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ISIS war sparks new wave of migration from Kurdistan
Friday, 17 July, 2015
Some 300 Iraqi Kurds are leaving every day in search of better lives in the West, the Iraqi Federation of Refugees says, reporting migration numbers unseen since the 1990s.
The federation’s Kurdish branch says that most of those who leave are young men, as Kurdish authorities struggle to try and advise against the flow.
“The number is probably much higher,” says Amanj Abdulla, who is in charge of the Federation’s office in Erbil.
“In the last three months, nearly 1,000 people have entered Europe with valid tourist visas, but have applied for asylum in a third country,” Abdulla says.
Those who cannot obtain visas resort to people smugglers to help cross borders.
Rudaw spoke to one smuggler in the Turkish city of Istanbul who charges as much as $10,000 per person for the often risky and illicit trips to Europe.
The trafficker, who did not wish to be identified by name, said that the number of “clients” from Kurdistan had increased dramatically over the past year, since Kurdistan’s war with the Islamic State group (ISIS) began last August.
“There could be between 60 to100 people daily from the Kurdistan region who either want to travel to Greece or further to other European countries,” he said.
Official figures for such migration are not available, but Abdulla in Erbil confirms that many take the one-way trip through human traffickers.
Since the mass exodus of the Kurds in the 1990s, the current wave of migration from Kurdistan is probably the largest, following a decade of steady economic growth and political stability that is the best in the region.
The rapid financial boom in Kurdistan after 2005 helped reverse migration trends, as thousands of families returned to a region posting economic growth of around 10 per cent and many business opportunities.
But ongoing economic tensions between Baghdad and Erbil have pushed many young Kurds to prefer the risky path to Europe to a life in Iraq or Kurdistan, according to Iraq’s Kurdish minister of migration, Darbaz Muhammad.
“Gloomy political prospects, security issues and the economic crises have created a kind of social anxiety for the young people, some of whom see no other exit than emigration,” Muhammad wrote on his Facebook page recently.
He added that the massive internal displacement of people in Iraq over the last two years has also pushed people to look for stability elsewhere in the world.
Peshawa Muhammad, a father of three, says he has decided to leave Kurdistan because he and his wife want their children “to grow up in a safer environment.”
“I have my own house and car and a good job here, but I’m not confident about the future of my children,” said Muhammad, 38. He has offered smugglers $10,000 for a safe journey to Europe for each member of his family.
But the route is often hazardous and unpredictable.
In October 2013, more than 400 migrants lost their lives in two shipwrecks off the coast of Italian island Lampedusa, where many Kurdish migrants also try to reach in their journey up north.
Vulnerable and without their usual support system, these migrants often end up in social and economic exclusion when they arrive in Europe, which itself is recovering from multiple financial crises.
The Kurdistan region has vast natural resources, including over 45 billion barrels of oil. The Iraqi government has frozen large parts of the Kurdish share of the national budget due to the KRG’s international oil deals.
The KRG says it will have the means to export over 1 million barrels per day of crude by the end of 2016, which it hopes will again reverse the exodus of young Kurds.
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Friday, 17 July, 2015
Some 300 Iraqi Kurds are leaving every day in search of better lives in the West, the Iraqi Federation of Refugees says, reporting migration numbers unseen since the 1990s.
The federation’s Kurdish branch says that most of those who leave are young men, as Kurdish authorities struggle to try and advise against the flow.
“The number is probably much higher,” says Amanj Abdulla, who is in charge of the Federation’s office in Erbil.
“In the last three months, nearly 1,000 people have entered Europe with valid tourist visas, but have applied for asylum in a third country,” Abdulla says.
Those who cannot obtain visas resort to people smugglers to help cross borders.
Rudaw spoke to one smuggler in the Turkish city of Istanbul who charges as much as $10,000 per person for the often risky and illicit trips to Europe.
The trafficker, who did not wish to be identified by name, said that the number of “clients” from Kurdistan had increased dramatically over the past year, since Kurdistan’s war with the Islamic State group (ISIS) began last August.
“There could be between 60 to100 people daily from the Kurdistan region who either want to travel to Greece or further to other European countries,” he said.
Official figures for such migration are not available, but Abdulla in Erbil confirms that many take the one-way trip through human traffickers.
Since the mass exodus of the Kurds in the 1990s, the current wave of migration from Kurdistan is probably the largest, following a decade of steady economic growth and political stability that is the best in the region.
The rapid financial boom in Kurdistan after 2005 helped reverse migration trends, as thousands of families returned to a region posting economic growth of around 10 per cent and many business opportunities.
But ongoing economic tensions between Baghdad and Erbil have pushed many young Kurds to prefer the risky path to Europe to a life in Iraq or Kurdistan, according to Iraq’s Kurdish minister of migration, Darbaz Muhammad.
“Gloomy political prospects, security issues and the economic crises have created a kind of social anxiety for the young people, some of whom see no other exit than emigration,” Muhammad wrote on his Facebook page recently.
He added that the massive internal displacement of people in Iraq over the last two years has also pushed people to look for stability elsewhere in the world.
Peshawa Muhammad, a father of three, says he has decided to leave Kurdistan because he and his wife want their children “to grow up in a safer environment.”
“I have my own house and car and a good job here, but I’m not confident about the future of my children,” said Muhammad, 38. He has offered smugglers $10,000 for a safe journey to Europe for each member of his family.
But the route is often hazardous and unpredictable.
In October 2013, more than 400 migrants lost their lives in two shipwrecks off the coast of Italian island Lampedusa, where many Kurdish migrants also try to reach in their journey up north.
Vulnerable and without their usual support system, these migrants often end up in social and economic exclusion when they arrive in Europe, which itself is recovering from multiple financial crises.
The Kurdistan region has vast natural resources, including over 45 billion barrels of oil. The Iraqi government has frozen large parts of the Kurdish share of the national budget due to the KRG’s international oil deals.
The KRG says it will have the means to export over 1 million barrels per day of crude by the end of 2016, which it hopes will again reverse the exodus of young Kurds.
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