Limping and Penniless, Iraqis Deported From Belarus Face Bleak Futures

THE NEW YORK TIMES: Hundreds of desperate Iraqis are being sent home after becoming political pawns in Belarus’s quarrel with its European Union neighbors.

Nazar Shamsaldin on Sunday with some of his family back in Erbil, Iraq, after being deported from Belarus. | Hawre Khalid for The New York Times
ERBIL, Iraq — It was cold in Belarus, bitterly cold, but at least it offered hope, however illusory.

Nazar Shamsaldin was one of thousands of Iraqis who made their way to the Eastern European country in recent months, hoping it would prove a jumping-off point to new lives in the West, only to become pawns in a geopolitical game.

But this weekend he was back in Iraq, sitting on the cold floor of a tiny unfinished concrete house, newly deported from Belarus. Nearby a small boy, one of a dozen children crammed into the house, was trying to warm his hands over a single, battered kerosene heater.

Mr. Shamsaldin, a laborer, and 35 of his relatives had risked everything to travel West. Like many of the hundreds of other Iraqis deported last week, they are now deep in debt and despair. » | Jane Arraf and Sangar Khaleel | Monday, November 22, 2021