Yazidi Family Abandons EU Dream, Reluctantly Returns to Iraq

Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
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Yazidi Family Abandons EU Dream, Reluctantly Returns to Iraq

Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)
Zena Kalo, 30, speaks to The Associated Press, with her family including her mother-in-law Kauri Kalo, at the tent that her family shares with her sister in law in Kabarto camp in northern Iraq’s Dohuk province on Saturday November 19, 2021.(AP Photo/Rashid Yahya)

Khari Hasan Kalo peered out of the window of the repatriation flight as it touched down in northern Iraq. It’s a place he and his family had hoped never to see again after they left for Belarus two months ago, driven by dreams of a new life in Europe.

Kalo, 35, had begged for loans and spent his savings on the ill-fated journey to the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the first stop on a journey to the West.

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. In the end, they returned home, fearing they were endangering the life of Kalo’s ailing 80-year-old mother, The Associated Press reported.

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. The Kalos are Yazidis, a religious minority that was brutalized by ISIS militants when they overran northern Iraq in 2014.

At the time, ISIS extremists rampaged through the Yazidi town of Sinjar and surrounding villages and destroyed religious sites. They kidnapped and enslaved thousands of women and children. Years after their lives were torn apart, Yazidis are still unable to return home or locate hundreds of women and children who had been snatched by the extremists. The Kalos’ home lies in ruins.

“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 said Friday, speaking to The AP from the Karbato camp in Dohuk province in the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region. His mother, looking frail, slept throughout the interview.

The Kalos, including three children ages 5, 7, and 9, had returned from Belarus a day earlier.

“It’s not even our tent; it’s his sister’s,” his wife interjected. “It’s no place to raise children, have a life.”

The region is considered the most stable part of conflict-scarred Iraq, yet Iraqi Kurds made up a large group among thousands of migrants from the Middle East who had flown to Belarus since the summer. Even in Iraq’s more prosperous north, growing unemployment and corruption is fueling migration, and the Yazidi community has endured particular hardship.

On Thursday, hundreds of Iraqis returned home from Belarus after abandoning their hopes of reaching the European Union. The repatriation came after thousands of migrants became stuck at the Poland-Belarus border amid rising tensions between the two countries.

Kalo’s family was among 430 people who flew from Minsk back to Iraq, where 390 got off at Irbil International Airport before the flight continued to Baghdad.

The West has accused Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns to destabilize the EU in retaliation for its sanctions imposed on his authoritarian regime following a harsh crackdown on internal dissent. Belarus denies engineering the crisis, which has seen migrants entering the country since summer, lured by easy tourist visas, and then trying to cross into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, all EU members.

Kalo didn’t mind if a geopolitical game was being played at his expense if it got his family out of Iraq.

“So what if I was a pawn in someone’s hands if it gets me to Germany?” he said.

Since being displaced, the family had gotten increasingly desperate. Their tent burned down in an accidental fire in June that ravaged the Sharia camp, also in Dohuk. They tried to return to their original home in Sinjar but found their house uninhabitable.

Tensions also were simmering in the area between a patchwork of rival militia groups, Iraqi forces, and members of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, an insurgent group outlawed by Turkey. Turkish jets still targeted PKK members in northern Iraq.

Then he heard from friends about Kurds finding their way to Germany after Belarus eased visa requirements last spring. He begged his brother in Australia to wire him $9,000 to pay the smugglers’ asking price for his wife, three young children and mother.

He also had saved money from his time as a policeman — cash that was hard-won because he endured discrimination as a Yazidi. Colleagues refused to eat or share a room with him, he said. He asked for a reassignment, but his superior said this would only be possible if he gave him half his income.

“What good is a job if its still not enough to feed your family?” he said of his decision to quit.

The Kalos took the land route to Istanbul in September, and boarded flights to Minsk the following month. There, they headed straight to the Polish border. With two other Iraqi families, the Kalos dug under the border fence, reaching the other side in darkness.

They walked for four days in search of a GPS point where they were promised a car would meet them and take them straight to Germany.

But that never happened..

Instead, on the fourth day, Kalo’s family ran out of food as temperatures dropped in the dense and soggy forest.

Polish authorities found them and sent them back across the border. They were greeted by an encampment of hundreds of migrants. Belarusian authorities were handing out wire cutters and pushing the migrants back through the razor wire.

Polish authorities used water cannons to repel them. But this did not deter Belarusian authorities, who beat and threatened them, Kalo said. He said they shouted: “Go (to) Poland!”

Still, husband and wife fought to stay, agreeing that anything was better than their life in a tent.

But with his mother struggling to survive as conditions grew increasingly squalid, Kalo sought the pity of the Belarusian authorities. They allowed them to return to Minsk to seek medical help.

Kalo heard the Iraqi government had agreed to repatriate citizens free of charge. He turned to his wife and they considered their choices: Return to their desperate lives in Iraq, or bear the responsibility if his mother died.

Reluctantly, they put their names on the list.

But their hope is not lost, Kalo said, as his 5-year old daughter, Katarin, dug her face into his chest at the Karbato camp.

“I have two priorities now,” he said. “The first (is) to get a tent of our own. The second, to get back on my feet and leave this country. I will make it this time.”

He added: “If it was my last day on this Earth, I will spend it trying to leave.”



The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
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The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)

Swing states, electoral college votes, candidates up and down the ballot, and millions of potential voters: Here is the US election, broken down by numbers.

- Two -

Several independents ran -- and at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, stumbled into a number of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But in the end, the presidential race comes down to a binary choice, with the two candidates from the major parties -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- seeking to lead a polarized America.

- Five -

November 5 -- Election Day, traditionally held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

- Seven -

The number of swing states -- those which don't clearly favor one party over the other, meaning they are up for grabs.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, concentrating their campaign efforts there in a push to ensure victory.

In a razor-tight election, just a handful of votes in any of those states could decide the outcome.

- 34 and 435 -

Voters won't just decide the White House occupant on Election Day -- they will also hit refresh on the US Congress.

Thirty-four Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In the House, members serve a two-year term. Republicans currently have the majority, and Harris's Democrats will be hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 seats out of 100 are available, for a six-year term. Republicans are hoping to overturn the narrow Democratic majority.

- 538 -

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect system of universal suffrage that governs presidential elections in the United States.

Each state has a different number of electors -- calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).

Rural Vermont, for example, has just three electoral votes. Giant California, meanwhile, has 54.

There are 538 electors in total scattered across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To take the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

- 774,000 -

The number of poll workers who made sure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are three types of election staff in the United States.

The majority are poll workers -- recruited to do things like greet voters, help with languages, set up voting equipment, and verify voter IDs and registrations.

Election officials are elected, hired or appointed to carry out more specialized duties such as training poll workers, according to Pew.

Poll watchers are usually appointed by political parties to observe the ballot count -- expected to be particularly contentious this year, thanks to Trump's refusal to agree to unconditionally accept the result.

Many election workers have already spoken to AFP about the pressure and threats they are receiving ahead of the November 5 vote.

- 75 million -

As of November 2, more than 75 million Americans had voted early, according to a University of Florida database.

Most US states permit in-person voting or mail-in voting to allow people to deal with scheduling conflicts or an inability to cast their ballots on election day itself on November 5.

- 244 million -

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

How many of those will actually cast their ballot remains to be seen, of course. But the Pew Research Center says that the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022, and the presidential vote of 2020, produced three of the highest turnouts of their kind seen in the United States in decades.

"About two-thirds (66 percent) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election -- the highest rate for any national election since 1900," Pew says on its website.

That translated to nearly 155 million voters, according to the Census Bureau.