[Dialogue] 'Little Baghdad' thrives in Sweden

Harry Wainwright h-wainwright at charter.net
Thu Jun 19 11:58:04 EDT 2008


 

  MSNBC.com

 

 'Little Baghdad' thrives in Sweden 

Sodertalje has taken in more Iraqis than U.S., but mood is changing

updated 9:05 a.m. ET, Thurs., June. 19, 2008

SODERTALJE, Sweden - In this lakeside town, once best known as the home of
Swedish tennis hero, Bjorn Borg, neighborhoods nicknamed "Little Baghdad"
and "Mesopotalje" now echo with arguments over Assyrian soccer.

Along the city's tree-lined waterfront, young Iraqi families and groups of
older men chat in Arabic, enjoying long summer evenings.

"Everyone here is Iraqi," said a grocer at the main supermarket in Ronna, a
neighborhood of tenement-style housing blocks, where two to three families
often crowd into one-family apartments.

Change has come to Sweden because of the Iraq war, driven by an open-arms
refugee policy and word of mouth in Iraq. Most of the 2 million externally
displaced Iraqis are living in Syria and Jordan, but Sweden tops the list of
Western nations that have offered a haven. 

In 2007, Iraqi citizens claimed asylum in 89 countries, with almost half
those claims - 18,600 - reported in Sweden, the U.N. refugee agency reported
this week. And Sodertalje, a city of 83,000 people, took in more Iraqis than
the United States and Canada combined.

The welcome approach to the refugees has been a point of pride to Swedes,
who were opposed to the Iraq war. But the unyielding flow is taking its toll
and the country is slashing the number of asylum approvals.

"Iraq is the worst refugee disaster in the Middle East since 1948," Sweden's
Minister for Migration and Asylum Tobias Billstrom told msnbc.com. "We want
to do as much as we can but we can't help everybody."

Safe haven
Since the start of the war in March 2003, Iraqi Christians fleeing
persecution from Islamic militants have set out with Sodertalje in mind,
with around 100 arriving each month, according to officials. 

A community of Assyrians (a Christian ethnic group mostly based in Iraq,
Syria, Iran, and Turkey) has existed here since the late 1960s, but its
numbers increased rapidly as more Iraqis sought protection among friends and
relatives.

"Everyone in Iraq knows it's the country of refuge, safety and kindness,"
said Nagiba Daud, who spoke after prayers at Johannes Chaldean Catholic
Church, explaining why she had chosen to escape to Sodertalje with her two
children.

The city boasts two successful Assyrian soccer teams (as well as at least
one all-Iraqi high school team), an Assyrian satellite television station,
and churches from the main Christian denominations common in Iraq: Chaldean
Catholic, Syriac Catholic, and Syriac Orthodox.  

The churches are a haven in immigrant neighborhoods that offer a startling
contrast to the chaotic streetlife of Baghdad and Mosul, even before the
destruction and violence of the war. 

In Ronna, nondescript tenement buildings are surrounded by grassland and
highways. There are no restaurants, movie theaters, kebab shops, or even
fast-food outlets. Apartment blocks and sidewalks are clean and neat, but
the only remote signs of life are at the neighborhood's only supermarket and
the church.

Harrowing memories
The Iraqi congregation of Johannes Church has swollen from around 650
families before the war to around 1000, forcing Sunday worshippers to watch
the packed service on television screens set up in the basement. Dozens also
come daily to pray, kneeling before a statue of the Virgin Mary, and
fingering prayer beads as they recite verses in Aramaic and Arabic.

Many have painful memories of violence and intimidation in Iraq.

"Someone I don't know put a letter under my door, saying we had to leave the
house in 24 hours or all the people in the house would be killed," said
Daud, a former seamstress, as she described her family's flight from
Baghdad.

She now may be forced to move again. Despite providing photos of her burned
down home to Swedish authorities, she and her sons, 9-year-old Saif and
21-year-old Stiven, have recently had their asylum claim rejected.

"It would be better if they killed me and my family now than if they send us
back to Iraq," she said of the danger awaiting them if their court appeal
fails.

