Focus on Iranian Kurd refugees

After 24 years of waiting, Iranian Kurds at the Al-Tash camp, near Al-Ramadi in western Iraq, say they are again waiting to be allowed to move to a new home. Community leaders say they want to move to northern Iraq, since they claim the Iranian government will not allow most of them to return home. Those who feel they could return worry that their children will not be allowed to attend school or will be ostracised. Since April, some 1,200 members of the group tried to move to Jordan and are now living in tents in the no-man's-land between Jordan and Iraq, while they plead with the Jordanian government for entry. Many of the 6,000 to 7,000 people in the camp fled to Iraq in 1982 during the Iran-Iraq war. "Saddam Hussein's secret police used to prevent us from working, but now we can," 53-year-old Azim Ali Haydar told IRIN at the camp. "But I still don't have any money to leave this place." Even though no one is confining them to the camp any more, most have not left. The camp actually looks like a rural Iraqi village, with its mature trees and low mud-brick houses. Men on motorbikes zoom in and out of the main gate and children play in the dusty streets. VISITS BY UNHCR Representatives from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) visited the refugees several times in June to discuss finding a place for them in northern Iraq, UN reports show. At the time UNHCR officials met representatives of the Iranian ethnic Kurdish refugees and local authorities. "We were told that 405 of the ex-Al-Tash refugees are in Kalar District, 140 km southeast of Sulaymaniyah, and that more were expected to leave Al-Tash camp due to insecurity and insufficient assistance," a UNHCR statement said in July. Al-Tash is a two-hour drive west of Baghdad. "Due to tight security measures instituted by the UN following incidents and reports of insecurity, visits by expatriate UNHCR workers to Al Tash camp have been infrequent in recent months," a UNHCR spokesman, Peter Kessler, told IRIN on Wednesday from Geneva. "Aid has been distributed in Al-Tash by the refugee committee. Representatives of the refugees travel to Baghdad to meet with UNHCR officials and to collect relief items," he explained, adding that a UNHCR national staff member visited Al-Tash in mid-October and was told by refugee leaders that only about 6,000 Iranians remained in the camp. However, he said the agency had been unable to verify this estimate. ALTERNATIVE SITES IN THE NORTH Kessler confirmed that according to refugee leaders and local officials in northern Iraq, some of the Al-Tash refugees had opted to leave the camp and move north with their families. "Some have settled in Kalar District. Others may have returned to Iran by crossing the heavily mined border," he said. Local authorities in northern Iraq have identified a total of three sites that could be used to shelter the Iranian ethnic Kurdish refugees from Al-Tash. UNHCR together with a local partner agency plans to erect shelters for the Iranians opting to leave Al-Tash. Other refugee groups also face problems in Iraq. Iranian refugees settled around Dujaylah, Ali al-Gharbi and Kumayt in eastern Iraq had moved in small numbers towards the Shahrani border crossing with Iran. They said they were having to leave their settlements because they were being harassed and now wanted to return to Iran. The first group of 125 Iranian refugees in Iraq went home in July with UNHCR assistance under a voluntary repatriation programme agreed upon over a year ago by the two governments. These Iranians had been living in Dujaylah and Kumayt refugee settlements in Wasit and Maysan governorates in southeastern Iraq. UNHCR workers have made sporadic visits over the past few months according to a teenager, Abd al-Hadi, who was born at the camp. Most UN staff members from Iraq are currently working in Jordan following two suicide bombings at the UN headquarters in Baghdad in August and September that killed more than 24 people. "No one wants to visit us now. We feel like we have no rights," he told IRIN. He had not heard about the bomb attacks. "The UN said they would help us, but it seems they left us," he said. SOME LOOK TO THIRD COUNTRY REFUGES Before Saddam's regime fell, the refugees had been working with UNHCR to be sent to a third country, possibly in northern Europe, Azim said. They have been waiting for a long time. Azim has a laminated card with his picture on it from 1996 identifying him as being considered for repatriation to a third country. Eight others said they had been waiting since 1999. "People who were working in political parties in Iran cannot go home now," 41-year-old Hamid Sa'idi told IRIN. "That is why we're asking to go to other countries, or to have a home in the north." Saddam had wanted to punish the group, according to Sa'idi, but they actually have enough food to eat and meagre water and electricity supplies. UNHCR built a water pipeline to the village years ago. Neighbours to the camp tap much of the water out of the pipeline, but some still flows through. When community leaders complained to the governor installed after the war, he promised to help them, but the camp dwellers say so far nothing has happened. Electricity is sporadic in the camp, as it is in many other places in Iraq, including the capital, Baghdad. SOME REFUGEES WORKING Under the UN Oil-for-Food programme, families receive a specific amount of food every month. "We continue to receive the food, but we have very little water or electricity," Azim said. The refugees also say Saddam used to give them a monthly stipend. Now, they are being asked to do work by Coalition forces, who have said they will be paid reasonable wages, according to some of the asylum seekers. "The US army has asked us to work," Sa'idi said. "We have no other choice." But security is also a problem. The refugees are not liked by people in Al-Ramadi and Fallujah, the closest cities to their camp, community leaders say. They also claim that people they believe to be secret police from Iran have come to spy on them. Community leaders are worried that political arguments between the US and the UN may trap them as well. "We are stuck between the UN and the US politics. We are the victims of these problems," Azim said. "Should it be the US government who decides what happens to us?" he asked.