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GUHARZE: Iraqi Kurdish villagers, displaced by fighting between Turkish forces and Kurdish militants that has played out for years in northern Iraq, are finally allowing themselves to hope they will soon be able to go home.
Their hopes were raised after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, on Saturday declared a ceasefire in the 40-year insurgency against the Turkish government, answering a call to disarm from earlier in the week by the group’s leader, Abdullah Ocalan, imprisoned in Turkiye since 1999.
The truce — if implemented — could not only be a turning point in neighboring Turkiye but could also bring much needed stability to the volatile region spanning the border between the two countries.
In northern Iraq, Turkish forces have repeatedly launched blistering offensives over the past years, pummeling PKK fighters who have been hiding out in sanctuaries in Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and have set up bases in the area. Scores of villages have been completely emptied of their residents.
A home left decades ago
Adil Tahir Qadir fled his village of Barchi, on Mount Matin in 1988, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launched a brutal campaign against the area’s Kurdish population.
He now lives in a newly built village — also named Barchi, after the old one that was abandoned — about 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) away, south of the mountain.
He used to go back to the old village every now and then to farm his land. But that stopped in 2015 when Turkish forces moved in and set up camp there in the fight against PKK, hitting the group with wave after wave of airstrikes.
Iraqi Kurdish farmers and their lands became collateral damage. The Turkish airstrikes and ground incursions targeting PKK positions displaced thousands of Iraqi Kurdish civilians, cutting off many from their land.
“Because of Turkish bombing, all of our farmlands and trees were burned,” Qadir said.
If peace comes, he will go back right away, he says. “We wish it will work so we can return.”
Fighting emptied out villages in Iraq
In the border area of Amedi in Iraq’s Dohuk province — once a thriving agricultural community — around 200 villages had been emptied of their residents by the fighting, according to a 2020 study by the regional Iraqi Kurdish government.
Small havens remained safe, like the new Barchi, with only about 150 houses and where villagers rely on sesame, walnuts and rice farming. But as the fighting dragged on, the conflict grew ever closer.
“There are many Turkish bases around this area,” said Salih Shino, who was also displaced to the new Barchi from Mount Matin.
“The bombings start every afternoon and intensify through the night,” he said. ”The bombs fall very close ... we can’t walk around at all.”
Airstrikes have hit Barchi’s water well and bombs have fallen near the village school, he said.
Najib Khalid Rashid, from the nearby village of Belava, says he also lives in fear. There are near-daily salvos of bombings, sometimes 40-50 times, that strike in surrounding areas.
“We can’t even take our sheep to graze or farm our lands in peace,” he said.
Ties to Kurdish brethren in Turkiye
Iraqi Kurdish villagers avoid talking about their views on the Kurdish insurgency in Turkiye and specifically the PKK, which has deep roots in the area. Turkiye and its Western allies, including the United States, consider the PKK a terrorist organization.
Still, Rashid went so far as to call for all Kurdish factions to put aside their differences and come together in the peace process.
“If there’s no unity, we will not achieve any results,” he said.
Ahmad Saadullah, in the village of Guharze, recalled a time when the region was economically self-sufficient.
“We used to live off our farming, livestock, and agriculture,” he said. “Back in the 1970s, all the hills on this mountain were full of vines and fig farms. We grew wheat, sesame, and rice. We ate everything from our farms.”
Over the past years, cut off from their farmland, the locals have been dependent on government aid and “unstable, seasonal jobs,” he said. “Today, we live with warplanes, drones, and bombings.”
Farooq Safar, another Guharze resident, recalled a drone strike that hit in his back yard a few months ago.
“It was late afternoon, we were having dinner, and suddenly all our windows exploded,” he said. “The whole village shook. We were lucky to survive.”
Like others, Safar’s hopes are sprinkled with skepticism — ceasefire attempts have failed in the past, he says, remembering similar peace pushes in 1993 and 2015.
“We hope this time will be different,” he said.

Port Sudan: In a worn-down classroom in eastern Sudan, men and women watch attentively from a wood bench as a teacher scribbles Arabic letters on a faded blackboard.
Nodding approvingly in the corner is the school’s 63-year-old founder Amna Mohamed Ahmed, known to most as “Amna Oor,” which partly means lion in the Beja language of eastern Sudan.
She has spent the last three decades helping hundreds return to their education in Port Sudan, now the country’s de facto capital.
The educator, who wears an orange headscarf wrapped neatly around her head, said she started the project in 1995 because of widespread illiteracy in her community.
“That’s what pushed me to act. People wanted to learn — if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have kept coming,” she told AFP.
Ahmed’s classes offer a second chance to those who missed out on formal education, particularly women who were denied schooling due to cultural or financial barriers.
A fresh start
For 39-year-old Nisreen Babiker, going back to school has been a long-held dream.
She left school in 2001 after marrying and taking on the responsibility of raising her younger siblings following her father’s death.
“My siblings grew up and studied, and my children too,” she said.
“I felt the urge to return to school. Even after all these years, it feels like I’m starting fresh,” she told AFP.
Ahmed’s school has also become a haven for those displaced by Sudan’s ongoing conflict, which erupted in April 2023 between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
The war has killed tens of thousands, uprooted over 12 million, and driven swathes of the country into hunger and famine.
Maria Adam is among those who fled their homes after war broke out. She arrived in Port Sudan seeking safety and a better future.
“When I arrived in Port Sudan, I heard about this place and joined,” said the 28-year-old, noting that she dropped out of school when she was 11.
Changing lives
“I want to finish my education so I can help my children,” Adam told AFP.
Sudan’s education system has been shattered by the conflict, with the United Nations estimating that over 90 percent of the country’s 19 million school-age children now have no access to formal learning.
Across the nation, most classrooms have been converted into shelters for displaced families.
Even before the war, a 2022 Save the Children analysis ranked Sudan among the countries most at risk of educational collapse.
But the determination to learn remains strong at the Port Sudan school, where many students have gone on to enter high school and some have even graduated from university.
In one corner of the classroom, a mother joins her young son in a lesson, hoping to reshape both their futures.
“To watch someone go from not knowing how to read or write to graduating from university, getting a job, supporting their family — that is what keeps me going,” Ahmed said.
“They go from being seen as a burden to becoming productive, educated members of society,” she added.