqi Air Defence headquarters and air force club in the centre of Baghdad. 8220;Nobody should live in such a place,8221; she said. 8220;But we don8217;t have any other option.8221;

With many families in such encampments or worse, and many others doubled or tripled up in friends8217; or relatives8217; homes, the deputy housing minister, Istabraq al-Shouk, puts the shortage across Iraq at two million dwellings.

Iraqi officials say that after security, housing is a priority, but plans to address the problem are minimal. The Housing Ministry is building 17 complexes with 500 apartments each across the country for government employees and families of those killed by militants, Shouk said. That would be 8,500 homes.

Housing officials hope to attract foreign contractors to build about 350,000 more over the next few years, he said, but that depends largely on whether conditions can be made safe enough for them to work.The shortage exists in many parts of Iraq, Shouk said. In Kirkuk, many Kurds driven out by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s who returned after the American-led invasion live in tent cities or hastily built houses. A survey of displaced people in Kirkuk by the International Organisation for Migration found that more than 20 per cent squat in government buildings or improvised settlements.

In Najaf, a southern city, throngs of destitute Shiite families have claimed buildings abandoned by the Baath Party and the government. Any trip across Baghdad, where the problem is particularly acute, reveals dozens of encampments.

The crisis appears more pronounced among Shiites than Sunnis because of the years of economic marginalisation they endured under Hussein. At least two dozen Shiite families are living in an abandoned army hospital in southern Baghdad, having fled Sunni Arab insurgents in the Abu Ghraib area to the west. Hundreds of other Shiite families are camped in other buildings on the sprawling former army base known as Camp Rashid.

Jabir Munther, his two wives and nine children live in a dank room in a building that used to be the base hospital8217;s radiology department. Rugs are the only furnishings. Outside Munther8217;s open window is a pond of raw sewage.

He showed a visitor a creased leaflet signed by a Sunni insurgent group that warned Shiites to leave the Abu Ghraib area. A Sunni friend warned him that he would be killed the next day, so he fled, with the help of the network of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Munther earns about 120 a month as a guard for a government ministry, he said, about half of what he needs to rent an apartment. He is grateful that he found the hospital, which has spotty electricity but usually reliable running water. 8220;It8217;s better than living in a tent,8221; he said.

Other Shiite refugees at Camp Rashid include former residents of Ramadi and Falluja in Anbar Province, centers of the Sunni insurgency. The former hospital is in the centre of a bizarre moonscape of rubble, the result of contractors dumping debris on the hospital grounds. Children play all day amid the piles. They cannot go to school because no school is nearby. At other encampments, people say they have trouble enrolling their children because they have no permanent address.

On a recent morning, water trucks from Baghdad8217;s municipal government arrived at the base; residents had been without water for a week after a pipe ruptured during construction of a nearby electrical substation. Women in black chadors flocked to the vehicles to fill their plastic containers.

Dozens of poor Shiite families have built ramshackle shelters out of rubble, corrugated tin and other materials on an empty stretch of land northeast of Sadr City, the Shiite district. They have no electricity. For water, they fill giant cisterns at a nearby water pipe.

Many Iraqi families who do have housing are now living with three or even four generations under one roof. A dispute with his wife8217;s family in Kut, a southern city, drove Ahmed Mishaan Battah, 22, and his wife to the former air force club. In October, they moved onto the grounds, paying the previous occupants of their new home, the second floor of a severely damaged building, 50. It has become increasingly common for rooms in squatter encampments to be bought and sold like regular real estate.

The Battahs got one room with walls, where they sleep, but the others are exposed. They cook meals on a small gas burner, tiptoeing around a precipice. As Iraq8217;s winter chill sets in, the Battahs, who are expecting their first child in a few months, are worried. 8220;I don8217;t know what I8217;m going to do when the rains come,8221; Battah said.

In an arrangement that is at once tragic and comic, Muhammad Ubaid, a carpenter; his wife, Talib; and their five children have ensconced themselves on the stage of the club8217;s former theatre. Like so many others, Ubaid struggled to find work after the American-led invasion. The family at first moved from their home in Dora to a less expensive neighborhood. But they soon lost that home, as well as Ubaid8217;s carpentry shop.

A friend suggested they try the theatre, which was unoccupied. Ubaid built a makeshift shelter for his family on the stage. It includes a front window that looks out on the empty auditorium with no seats. After the invasion, looters ripped out every one in a matter of hours.

Ubaid still takes occasional furniture orders from customers. A fancy set of sofas was parked on stage on a recent afternoon. But the meagre income he earns is not enough to move his family out. The Ubaids remain on the stage, living out their own drama.

8211;MICHAEL LUO