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Baghdad, Iraq As the plane was en route to the Erbil airport after a three-hour flight from the Belarus capital Minsk, Azad looked out the window, holding his wife’s hands.
“We’ll take off our hats, put on masks, and leave the airport soon,” Azad, a 28-year-old man from the Kurdish city of Dohuk, recalled telling his wife.
After trying to prevent entry into the European Union from Belarus which left them with bruises on their arms and excruciating pain, Azad and his wife, who asked for anonymity while trying to be as low as possible, told Al Jazeera. they were treated like animals on the border between Belarus and Poland and no longer wanted to be interviewed by the press as soon as they returned to their much-needed destination.
“In the meantime, we will try not to think too much about our future because once we start thinking, it will be clear that we are not in Kurdistan,” Azad told Al Jazeera while sitting in his apartment. in Dohuk. “But we all know we’ve probably been here for the rest of our lives.”
Azad, along with 430 other Iraqi civilians, returned from Belarus to Iraq last Thursday on a state-sponsored return trip, as part of the Iraqi government’s goal to end the conflict that has plagued the Belarus-Poland border for several years. past. months.
While many of the refugees and asylum seekers decided to stay in Belarus with little hope that one day they would cross the border into Poland, others “lost hope of not winning” and decided to return home, Azad said.
‘The time to give up’
Yet returning to Iraq was not an easy decision to make. Like many others who left Belarus with the hope of joining the EU, Azad saved and asked for financial help from his family, and was about to sell his house. After hearing that the Iraqi government was providing return flights from Minsk to those who wanted to return voluntarily, their initial reaction was “no” surprisingly.
“I remember telling my wife in our tent at night that we had not spent all our money and wasted all our energy to get back to Iraq,” Azad said. But the next day, routine clashes between Belarusian border troops and their Polish counterparts took place.
Azad said he was being pushed by Belarus police across the border, and that Polish police were holding them back.
“Back and forth, back and forth, they would play with us like animals,” he said, starting to lose his temper. “It was a time we thought it was time to give up the dream of moving to Europe.”
What Azad described is just a small part of the political and social crisis that has plagued the eastern EU border. So far, at least 11 people have died during the border crisis, with many more experiencing cold temperatures and declining supplies.
Although the Belarussian government is making efforts to deport buses and refugees to temporary shelters, it is unclear how the government will address the problem. Western politicians have accused Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko of using refugees and internally displaced persons as “weapons” to avenge EU sanctions on his government.
For many like Azad, waiting is no longer an option: they decided to return home. Now back in Iraq, Azad said he was lucky he did not sell the house. But that’s also the last thing he has now: he sold a sofa, a refrigerator, and even a coffee pot. Virtually anything that could turn into money to support their odyssey in Iraq was a good game to sell.
Social media articles also revealed a bleak picture of what awaits returnees in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. For example, one Kurdish family did not even have the money to buy a taxi to take them to the airport (IDP) camp where they lived.
‘The only choice I had was’
Although the Kurdish region, home to the Iraqi Kurds and Yazidis, has less security and development compared to the rest of Iraq, the people living in the region are facing unemployment and corruption. Defeated by the ISIL (ISIS), some Kurdish and Yazidi territories are still struggling to rebuild.
Employment opportunities are limited and many young people like Azad see no future in the Kurdish region. “I tried, but I couldn’t find a job, so leaving Erbil was the only option I had,” said a young man still in Belarus.
The regional government, in response to the growing humanitarian crisis in the region, insists that the immigration crisis is a result of human trafficking. However many people who spoke to Al Jazeera said they left their homes of their own free will and went to Belarus by plane and visa arranged by the tourist agency.
For the 430 people who have returned from Europe to Iraq, their future is now worse than when they decided to embark on the journey a few months ago. Without government assistance, many suffer severe depression.
“I don’t expect the media to really care about us and I don’t think people will understand what we are going through, but I’m glad I have someone to talk to,” Azad said, standing up. down and end the conversation.
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