The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Iraqi refugees abroad flock home from turmoil Posted: 02 Jun 2011 02:37 AM PDT  There may not be much to come home to, but physician Haider Farid feels "like a fish back in water" hearing the Iraqi dialect. — Reuters pic But in the past few days, he has returned to Iraq, this time looking for sanctuary from violence and instability threatening Syria and other states in the Middle East and North Africa. Officials in Baghdad say hundreds of Iraqis, former refugees from years of turmoil and sectarian conflict at home, have been flowing back this year from Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria as popular uprisings demanding reforms sweep the region. Razaq came home with his wife, leaving his two sons in Syria to finish their exams. He returned to fix his house, still scarred by the destruction from the communal violence that ravaged his southern Baghdad neighbourhood in 2006-07. As Iraq's internal conflict has eased comparatively, he preferred now to be at home rather than in Syria. "The situation is unbearable, Syria is no longer a safe haven, and it will witness the same kind of violence that Iraq experienced after the regime change in 2003," he said, while carrying a new mattress to refit his house. Syria has a 600-km border with Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees fled across the border following the US-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein and triggered years of bloody sectarian strife. Salam al-Khafaji, a deputy minister of migration and displacement, said hundreds of Iraqis were returning from abroad, and he expected the numbers to increase as turbulence in Syria and other troubled nations in the region increased. "There are a lot of Iraqis stuck in those countries and we seek to evacuate them but our problem is we don't have offices in those countries, and there are weaknesses in coordination between the respective ministries," Khafaji said. He said Iraq's government had sent planes to bring back a total of 3,734 Iraqi nationals from Egypt, Yemen and Libya this year after they asked to be evacuated. "Many times more refugees have returned to Iraq on their own, and without informing us," Khafaji said. Buses coming back full from Syria The level of violence has eased in Iraq from the 2006-07 peak of the sectarian conflict that pitted rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims against each other, although bomb and gun attacks against officials and security forces still occur daily. Nevertheless, the government is trying to encourage Iraqi refugees abroad to return by offering free transport and an incentive of 4 million Iraqi dinars (RM10,400) per family. Haider Farid, a physician, returned to Iraq last week from Yemen on a plane sent by the Iraqi government. "My family and I decided to return home because the situation in Yemen is worsening," he told Reuters. "We left Iraq seeking safety and now as there is no security in Yemen, we made up our minds to come home," said Farid, who was visiting the Migration and Displacement Ministry to file the documents needed for him to receive the returnee grant. The return of the Iraqi refugees from abroad has boosted the business of travel companies, which have increased the number of trips they offer from Syria. The price of a bus ticket from Damascus to Baghdad is around US$30 (RM90). "We had about 700 passengers travelling on our buses in the past week, mostly returnee families with their belongings," said Muafaq Mohammed, the owner of a travel company in Baghdad. "We send almost empty buses to Syria and they drive back full." Returning Iraqis said they were pleased and relieved to be home, and they hoped the security situation in their country would continue to improve. "Being abroad took a heavy toll on us," said Farid. "I feel good when I hear the Iraqi dialect; I feel like a fish back in water." — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
| Iraqi youth tired of war fret over scarce jobs Posted: 02 Jun 2011 02:31 AM PDT BAGHDAD, June 2 — Like most Iraqi university students, Dalia Muthanna is more concerned about finding a job than worrying about bomb attacks or a return of sectarian fighting in her homeland. More than eight years after the US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, young people are weary of war and more interested in discussing how the country is going to get back on its feet and rebuild its battered infrastructure. Their biggest worry and frustration is finding jobs. "Any student you talk to will tell you that he or she dreams of graduating and getting a job, or travelling," said Muthanna, a 20-year-old computer studies student at Baghdad's Mustansiriya University. "But talking about the wars and sectarian issues we went through, they won't discuss them. "We rarely speak of these issues, as we talked about them in the past, and we have suffered enough because of them. We try not to speak about issues like war," she said. Iraq's official unemployment rate stands at 15 per cent although the real figure is believed to be around 30 per cent. Around 60 per cent of the population relies on a government national food ration programme. The high level of unemployment fuels concerns about frustrated young people turning towards militias and insurgent groups, which remain capable of lethal attacks in Iraq, although overall violence has subsided from the peak of sectarian warfare in 2006-7. The country needs massive investment in every sector. Private industry remains relatively small compared with state-owned enterprises, and the government is still the biggest employer. Iraq depends on oil exports for 95 per cent of government revenues. Mehdi al-Alak, a deputy planning minister and head of the statistics office, has said at least 25 per cent of Iraqis aged 16-29 are unemployed. 'More open to outside world' Some Iraqi students said there was evidence of influence and recruitment by insurgents' groups at universities. But they said most young Iraqis saw campus as a place where they could escape from sectarian issues and violence and talk more about the latest fashion and art. "After the fall of the (Saddam Hussein) regime, there was the influence of a certain Islamic sect on the university," said oil engineering student Ammar Naiem, 22. "There are some who join it for benefits and some join it because of their beliefs. But they can't divide the students . . . Religion should be out of the university campus in general." Naiem declined to name the sect concerned, saying he feared retribution. In the still charged sectarian atmosphere of Iraq, religious and political groups compete for supporters among the country's disgruntled and restless youth. Dr Qassim Shakir, head of the geography department at Mustansiriya's Arab and International Studies centre, said Iraqi youth were able to move away from the past by making connections with other countries and their young people through Facebook and the Internet. "Most of them (students) are liberal. They are not conservative," he said. "The Internet has become a connecting point between the youth of the world. The young men learn a lot from other people's cultures and civilisations. "Now the university student spends at least 3-4 hours a day surfing on the Internet to acquire information . . . They are now more open to the outside world," Shakir said. Like the rest of the Arab world this year, Iraq has not been immune to popular protests that have mainly been organised through social media platforms such as Facebook. Although Iraqis have not called for a complete overhaul of their democratically elected cross-sectarian government, many have voiced frustrations over a lack of basic services and jobs. Iraq's five-year economic development plan, which aims to create three to four million new jobs by 2014, has done little to ease such concerns. Critics say the ambitious job-creation goal seems to exist only on paper, and shows little sign of becoming reality. For example, they say, the ongoing expansion of the oil sector has not yet created the surge in jobs for Iraqis that was promised. "The problem we, the youth, suffer is that when we graduated we don't get a job," said 21-year-old Muhammad Sameer Abbas, a second-year arts student studying French. "What is the government doing?" — Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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