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Asos Hassan is one of thousands of Kurdish people in the semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq who have risked their lives trying to reach Europe this year.
Desperate to escape economic hardship and political repression, the 28-year-old Koya University graduate east of the capital Erbil has twice tried to cross the Aegean Sea to Greece, but was deported by Turkish authorities.
Despite failed attempts, he intends to return to Turkey and continue to try until he reaches his destination.
“I will continue to do so despite being deported dozens of times,” Hassan said. “I’d rather die than live this miserable life,” he said, adding that he has been struggling to find work for years and feels hopeless about the future.
Like Hassan, Kamaran Aziz, a 21-year-old from Halabja, tried. Arriving in Europe from Belarus but was deported by local authorities when his visa expired last week.
Aziz paid $ 6,000 to travel to Kurdish smugglers, but was arrested and beaten by Belarusian border police before being forced to return home. Aziz told Al Jazeera that he would rather kill him again than stay in the Kurdish region.
Many of the 30 people they lost their lives Kurdish regions were trying to cross the English Channel last week.
Iraqi Kurds have also been killed on the border between Belarus and Poland hundreds more remain stagnant at sub-zero temperatures as they try to make their way to the European Union.
These tragic events have highlighted the growing wave of migration from the Kurdish region and many have wondered why it would make such a dangerous journey to leave an area rich in oil resources and long as a model of stability and development for the rest. country.
Corruption, repression, poverty
Like most Kurdish emigrants, the two youths denounced high unemployment, unpaid wages, widespread corruption, poor public services and networks of patronage linked to the two main families and their political parties who shared power in the region.
“It’s impossible to find a job if you don’t have a connection to the ruling authority,” Hassan said. “And if you try to call for your civil rights or take part in peaceful demonstrations, they will shoot you with live bullets.”
The Barzani and Talabani families and their Kurdish regions dominated by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Kurdistan National Union (PUK) have been the subject of increasing protests in recent years.
Thousands of students from Sulaimaniyah he went out into the street asking for the resumption of a monthly scholarship that was cut off seven years ago for several days last month. The protests turned violent after police riot police confronted students and used live shifts to disperse the crowd.
Smaller protests spread to other cities in the Kurdish region, including Erbil, Halabja, Kalar and Koya, and demonstrations of solidarity took place in Baghdad.
Earlier this year, the United Nations denounced the region’s “arbitrary arrests”, unfair trials and “harassment of journalists, activists and protesters”.
Sulaimaniyah inguruan unibertsitateko ikasleen protesta bat sakabanatzen saiatzen da istiluen polizia [File: Shwan Mohammed/AFP]Growing wave of migration
According to Ari Jalal Sulaymaniyah, head of the Refugee and Displaced Persons Foundation, at least 40,000 Iraqis have left the country since the beginning of 2021, 70% of whom came from the Kurdish region.
Jalal said migration from Iraq has been on the rise since the 1990s, but slowed after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, before escalating again in 2014 with the rise of ISIL (ISIS).
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has blamed the growing number of people leaving the Kurdistan region for the arrival of internally displaced persons in Iraq after ISIL took over large parts of the north of the country in 2014, amid tensions over decades. Turkish and Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK, listed by a large part of the international community as a terrorist group, is using the mountains of northern Iraq as a starting point for insurgency against Turkey. The Turkish military is conducting cross-border operations and airstrikes against the PKK in northern Iraq.
In a statement last week, Dindar Zebari, the KRG’s international promotion coordinator, said the influx of 700,000 internally displaced people from other parts of Iraq has been a source of frustration for Iraqi Kurds, and many are “growing the tendency to flee”. country”.
PKK fighters have added hundreds of villages in the border areas where Turkey has clashed with the desert to increase migration.
“Those who are migrating are telling and exploiting false stories about the living conditions in the Kurdistan region … to tarnish the region’s reputation,” he told Al Jazeera. He said the smugglers who were looking for the material were also guilty.
Erbil has worked closely with Baghdad to repatriate hundreds of Kurdish refugees stranded in Europe. He denies being forced to return.
Demonstrators are waving at a rally in Azadi Park in central Sulaimaniyah, a Kurdish autonomous region of Iraq. [File: Shwan Mohammed/AFP]‘Lossa’s Fountain’
But analysts said the real reasons behind Kurdish migration had nothing to do with the government’s analysis.
“The main problems are corruption, repression of liberties and civil liberties, and lack of employment,” said independent Kurdish analyst Mahmoud Kurdi.
The arrival of internally displaced persons (IDPs) or tensions between Turkey and the PKK have been blamed on “small towns inhabited by hundreds of people”.
“People are getting tired of poverty and unemployment. Redevelopment has also been limited to major cities such as Erbil and Sulaimaniyah, but most areas remain poor, looking closer to Sadr City, ”he said, referring to one of the poorest areas in Baghdad.
Karim Nouri, Deputy Minister of Migration and Displacement of the Central Government of Iraq, confirmed this. “It is because the wave of migration from the Kurdish region is making it difficult for young people to live freely and with dignity.”
The semi-autonomous region, known for its bright tower blocks and open green spaces, has been regularly criticized for restricting freedom of expression, and the recent refugee crisis on the Belarus-Poland border has highlighted growing corruption, poverty, corruption, poverty, and more. and poor financial management.
According to Sulaymaniyah-based analyst Lawan Othman, the migrant crisis has been “a source of great embarrassment for the KRG”.
“Whether it’s the issue of migration or the recent protests, all of these events are linked to a broader sense of frustration among Kurds,” Othman said.
“The Kurds reflect their disapproval and rejection of their government and how it has violated their sense of dignity and basic civil rights,” he added.
Dana Taib Same helped in this Sulaimaniyah report
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