Law tightens
Daud is a victim of the hardening attitudes in Sweden toward the refugees.

After repeated appeals for for other nations - notably the United States and
the EU nations - to share the burden, Sweden changed its asylum
requirements.

In July 2007, Sweden's Supreme Court decided that armed conflict had ended
in Iraq. Since then, asylum has only been granted to those who can prove
that they were singled out for persecution, not by the region they hail from
or their religion. Since the law changed, "the approval rate has dropped
from about 80 percent to 20 percent," said Mikael Ribbenvik, head of Asylum
Reception and Detention at the Migration Board, a government agency.

"When we deny people, we have the responsibility to return the people to
their country - and we are currently returning people to Iraq," he said.

Those who accept a "voluntary return" are given a plane ticket and
re-establishment funds. Those who do not are forcefully returned by the
police.

In 2007, 854 Iraqis were "voluntarily returned" to Iraq, up from 197 the
previous year. Figures were not available for involuntary returns.

In a report released this week, Amnesty International said Sweden's change
of heart had resulted in Iraqis being forcibly returned to areas still
considered very dangerous. The human rights organization also accused world
governments of using terms such as "voluntary returns" for political gain,
and said some refugees "are making this decision as they feel they have no
other option."

Left in limbo
Thousands who arrived since the law changed have been left in limbo.

"When I came to Sweden, I had a little money to give my family, but now it's
all gone," said Dawood Yousif, who was checking on the status of his asylum
case at a refugee reception center in Solna, just north of Stockholm.

After paying $50,000 to men holding his brother hostage in Baghdad, and
$15,000 for false papers to get to Sweden, "I thought I could get permission
to stay here and bring my family over in about three or four months," the
48-year-old former photo librarian said.

"But, it has taken so long I've had to borrow money from relatives to send
to my wife and kids in Syria," he said, adding that he has never seen his
7-month-old son who was born in exile.

Single adults here receive a stipend of 71 kroners ($11.75) a day, but in a
country where a McDonald's meal costs roughly $10 and use of a public toilet
nearly $1, the allotment isn't much to live on.

"They are very tough with Iraqi refugees now in Sweden," said the father of
three who now lives with an aunt.

Few options
If his case is ultimately rejected, Yousif said he would have to return to
Syria. Although Syria and Jordan have hundreds of thousands of Iraqis living
within their borders, the recent imposition of visa restrictions has made
that option more difficult too.

Meantime, Sweden has stepped up its appeals, urging the United States to
accept more responsibility for Iraqi refugees; in April, Sodertalje's mayor,
Anders Lago, spoke before the Congressional Helsinki Commission in
Washington, and in May, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt raised the subject
with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Every country has a humanitarian obligation to respond to the situation
apart from the politics, but there's no doubt in my mind that the [Iraq war]
coalition partners bear special responsibility in this," said Kathleen
Newland, co-founder of the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute in
Washington, D.C., adding that more assistance should also be given to the
Middle Eastern countries shouldering the heaviest refugee burden.

Under fire for its response to the crisis, the United States took in a
record number of Iraqis in May, more than 1,000, according to the Bush
administration. But, even if it meets its goal to increase its yearly intake
to 12,000, from just 1,608 in 2007, it will have taken in just two-thirds of
the number that applied for asylum in Sweden last year.

Praying for peace
The vast majority of Iraqis who have arrived in Sweden since 2003 plan to
return home, according to those interviewed and migration authorities, but
no-one can say when it will be safe and many remain anxious about the
future.

"Iraq is finished," said Yousif, the asylum seeker at the Solna center with
a wife and young children in Syria.

A deacon at St. John's Church, Slewa Kalka, took a more positive view,
saying, "it will be a free land, but we don't know when."

"It was very beautiful, we had a very good life in Iraq, but wars all the
time destroyed it all," his wife Jamila said, as they recounted the deadly
conflicts with Iran, Kuwait, and the U.S.-led invasion.

"We pray every day for peace in Iraq," he said.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25004140/

  _____  

C 2008 MSNBC.com 

 

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