The Times - UK - 04.12.2021

24 2GMK1 Saturday December 4 2021 | the times

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Dunkirk in mid-October. On the

French coast he was soon put in contact

with some other Kurdish smugglers,

whom he paid £2,500 to cross the

Channel. The smugglers had also

offered to sneak him into Britain inside

a lorry but that was double the price.

Eventually, on the sixth attempt, he

reached his intended destination after

his dinghy was rescued by the Border

Force. He was placed in coronavirus

quarantine for ten days before arriving

in Basingstoke. Ahmad is to be moved

from the hotel to a permanent resi-

dence while his asylum application is

processed.

He said that like many Kurds he

wanted to seek asylum in Britain

because English was the language

taught in schools in Kurdistan. His

fellow countrymen had already estab-

lished a community here and he

wanted to find work as an accountant.

“There is an old saying in Kurdistan

that the British are friends to the

Kurds,” he said.

“When we arrived, the police were

very respectful and kind towards us,

unlike in other countries I have been

through. I am very thankful to the

British government. They saved my

life.” Blnd Ahmad, 27, near Basingstoke. He hopes

Ranya, Iraqi-Kurdistan

Shakar Ali, 27

Ranya, Iraqi Kurdistan

Harem Pirot, 23

migrants whose bodies were pulled

from the sea last week. Among those

feared drowned are Baran Nuri

Hamadamin, 24, from Soran in Arbil

province; Shakar Ali, 27, and Harem

Pirot, 23, from Ranya, Iraqi Kurdistan;

Hevert Hassan, about 25, from Iraq;

Sirwan Ali, 23, from Iran; Halimo,

about 25, from Somalia; and Twana

Mamand, 18, also from Ranya.

Twana’s brother Zana Mamand, 33, a

firefighter, said they had last spoken

on the night the dinghy sank. Just

before midnight Twana complained

“the boat is not good” because it was

Rzgar Hussin, a policeman, sits in his
home in Iraqi Kurdistan scanning
newspaper photographs of migrants
arriving in the UK, hoping he will
recognise his wife and three children.
His eldest daughter, Hadia, 22, who
was studying to be a teacher, phoned
him from a refugee camp in Dunkirk
before boarding an inflatable boat last
week on the day at least 27 mainly
Kurdish migrants drowned.
On the call Hadia, who took a selfie
with her father and the rest of the
family at Arbil’s Sulaymaniyah airport
two months ago, asked him to pray for

Channel to England recounted how

they had flown from Baghdad or

Istanbul to Minsk. At the airport they

are picked up by what they refer to as

the “Kurdish mafia”, who have

contacts on the route across Europe

and in British cities.

Human rights groups say at least 13

people have died as migrants have

camped in freezing conditions at the

border after EU countries blocked the

crossings. For those that make it

across, the next danger is the

Channel. French officials are still

trying to identify many of the 27

Blnd Ahmad wept tears of joy when he
landed at Dover, astonished that he had
made it alive to British shores.
Having narrowly escaped death on
several occasions, the accountancy
graduate considered himself lucky to
have survived the journey over three
and a half months from his home in
Sirwan, Iraq. Yet this was no thanks to
those who arranged his passage.
The most danger was consistently
posed by the “brutal and inhuman”
smugglers who organised almost every
stage of his journey, Ahmad said after
his arrival on November 16. He is now at
a Home Office-registered hotel in
Basingstoke, Hampshire.
Ahmad said that they put people into
boats that they knew to be riddled with
holes, with faulty GPS equipment and
not enough fuel.
On one of his five abortive Channel
crossings he said that a smuggler,
struck by a sudden pang of guilt at the
last minute, told a family with children
not to get into a dinghy he had prepared
because he knew it had a hole.
The smugglers used guns and knives
to maintain a brutal authority over the
camps around Calais. Migrants were
threatened with murder if they did not
follow their orders, he said. Gunfights
between rival smugglers were common
and at night the sound of shooting
echoed around the camps.
He said that he woke up one morning
to find the aftermath of a skirmish, with
several smugglers lying wounded in the
mud. The Times has reported how
Channel crossings are becoming big
business for organised criminal gangs.
“They are violent and brutal people,”
Ahmad, 27, said. “Their behaviour to-
wards us was inhuman. They verbally
and physically put us down and abused
us. All smugglers say that the dinghy
will get you to the UK easily but that is
not the case. [On one attempted
crossing] the smuggler knew the boat
had a hole in it, and told a family not to
get in. [The family] got in anyway
because they said they could not live
any longer in the camps.”
The raft soon began to founder and
the migrants spent 12 hours desperately
bailing out water before they were res-
cued by the Belgians. Ahmad is among

many Kurdish migrants arriving

on small boats, having fled political

oppression and poverty in their

homeland.

Most of the 27 people who died last

week when a dinghy capsized in the

Channel were Kurdish.

