Some Iraqis Giving Up On Europe
BAGHDAD — Mohammed alJabiry tossed and turned in his bed at a refugee center in Finland, comparing life in Europe with life in Baghdad. After many sleepless nights, he decided to come home.
“In Iraq, I can find a girl to marry,” Mr. Jabiry, 23, reasoned. “And my mom is here.” There were little things, too, that drove him to return, like the high price of cigarettes and the chillier weather. “In Europe, I was isolated,” he said. “Life in Europe was not what we were expecting.”
Last year, beckoned by news reports of easy passage to Europe through Turkey, tens of thousands of Iraqis joined Syrians, Africans and Afghans in the great migrant wave to the Continent. Now, thousands of Iraqis are coming home. Many say they arrived in Europe with unrealistic expectations. Some also say the warm reception they received from Europeans last summer gave way to suspicion after the Paris terrorist attacks carried out by the Islamic State in November.
Many Iraqis have stayed in Europe, of course, especially those who were displaced from lands controlled by the Islamic State. And others are still risking everything to get there. The returnees largely reflect those who left Baghdad for economic reasons.
When Mr. Jabiry left last summer, he said, “I was thinking, ‘I have no job here, and I never finished school.’ I thought of a better future there — that I would find a better job, that I could continue my studies, earn more money.”
He added: “I was crying the first day I arrived in Finland. Crying of happiness.” As the days stretched into months — time he said he mostly spent at the gym or hanging out with other Iraqis in the refugee center — he realized it would be a long time before he could get a job or a home of his own.
Last summer, Facebook was filled with posts about making the trip. One video posted recently shows an Iraqi man saying, “I’m just waiting for my flight to Baghdad, and I will be back soon. I would advise everyone not to take the risk and come to Europe.”
The International Organization for Migration said it helped almost 3,500 Iraqis return home last year — just a portion of the overall number coming back, as many do so with the assistance of local governments or Iraqi Embassies in European countries. The Iraqi government recently sent a delegation to Europe to organize the return of Iraqis, and it may send chartered airplanes to bring them back.
Many of those returning to Iraq are broke, having sold most of their belongings to pay smugglers to get them out of Turkey, on a dangerous sea voyage, to Greece. “Our dream was to leave the country,” said Haitham Abdulatif, 48, who sold his Mercedes for $8,000 to pay for the trip he took with his 10-yearold daughter.
Mr. Abdulatif was an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, but after the invasion by the United States in 2003, and the subsequent policy of de-Baathification, he was left without a pension. Three brothers were killed during the sectarian civil war. But he has an aunt and cousin who live in the United States, and their stories motivated him to think of life elsewhere. “They are comfortable,” he said. “They are safe. There are job opportunities.”
He arrived in Belgium with this in mind: “I was expecting them to give me a house, a good job, so I could have a better life.”
The reality, he said, was much different. He quickly spent the $8,000 he brought, mostly paying smugglers, and found himself almost broke. He hated the food (milk and toast for breakfast, cheese sandwiches for lunch). And obtaining residency and finding a decent job would take months, he said. Finally, he went to the authorities and said, “I want to go to Iraq.”
“They were surprised,” he said. “But I told them I’d rather die in my country than die outside in a strange country.”
Mr. Jabiry said at first he was treated warmly, though as a curiosity. “In the early days when we arrived, the people were impressed with us,” he said. “They were taking pictures of us, inviting us into their homes. They liked our brown skin and our dark hair.” After the attacks in Paris, though, many Europeans began to regard migrants as a threat.
Some Iraqis who returned had fond memories of their brush with European culture. “It was very green and clean,” Mr. Abdulatif said. “It was beautiful. Even the people’s morals — they all respected us. Everyone said ‘bonjour’ to me every morning.
“It was 99.9 percent different from Baghdad. People here all talk in a sectarian way: He’s Sunni, he’s Shiite, he’s Kurdish.”
He added: “I now consider the journey as something that was fun. I don’t regret it.”