An Iraqi plane that left Minsk (Belarus) with migrants on board landed at Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, November 18. A total of 431 people were on board the Boeing 747 of the national company Iraqi Airways, according to the government spokesman of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, Jotiar Adel. The vast majority of passengers got off at Erbil from the aircraft, which was to take off again in the evening for Baghdad.
This repatriation was the first since the start of the migration crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland. It unfolded “on a voluntary basis”, according to the Baghdad government. The Iraqi Kurds who returned on Thursday were part of a group of several thousand migrants, mostly from the Middle East, who had been stranded for days along the Polish border in hopes of reaching the EU.
Among the passengers were many children and women. When they got off the plane, some hid their faces so as not to appear on the images broadcast live by local television stations. Many of them carried their personal belongings in backpacks or plastic bags.
“I spent over $ 4,000 to get to Belarus”, lamented a resident of Erbil, on condition of anonymity. The low, “The situation was very difficult, we had to eat grass and tree leaves and it was cold”. He explains that “smugglers take migrants across, charging them between $ 6,000 and $ 7,000”, but that he is “difficult to pass for those who have families”. A resident of the Sinjar region in northern Iraq, for his part, said that if “the situation there was difficult, here it is worse. These are difficult conditions [en Irak] which prompted us to emigrate. “
>> Migration crisis in Belarus: many Iraqi Kurds are still hoping to reach Europe to escape an “everyday struggle”
According to the Presidency of Belarus, “about 7,000” migrants are currently in this country, including more than 2,000 on the border with Poland. The West accuses Minsk of having orchestrated this influx of migrants since the summer, in response to Western sanctions taken against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko after the repression in 2020 of an opposition movement.