Migrants fall into hardship in Iraq

As waves of Iraqis flee their conflicted country, other desperate civilians are going in.

Migrant workers from some of the world's poorest countries are being lured by the prospect of inflated salaries in construction or security companies. Some enter despite explicit bans in their own governments; others think they are going to work in safe countries.

But instead of the conventional jobs that were promised, traffickers are hustling them into hardship conditions with little pay and no mobility, according to groups that work with migrants and small numbers of migrants themselves who have managed to ask for help. Some of them are being sent home to such places as Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and the Philippines.

It is the latest twist in a migration pattern that is creating extreme circumstances for vulnerable people who go abroad in quest of work.

In two months, the International Organization of Migration, an intergovernmental agency based in Geneva, said it has repatriated a total of 30 Sri Lankan carpenters brought from the Dubai airport to Iraq. Another 20 have come forward since then to ask for help.

"The Sri Lankans are the first concrete caseload we have been dealing with," said Vincent Houver, responsible for the agency's evacuation of third world nationals from Iraq. They are "the first visible and concrete sign that there is cause for concern."

Another group - five to six Ethiopian maids who had expected to work in Jordan - had been taken into Iraq against their will, Houver said. Some are being kept in Erbil, in the Kurdish north of Iraq, and the others in Baghdad, he said, and they are being prevented from leaving.

"We are witnessing the emergence of new patterns of exploitation," said Houver, who is based in Jordan. The agency gets its information from migrants or intermediary aid agencies, then investigates the situation and tries to negotiate the refugees' freedom and to repatriate them.

Growing wealth in Kurdish Iraq, with a steady stream of foreign investment in construction projects and openings for domestic workers, has stoked a demand that is being filled by Filipinos, Sri Lankans, Indians, Pakistanis and Ethiopians.

India, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines expressly outlaw travel to Iraq for their nationals, and in Sri Lanka it is illegal for employment agencies to offer jobs in Iraq. The reasons became obvious in 2004 when 12 Nepalese men, in Iraq to work as cleaners and cooks, were taken hostage and killed.

But the prospect of a job with a foreign contractor at a salary enhanced by a security premium has fueled worker interest. Houver estimates that "a couple of thousand" foreign workers now live in the Kurdish north of Iraq, having entered by legal means, while another 4,000 could be considered irregular.

The Sri Lankans' story speaks of the dangers the workers are exposed to. All 30 of them, in their 20s and 30s, were seeking work as carpenters on construction sites in the United Arab Emirates.

But, having paid about $2,000 to a legal employment agency in Colombo, the men fell victim to traffickers on route, the International Organization of Migration says. Their agency, Arabian Express, denies any wrongdoing and says the men never showed up when its representative went to meet them in Dubai, according to press reports.

Houver said, "It is unclear who is at fault, but the whole phenomenon started while they were transiting in the Gulf."

A first group of 17 men, all Tamils from Sri Lanka's strife-torn rural north, arrived in Erbil in the Kurdish north in winter with no idea what country they were in, according to the International Organization of Migration. Their supervisors later threatened to send them south to Baghdad or to make them repay the $1,200 in fees that their employers had paid the traffickers, according to the migration organization.

According to the migrants' reports, their Iraqi employer took their passports and put them to work seven days a week, 16 to 18 hours a day. Kept under armed guard, they slept at the site, which lacked hygiene facilities, were paid $150 a month and were prevented from telephoning their families.

After several weeks the 17 made a bid for freedom. Breaking through a partition wall when the guards were away, they wandered the streets of Erbil until they stumbled across a UN compound and turned themselves in.

Two of them described their plight in letters written in Tamil that UN officials had to have translated before they could refer them to the migration organization. The agency then negotiated the men's departure from their employer and from Iraq. "It was less a condition of physical vulnerability than of severe distress," Houver said. "They were in a country they had no intention of going to and couldn't speak the language and were completely at a loss."