2023-07-09 14:38:57
Above all, do not rely on the idyllic setting, between the mountains and the clear blue waters of Lake Dukan: Ranya, a small town in Iraqi Kurdistan located about a hundred kilometers east of Erbil, is a disaster-stricken town. “Here, everyone is looking to leave and wants a Turkish visa”claims Bejan Kamaran (1), the director of a travel agency. “This visa is much easier to obtain for Iraqis who want to emigrate for economic reasons than a Schengen visa”he says.
This June day, six people paraded in an hour in his cramped agency on the main street, where a dozen competing offices rub shoulders. Aras, 27, is the first to introduce himself. “I can’t make enough money to live, there is no work here”, he argues. This fisherman, with a shy expression and a plump face buried in his brown beard, can neither write nor speak English. He shows a picture of one of his three cousins already settled in the UK. Well dressed, cropped on the sides, one of them poses on a bridge overlooking buildings in London. A photo worthy of a fashion magazine that puts stars in her eyes.
To leave, Aras still has to go through two crucial steps. He was banned from Turkey in 2017 “when he got off the plane”, during his first attempt to start. For how long ? Aras is unaware of this, and may fear that it will happen again. Money is his second challenge. He says he has saved $5,000 and is going to borrow double that from his family. A common pot has been set up in Ranya where the majority of families are ready to finance the journey of their offspring for a better life. For a total of $20,000 per head. The price of smugglers.
“We were beaten by the smugglers with sticks at the slightest question”
This is what Abdullah Rashid paid, arrived in November in the United Kingdom, and contacted by telephone. His ride, he did “in two trucks”rolling during “tens of hours”one as far as Greece, the next as far as Italy. “The journey was torture. We were beaten by the smugglers with sticks at the slightest questionsays this 23-year-old man. There were about fifteen of us, we didn’t have enough food and we couldn’t breathe. » The majority of migrants he says he met on his journey were from Iraqi Kurdistan, like him. Arrived in France from Italy by his own means, he joined Calais.
Abdullah then crosses the other side of the Channel after his fourth attempt. Each time hidden in a truck. “The times before, I was discovered at the controls, but this time I was lucky. I was in a container of food that was loaded onto a train. Once in England, I went to the police to apply for refugee status”he says.
Pending a residence permit and a work permit, Abdullah Rashid has been placed in a hotel in Manchester, where the government only gives him “8 pounds a week” (less than ten euros) and where “food is appalling”. Nonetheless, he says “no regrets. I had neither a job nor any hope for the future. » In England, he will be a barber, a profession where he trained in Ranya.
Volatilized local youth
“Reaching Europe and obtaining citizenship there remains the only dream of many young Kurds”, notes doctoral student Sara Karim, whose thesis focuses on migratory routes. According to her, high unemployment, widespread corruption and poor services have left these young people on the brink.
In Ranya, the local youth seems to have evaporated. To notice this, just cross the market or the central square where a hundred men, idle and more in the prime of life, play board games in the middle of the afternoon, sipping tea .
At the exit of the city sits an industrial area where ruined buildings, stray dogs, wrecked cars and garbage cans make you think of a war scene. Ranya’s poverty is obvious. Three Baban brothers, Ashkan (1), Najim (1) work in a carpet laundry with their cousin Rahand. The first, 27, was expelled from Germany where he had gone when he was 18. The two youngest, who are only 16 years old, have already applied for a visa for Turkey.
“Wearing wet mats all day is heavy. The job is hard”, assures Ashkan, with a youthful face. He left school at 13 and plans to be a barber “to make money” and resume his studies. He and Rahand have already contacted smugglers who will take them across “by ship from Turkey to Italy” before reaching Calais by land, then boarding a small boat, a makeshift boat.
“Leave as soon as possible”
Ashkan is already dreaming of a « bright future », and the story of his big brother does not seem to worry him. Baban says, however, that he failed to reach England and was placed in a refugee camp in Germany, mainly populated by Afghans and Syrians. “The living conditions were horrible. There were fights, sometimes with a knife., he testifies. But that doesn’t stop him from “to think in order to retry (at) chance » rather than being “doomed to live here”. Baban even advises his two brothers and his cousin to “leave as soon as possible”.
Ashkan works at his father Said’s carpet cleaning factory. / Julia Zimmermann for The Cross
“Here, there are no laws but crimes and drugs”storms the father, Saïd Al Salan Barzanji, 53 years old, white shirt and gray hair in brush, for whom “Ranya has been abandoned by the government”. As for the $40,000 he is about to invest for his two children, he says he feels “forced to do it out of duty” et “believe in their destiny”.
A destiny with sometimes tragic consequences. “A year ago, a teenager came to apply for a visa, he was under 15says the director of the travel agency, Bejan Kamaran. I initially refused but he came back with his parents. » And he adds: “His mother wanted him to go to work in Europe to send money home. » In December 2021, the news fell: his boat sank between Turkey and Greece. He died, drowned. His body has never been found.
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A young population and very affected by unemployment
Iraq had 41.2 million inhabitants in 2023, according to annual CIA data.
About 61% of Iraqis are between the ages of 15 and 64.
The unemployment rate among young people aged 15 to 24 has reached 27.2%; 23.5% for men and 65.2% for women. Among young Iraqi Kurds, it is 24% for men and 69% for women, according to a UN survey.
According to United Nations estimates for 2021, between 43,000 and 54,000 jobs should be created in the three Iraqi Kurdish provinces to absorb the new waves of young people joining the labor force.
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