SULAIMANI (ESTA) — A Yazidi family returned to Iraq unreluctantly on Thursday after it did not succeed in reaching Europe via Belarus, The Associated Press reported.
Khari Hassan Kalo, 35, peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq, AP reported.
He and his family had hoped they would never see the country again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe, according to AP.
Kalo had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to Minsk, the first stop on a journey to the West, the agency said.
His wife, 30-year-old Zena, had sold her few belongings on the gamble that left the family of six stranded for days in a cold forest on the border of Belarus and Poland.
Yet, they say they would do it all again to escape their hopeless life, spent in a camp for displaced persons for the past seven years.
“If it wasn’t for my children and my mother, I would never have returned, I would have stayed in that forest at all costs rather than return to this tent,” Kalo told AP on Friday.
“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”
Though the Kurdistan Region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer.
Nearly 430 Iraqis and Kurds who had camped for weeks at Belarus’ borders with the EU seeking to cross into the bloc flew back home on Thursday.
Iraqis, especially Kurds, have made up a significant number of the estimated 4,000 migrants waiting in freezing forests and trying to cross into Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
For months, EU countries have accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the migrant crisis to avenge sanctions imposed after he won a disputed 2020 election and authorities cracked down on mass protests against him.
Now, hundreds of would-be migrants are returning home having failed to cross the heavily guarded frontier. Some described the harsh conditions of living in the forest in winter, often with young children, and of beatings by border guards.
At least eight people have died at the border in recent months, including a 19-year-old Syrian man who drowned in a river trying to cross to the EU.
