Refugees disillusioned with life in Europe return to brave the dangers of Iraq
TO GET to Germany’s promised land, he walked for eight hours into Turkey and took a gruelling 20-hour ride in a crammed and stinking lorry across south-east Europe.
But now Mohammed Aziz Qadir, an Iraqi Kurd, has returned home, one of scores of refugees who have decided that facing perils and hardships in Iraq is preferable to the ordeal of a transit camp in an unwelcoming Europe.
“When I first entered the camp I was shocked to see the difference between the Berlin I had in mind and what I was seeing,” Mr Qadir, 24, said. “I was looked at as a second class citizen, I didn’t feel respected. When I walked into town it was clear I was a camp guy – a refugee.”
Refugee agencies say a growing number of Kurdish refugees are returning home, even as hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans make the dangerous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and leaders of other European states held crisis talks last night in Brussels to decide how to handle the flow. Some 25,000 people from Iraq’s Kurdish region have left the country since last year, according to Iraqi officials. But last week alone a group of 50 Kurdish asylum seekers arrived back in Erbil, the region’s capital, flying in from Germany.
Mr Qadir spent two and a half months in a transit camp on the outskirts of Berlin. He had hoped to open a pizza shop, make enough money to help his family in Erbil, marry and raise children in a European country.
He took a bus to Istanbul, walked for eight hours to the Greek border and was smuggled the rest of the way in a refrigerated lorry. “We sat with our knees pressed against our chest,” he said. “We could barely breathe. It was not a human way of travelling.”
But in the camp conditions also worsened as more people arrived. Food was limited to two meals a day and a curfew was imposed. “The hard situation in the camp made me feel like life in my own country was better,” he said. While Mr Qadir had a home and safety net, other returnees like Nawaf Alias have only a flimsy tent and a cold winter ahead. The 35-yearold Yazidi was forced into a camp near the Kurdish city of Dohuk after Isil seized his village last year.
He paid a smuggler $20,000 to get to Germany. “The German government offered food and €540 to me and my son but it was not enough,” Mr Alias said. “My son was sad and scared, he didn’t have friends or relatives.”
Now he is back – his tent in Dohuk preferable to poverty in Germany. “My community welcomed me back,” he said. “My friends came around to drink beer and smoke together, like before.”