Iraqi refugee
Shahab is 21, Yazidi and has everything this country needs. He’s still not allowed to stay
Shahab Smoqi does not receive asylum – although the federal government describes the farewell to Yazidis like him as “unreasonable”.
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He came to Germany when he was 18 and integrated a picture book. But an IT job, fluent German and his Yazidi faith are of no help to him, none of his applications to stay have been approved – and he has to fear for his life in Iraq.
It’s New Year’s Eve 2023, in the afternoon, and the shops are already closing. While people stream into the buses and trains at Hamburg Central Station to ring in the end of the year, Shahab Smoqi is sitting in a café and studying for his master’s thesis. That’s why he actually doesn’t have time for partying and isn’t really in the mood either. The 21-year-old has been living in for three years now Germany, he has a university degree, a permanent job as an SAP consultant, he is committed to environmental protection, but this city still doesn’t want him. He faces deportation sometime in the spring.
Shahab’s deadline is the end of February
Several of his asylum applications have already been rejected. Likewise the request for a work permit. “The immigration authorities have given me a deadline until the end of February, by which time I should present my Iraqi passport. But it is in Iraq, like my other documents. Unfortunately, I don’t know how I can get the documents to Germany,” says Smoqi .
His homeland is not particularly safe in itself, and especially not the region from which he comes: Shinja in the north. Shahab, like so many in the area, is Yazidi. The Yazidi religion emerged around 800 years ago in the Middle East. Many believers now consider themselves to be a separate ethnic group, but their Arab neighbors usually view them with skepticism. In the best case. When the terrorist militia “Islamic State” wreaked havoc in Syria and Iraq in the mid-10s, its fighters massacred thousands upon thousands of Yazidis.
There is still fighting in northern Iraq
A year ago, the federal government recognized the genocide against the Yazidis and said that deportations of Yazidi refugees were “unreasonable”. Also because the north of Iraq is still being fought over. The Turkish air force continues to bomb the Kurdish areas and militias there, and scattered ex-IS fighters and other rebels are engaged in bloody battles. Right in the middle: the Yazidis. “No place in Iraq is safe for us. What is happening to us there is genocide,” says Smoqi.
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Despite all their assurances, the Yazidis are not safe from deportation. “Many Yazidis have this problem at the moment,” says Zemfira Dlovani, chairwoman of the Central Council of Yazidis in Germany and a lawyer in Koblenz. These are no longer isolated cases, the number is in the three-digit range, said the lawyer.
The sick father of the family should also return
She heard about another hair-raising case from the Hanover area. Shortly after the New Year, a Yazidi father was told that his application for asylum had no chance. His wife came before 2019, when Yazidi refugees were still being recognized without any problems; he followed her later. Mentally stressed and physically ill, he was never able to work and had difficulty integrating. The fact that his wife, children and sisters are also here apparently doesn’t matter to the authorities. “It’s true that women and children enjoy special protection, but men are also victims of the genocide,” says Dlovani.
The Federal Ministry of the Interior, as the responsible authority, bases its decisions on the assessments of the Foreign Office, which are available to the ARD magazine “Monitor”. The diplomats then came to the conclusion that religious minorities such as Yazidis would continue to suffer from discrimination. “The Iraqi state cannot ensure the protection of minorities,” the document says, according to Monitor. Nevertheless, a recently agreed but not yet official declaration of intent between Berlin and Baghdad stipulates that more Iraqis are to be deported than before – including Yazidis.
“Iraq is the perpetrator country”
But many Yazidis don’t want to go back to Iraq just because they have to fear for their lives there, as Zemfira Dlovani says: “They are survivors of a genocide. They have lost their homeland, their houses, their families. For these people Iraq is the perpetrator country, there is no longer any trust in the government.” Shahab Smoqi feels the same way. “I don’t want to live in a country that has never accepted me.”
Shahab was on the way to Germany for 50 days. On foot from Shinja via Turkey, Greece, the Balkans. He doesn’t like to talk about these almost two months. But now he is here, speaks fluent German, and is one of the urgently needed skilled workers. He can hardly do more. His “employer is also doing everything so that I can somehow get a work visa,” he says. So far in vain. Yazidi leader Dlovani complains: “People like Shahab Smoqi are model migrants.” However, he is not allowed to stay.