"I live off my sons," he said, his pride clearly hurt.

Ismail was one of almost 141,000 villagers displaced two decades ago when deposed ruler Saddam Hussein's forces launched the eight-stage Anfal military campaign against the minority Kurdish community.

Between February and September of 1988, Iraqi forces swept through thousands of Kurdish villages, killing people in deadly chemical attacks and razing their houses to the ground.

Saddam and six former members of his regime are now being tried for the alleged massacre of 182,000 Kurdish men, women and children.

But in addition to those killed during the savage military attacks, thousands of other Kurds were displaced from their homes.

Some like Ismail, whose village was near the northern city of Mosul, were forcefully removed by a regional policy of "Arabisation".

Ismail cannot return home now unless Arabs staying there are transferred somewhere else.

There are others like Lukman Khalid Weisy, whose village near Dohuk was destroyed during the Anfal offensive. He and his neighbors continue to live in precarious conditions, barely managing to survive.

"The problem of those displaced is more than their numbers," says Musa Ali Bakr, a former Kurdish peshmerga militant. Bakr is now a senior official in Kurdistan's ministry for displaced and is responsible for Dohuk and Mosul.

"Saddam Hussein carried out a systematic destruction of Kurdistan," he said.

"He not only displaced people, razed their villages and destroyed the economic fabric, but also broke up family units and eliminated the conditions for their possible return."

Bakr said such problems were not fully understood by the international community.

"We must rehabilitate their villages, but it is not easy as their safety must be guaranteed," he told AFP. "It is also essential that these villages are accessible with proper roads."

Other crucial amenities mentioned by Bakr were "electricity, water, schools, social life, a centre for arts or a football club".

Diplaced people had become accustomed to these things in the cities where they have been staying for nearly 20 years, he explained.

Bakr also called for the creation of new jobs.

"Families have grown. A farm which used to feed 10 people can't nourish 20 today," he said.

"It is thus necessary to create small companies that will employ these people," he noted, warning that any amount invested in Kurdistan would be in vain "if these conditions were not met".

The human catastrophe wrought by Anfal has transformed into a social drama, as witnessed by Weisy's family which lives in Fort Nizarky, the same prison it was locked up in during the offensive.

The family's village still lies in ruins.

Ismail, who was displaced by Arabisation policies, has put his hopes in a commission that looks into cases like his, but the body's work has stalled owing to prevailing tension between various ethnic groups in and around Mosul.

In Mam Shivan, 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Dohuk, 14 families occupy the site of their old village.

A team from a US aid agency, American Concern for Kids, comes each week to filter spring water from the village which is unsuitable for consumption.

Dohuk's water supply network stops two kilometres (1.5 miles) away from Mam Shivan.

"There is a lack of political will. Here the ground is fertile. If the villages are connected to the water supply network, 100 to 200 families can return to the village," said farmer Kamal Jaffer Hamo.

"What was destroyed over 30 years requires 6O years to be rebuilt," Bakr said.