In 2006, as it did in the year prior, Peace Winds Japan continued its relief operations in the areas surrounding the so-called 'Green Line', or the boundary between the old central regime and the northern Kurdish Autonomous Region (KAR).  In February, religious conflicts in the area were heightened due to a bomb attack on a sacred Shiite mosque in Samarra.  As a result, more than two million refugees flowed out of the nation into neighboring countries and the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) exceeded one million.  These numbers continue to increase daily. In addition to villagers returning home, the villages along the area of the Green Line are over-crowded with refugees who have fled from the middle and southern provinces of the country seeking shelter in the comparatively secure regions of the North.

Persistent warfare has destroyed the infrastructure in the Green Line area and the limited numbers of facilities that remain are deteriorating; also, vague administrative divisions undermine government restoration work. PWJ has attempted to combat these issues by helping to construct and to restore schools and water systems, thus providing infrastructure for the increasing number of returnees and IDPs. Taking the sectarian strife into consideration, PWJ has extended its relief endeavors not only to Kurdish villages but also to Arab villages.

The increased numbers of IDPs significantly taxed an over-burdened public services sector still under the supervision of the KAR.  And as a result of the country’s difficulty in providing adequate security, the medical sector was in disarray as patients crowded into the KAR from all over Iraq.  Kirkuk, the neighboring province of the KAR, lost control of its medical supply distribution, making it impossible for them to offer essential medical services and making them incapable of offering services such as operations.  In managing the situation, PWJ supplied medicine and medical equipment to the health department of Kirkuk and those of three other northern governorates and supported training programs for personnel at medical and technical schools.  In addition to such emergency relief operations, PWJ’s mobile-clinic team provided hygiene education in distant localities in an effort to cut back on the number of patients arriving in the region center.

In addition, in the city of Dohuk, PWJ implemented female literacy programs, and supplied hearing aids and offered sign-language training at schools for blind and deaf children; thus supporting a vulnerable portion of the population whose needs were left unattended by an ineffectual municipal administrative.  PWJ also transferred the operations of a juvenile reformatory center that it operated for many years to a local nongovernmental operation.

Additionally, PWJ, at the request of the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC), undertook in the neighboring country of Jordan, data collection and coordination work with respect to candidate plans for the use of ODA loans to support the Iraqi Support Program.