Smuggling business thrives as Iraqis flee violence, death
By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD, Iraq -
BAGHDAD, Iraq - BAGHDAD, Iraq—Maher Abdul Razak, like millions of his countrymen, had given up.
Fear had grown pervasive in his once-affluent Zaiyuna neighborhood of Baghdad. The laundry man down the street had been killed, and attacks on the market were common. Business was poor.
So Razak, a Shiite Muslim, sold his 10-year-old BMW for $10,000 and his appliance store for $16,000. Unable to get a visa to go to Germany, he turned to smugglers to get him across the border to Turkey and on to Greece, on a path he hoped would lead him and his family to a new life in Sweden.
Although few countries are willing to recognize them as political refugees, more than 2 million Iraqis have fled death threats, random violence, sectarian cleansing and poverty since the war began; 1.8 million more are displaced inside the country.
The refugees' reasons may vary, but the root is the same: "You start to fear everything," Razak said.
Most of those who've fled have settled in Syria or Jordan, but at least 40 Iraqis a day sneak across the border into Turkey, smugglers say.
Kurds used to take the same route to escape the murderous regime of Saddam Hussein. Now the smuggling business is thriving again, Kurdish smugglers say, as Arab Iraqis flee the violence of post-Saddam Iraq.
"In 2002 and 2003, business took a sharp dip and hardly any people came to me for services," said Dler, the pseudonym of a smuggler whose money-exchange business in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah provides cover for his activities. "In 2004, the trend picked up again and business flourished above all expectations. These past months have been the best, and numbers are rising still. There are many who have left their names with me to smuggle them ASAP through Turkey."
Razak, who tried and failed to get a German visa by feigning an illness, took the money he'd gathered and packed a suitcase with clothes and photos of his wife and his two young children. He planned to send for them once he got to Sweden, which has become the destination of choice for thousands of Iraqis, in part because the government doesn't track who's entered the country illegally after they've asked for asylum.
In the past year, the number of Iraqis seeking asylum in Sweden has tripled, and this year the Swedish ministry of migration expects as many as 20,000 more, more than double the number in 2006.
Razak was able to get a one-month visa to Turkey, where in December he and another Iraqi Arab checked into a modest Istanbul hotel for $15 a night. Instantly he felt calm.
"You feel a sense of peace," he said. "The organization, the clean places ..."
In a cafe, they met Ghassan, an Iraqi of Turkmen descent, who gave the men their options over tiny cups of Turkish coffee: $12,000 for a fake visa to a European country or $5,000 to be locked into a truck container with at least 10 other men. The container would be hidden by furniture. Of course, Ghassan noted, there was the risk of suffocation.
Or for $4,000 they could walk to the Greek border, float across the Aegean Sea in a dinghy and then be taken to Athens.
"The hardest way is the safest way," Razak recalled Ghassan saying. The pair decided to walk.
Razak prepared a backpack with a change of clothes, two changes of underwear, a little bread and some canned meat. He put in some cologne and another pair of pants for good measure. He didn't have hiking boots; his black leather dress shoes would have to do.
Two days later, on Dec. 7, Ghassan called. It was time.
Razak left his Iraqi passport, the rest of his belongings and the $10,000 he'd brought with him with Ghassan. He'd get it back in Greece, minus the $4,000 he owed for a successful trip. He forgot to pack water.
"I didn't realize how long it would take," he said.
Ghassan handed the two Iraqis over to two Kurds, who took them to a basement apartment where they joined dozens of others, mostly Kurdish or Arab Iraqis and a few Arabs from other nations.
They waited there for hours. Sunset, the time they were supposed to leave, came and went. Newspapers were laid out, and Razak ate eggs, tomatoes and cucumbers and struck up a conversation with one of the Kurdish guards.
"Don't worry, we'll leave tomorrow," the guard whispered in broken Arabic, sensing Razak's nervousness.
The next afternoon, Razak was stuffed, along with 25 others, into a minivan whose seats had been removed. Razak remembers that his leg was crunched under a heavy Egyptian man.
The van stopped once for gas, then, five hours later, stopped again to drop them off. They met their guide, Abu Dula, who stepped out of a car in front of them. He towered over Razak and the other men and surveyed them with sharp eyes. He told them to make a human chain, hands on the shoulders of the man in front.
"His voice was rough and horrifying," Razak said.
For hours, they walked in darkness and thick fog. Razak's feet hurt in his dress shoes, and his jeans were covered with mud. Every so often Abu Dula yelled out, "Danshe, Danshe"—get down. The men took turns carrying the dinghy that would get them across the sea.
They came to the water. Abu Dula took the Kurds first. Thirty minutes later, he returned. Razak got into the boat, which held 15 men, twice what it should have carried, and they pushed off, using their hands to paddle against the current.
At one point, the dinghy's bottom ripped. Razak plugged the hole with his hand as other men bailed. Razak's jacket and pants were drenched; his teeth chattered.
"Now you are on Greek land," Abu Dula said. Five hours had passed, and there were still four hours of walking to go.
With daylight glowing, they stopped in a cluster of trees to sleep. Razak leaned against a tree trunk, his teeth chattering, and prayed that the trip would be worth the suffering.
At sunset, they began to walk again.
"Don't get tired—I need you to move on time," Abu Dula said.
He kicked the men who fell, and when Razak took a tumble in slippery mud, Abu Dula raised his arm to hit him. Razak blocked the blow.
They finally made it to the meeting point, but the car never came to take them to Athens. Razak's lips were chapped from thirst.
"I was so dry, if you had given me a basket of gold and a bottle of water, I would have chosen the water," he said.
They could wait or walk down the nearby thoroughfare and risk getting caught. Succumbing to thirst, Razak and his friend walked to the street, where a Greek soldier saw them. In broken English, Razak begged, "Please, water."
The soldier gave them a bottle and a sandwich to split.
"Do you have passports?" he asked.
"No," Razak answered. "We are Palestinian." The smugglers had told them that if they claimed to be Iraqi they would be handed over to Turkish authorities for harsher punishment.
"I'll let you go," the soldier told them.
"No, call the police," Razak said. He didn't know where he was, but he knew he was cold and he was tired and he wanted to go home.
The police took them back to the border, where they were put in a large jail cell. Everyone there was claiming to be Palestinian.
Razak smiled at that memory as he recounted his journey in the living room of his Baghdad home.
They were held for four days. On the third day, the rest of the group that Razak had been traveling with joined him in the cell. No one had come to take them to Athens, and they'd been caught trying to make it back to Turkey.
The men were sent back to Turkey, where Razak made it back to Istanbul. He reclaimed his passport and his money, booked a ticket home and called his family. His mother and his wife cried; they hadn't heard from him in more than a week.
Now Razak has decided to move to the Shiite province of Najaf in Iraq's south. And his dreams of a new life in Europe?
Razak looked down. "Never again. Never again," he said.
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A roundup of the day's violence in Iraq is posted every afternoon at www.mcclatchydc.com. Click on "Iraq war coverage."
Read what Iraqi members of McClatchy's Baghdad staff have to say about the situation in their country on the Inside Iraq blog: http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq
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(McClatchy special correspondent Yaseen Taga contributed to this report from Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.)
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(c) 2007, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
Iraq
McClatchy Newspapers 2007
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