Damascus – Kawther and her daughter were eating supper in the kitchen when a firebomb flew through the window. Their flat burst into flames but they were unhurt.
That was the first time Kawther, an Iraqi who was employed as a bookkeeper in a Baghdad hotel, considered emigrating. It was 2004, about a year after US forces had taken the Iraqi capital.
In the winter of 2005, five armed men in black masks assaulted the two women in their renovated flat. Kawther’s daughter, then 18 years old, dropped to the floor in front of them and pleaded, ‘Don’t take my mother away! She’s the only person I have in the world.’
The men led Kawther into her bedroom, where she was raped. ‘Not one, but four,’ she whispered, her voice choked with tears, after she had sent her daughter to the kitchen for a glass of water.
She took a drag on a cigarette and blew smoke toward the ceiling. Mother and daughter arrived in Damascus, the capital of neighbouring Syria, in 2006 and moved into a small flat in a suburb.
They receive assistance from the United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR. But they lack work permits and long-term residence permits.
Since they see no prospects for a decent future in Syria and are fearful of returning to Iraq, the UNHCR has suggested that they seek admission to Germany.
Two of Kawther’s sisters have lived in Cologne with their families since the 1990s. Kawther, who has been divorced since the late 1980s and will turn 50 this December, said she wanted to ’start a second life’ there.
She still does not know whether German authorities will approve her application. Most of the 1,147 Iraqis that Germany has accepted since March under the European Union’s refugee resettlement programme are Christians or members of other religious minorities in Iraq. Kawther is a Muslim.
‘We’re very pleased that Germany has taken so many refugees, but we think there shouldn’t be any discrimination. Religion shouldn’t be used to exclude a case,’ remarked UNHCR officer Michelle Alfaro. Some refugee workers have criticized Berlin for allegedly preferring Christians for domestic political reasons.
By the end of this year, Germany is to admit a total of 2,500 Iraqi refugees stranded in Syria or Jordan. They receive a three-year residence permit but have the opportunity to stay longer. The other 26 EU countries have offered to take a combined total of 7,500 Iraqis.
The UNHCR has found homes for about 9,400 Iraqis in the United States since 2007. Many Iraqis do not want to go to the US, however. Some have political reservations, saying they simply cannot imagine ever feeling at home in ‘the country that drove Iraq to the brink of ruin.’
Others are afraid that after their first six months in the US, during which new arrivals receive government assistance, they will land in the gutter without health insurance, work or social benefits.
‘You mustn’t forget that many of these refugees are heavily traumatized, which naturally makes integration even harder,’ Alfaro said.
Iraqis fully without means are not the only ones trying to reach Germany by way of Syria. Among the language students at the Damascus branch of the Goethe Institute, a German cultural organization, are Iraqis hoping to receive a German visa. Most are young women with an Iraqi husband waiting for them in Germany.
‘If the situation in Iraq weren’t so dangerous, most families probably wouldn’t want their daughters to travel alone to Germany, in many cases to a husband whom they hardly know,’ remarked an Iraqi woman who has worked in Damascus for years.
‘But they have no hope that the girls’ future will be safe in their homeland.’
Source: Traumatized Iraqis seek peaceful new life in Germany (News Feature) – Monsters and Critics