Ahmad said that he had been forced

to leave his home and family when he

received threatening phone calls from

people he suspected were government

agents.

He had taken part in anti-gover-

nment demonstrations and had posted

on social media criticising the Kurdis-

tan Regional Government, the execu-

tive body of the autonomous Kurdistan

region in northern Iraq.

Ahmad, who borrowed £10,000 for

his journey, said: “No one would leave

their own family and their culture be-

hind unless they were desperate. But

there is no individual freedom in

Kurdistan.”

He added that economic insecurity

and the lack of job opportunities were

another factor. Despite having gradu-

ated from university with a degree in

statistics and accountancy, he had been

working as a baker for the past six years.

Having left his home on July 31, he

flew to Istanbul from the Kurdish capi-

tal of Erbil. He stayed in Turkey for a

few days and arranged with a smuggler

to take a yacht to Italy, costing £7,500.

During the crossing, however, the

engine stopped working and the group

had to return to Turkey in a dinghy.

He then decided to fly to Minsk from

Istanbul. While buying his ticket at the

airline office a Kurdish smuggler of-

fered to take him from Belarus to

France for £3,400.

This was the cheapest option. It

involved a group of migrants being led

remotely with GPS and through tele-

phone contact with a smuggler, who ar-

ranged for minibuses to pick them up at

certain checkpoints.

The more expensive option involved

a smuggler guiding them in person.

Once he arrived in Belarus, he

walked to the Polish border with about

nine other Kurdish migrants, who cut

the fence.

A minibus collected them in Poland

and drove them to Germany. He was

due to take another minibus but was

arrested by police, who placed him in an

asylum camp.

The smuggler told him to escape

from the camp and had a car waiting for

him outside. He entered France after

leaving Germany and arrived at

Mafia meet migrants off

the plane at Minsk airport

them. The image published today in

The Times would be the last time the

family posed for a photograph

together. “I haven’t slept or eaten

since the drowning,” Hussin, 47, said.

“All I do is cry. People keep ringing me

for information and I don’t know what

to tell them.”

Hussin’s family, like thousands of

other Kurds, have become pawns in a

cynical international web of political

intrigue, organised crime and human

misery. He believes they entered

Europe through Belarus, which is

being criticised for weaponising the

migrants against the European Union.

Belarus’s KGB was accused this

week of creating dozens of fake social

media accounts of people posing as

journalists and activists to stir up a

migrant crisis on the border with

Poland. Facebook’s parent company

Meta removed dozens of accounts it

claimed posted criticism in English,

Polish and Kurdish about Poland’s

alleged violation of migrant rights. EU

countries have accused Belarus of

creating a migrant crisis on the bloc’s

eastern borders by encouraging

thousands from the Middle East and

Africa to try to cross into Poland and

Lithuania, in revenge for western

sanctions on Minsk.

On Thursday Liz Truss, the foreign

secretary, announced a fifth tranche

of sanctions against Belarus, which

the UK has accused of a “litany of

abhorrent acts and human rights

violations”. Russian food firms have

warned they might have to stop

production because of the delays in

getting raw goods over the Poland-

Belarus border. The crossing, which

accounts for 10 per cent of Russian

imports, is taking up to four days

instead of 12 hours. In retaliation,

Belarus has threatened to cut off its

transit of Russian gas to Europe.

Many Kurdish migrants at camps in

northern France hoping to cross the

Kurdish gangsters run

trade in human misery,

report Ben Ellery,

David Brown and Azar

Muhamad in Kalar, Iraq

Rzgar Hussin and his lost family

From Kurdistan to Basingstoke...

Tom Ball

News Migration

1

2

3

5

8

9

IRAQ

TURKEY

BELARUS

POLAND

ITALY

GERMANY

Dover Dunkirk

FRANCE

UK

July 31, 2021

Bldn Ahmad

left Sirwan

Erbil

Istanbul

He stayed in Istanbul for a few

days and then arranged with a

smuggler to take a yacht to Italy,

costing £7,500

During the crossing the engine

failed and group had to return to

Turkey in dinghies

4

Late August

Flew to Minsk from Istanbul. While buying the plane

ticket Ahmad was approached by a Kurdish smuggler

offering to transport him from Belarus to France,

Walked from which he accepted, costing £3,400

Belarus to the

Polish border

with nine other

Kurdish

migrants

Smuggler minibus took

the migrants from

Poland to Germany.

Ahmad was then

arrested and placed in

an asylum camp by

German authorities. He

was there for about a

week before he escaped

Mid-October

The smuggler arranged a

car that took him to France,

then another on to Dunkirk.

He stayed at a migrant

camp there where he met

up with new Kurdish

smugglers. He paid £2,500

for a Channel crossing

100 miles (all routes are approximate)

6

7

November 16

Ahmad succesfully reached

the UK after five failed

crossing attempts. Boat

was picked up by Border

Force in the Channel and

brought into Dover