KARBALA: Rami, a Syrian worker in Iraq, spends his 16-hour shifts at a restaurant fearing arrest as authorities crack down on undocumented migrants in the country better known for its own exodus.
He is one of hundreds of thousands of foreigners working without permits in Iraq, which after emerging from decades of conflict has become an unexpected destination for many seeking opportunities.
“I’ve been able to avoid the security forces and checkpoints,” said the 27-year-old, who has lived in Iraq for seven years and asked that AFP use a pseudonym to protect his identity.
Between 10 in the morning and 2:00 am the next day, he toils at a shawarma shop in the holy city of Karbala, where millions of Shiite pilgrims congregate every year.
“My greatest fear is to be expelled back to Syria where I’d have to do military service,” he said.
The labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Syria, Pakistan and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers.
Now the authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers, as the country seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector.
Many like Rami work in the service industry in Iraq.
One Baghdad restaurant owner admitted to AFP that he has to play cat and mouse with the authorities during inspections, asking some employees to make themselves scarce.
Not all those who work for him are registered, he said, because of the costly fees involved.
Some of the undocumented workers in Iraq first came as pilgrims. In July, Labour Minister Ahmed Assadi said his services were investigating information that “50,000 Pakistani visitors” stayed on “to work illegally.”
Despite threats of expulsion because of the scale of issue, the authorities at the end of November launched a scheme for “Syrian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani workers” to regularise their employment by applying online before December 25.
The ministry says it will take legal action against anyone who brings in or employs undocumented foreign workers.
Rami has decided to play safe, even though “I really want” to acquire legal employment status.
“But I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m waiting to see what my friends do, and then I’ll do the same.”
Current Iraqi law caps the number of foreign workers a company can employ at 50 percent, but the authorities now want to lower this to 30 percent.
“Today we allow in only qualified workers for jobs requiring skills” that are not currently available, labor ministry spokesman Nijm Al-Aqabi told AFP.
It’s a sensitive issue — for the past two decades, even the powerful oil sector has been dominated by a foreign workforce. But now the authorities are seeking to favor Iraqis.
“There are large companies contracted to the government” which have been asked to limit “foreign worker numbers to 30 percent,” said Aqabi.
“This is in the interests of the domestic labor market,” he said, as 1.6 million Iraqis are unemployed.
He recognized that each household has the right to employ a foreign domestic worker, claiming this was work Iraqis did not want to do.
One agency launched in 2021 that brings in domestic workers from Niger, Ghana and Ethiopia confirms the high demand.
“Before we used to bring in 40 women, but now it’s around 100” a year, said an employee at the agency, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
It was a trend picked up from rich countries in the Gulf, the employee said.
“The situation in Iraq is getting better, and with salaries now higher, Iraqi home owners are looking for comfort.”
A domestic worker earns about $230 a month, but the authorities have quintupled the registration fee, with a work permit now costing more than $800.
In the summer, Human Rights Watch denounced what it called a campaign of arbitrary arrests and expulsions targeting Syrians, even those with the necessary paperwork.
HRW said that both homes and work places had been targeted by raids.
Ahmed — another pseudonym — is a 31-year-old Syrian who has been undocumented in Iraq for the past year and a half.
He began as a cook in Baghdad and later moved to Karbala.
“Life is hard here — we don’t have any rights,” he told AFP. “We come in illegally, and the security forces are after us.”
His wife did not accompany him. She stayed in Syria.
“I’d go back if I could,” said Ahmed. “But life there is very difficult. There’s no work.”
Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations
https://arab.news/rrmpk
Iraq tries to stem influx of illegal foreign workers from Pakistan, other nations
- The Iraqi labor ministry says the influx is mainly from Pakistan, Syria and Bangladesh, also citing 40,000 registered immigrant workers
- Authorities are trying to regulate the number of foreign workers as Iraq seeks to diversify from the currently dominant hydrocarbons sector
Germany, France, UK say Israel’s Gaza aid blockade ‘must end’
“This must end,” their foreign ministers said in a joint statement. “We urge Israel to immediately re-start a rapid and unimpeded flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza in order to meet the needs of all civilians.”
Gaza rescuers say charred bodies recovered as Israeli strikes kill 17
- 11 of the victims died in an air strike targeting the Yafa school building in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood
- Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: Gaza’s civil defense agency on Wednesday said its crew recovered charred bodies from a school-turned-shelter for displaced people, as Israeli strikes killed 17 people in the Hamas-turn territory since dawn.
Israel resumed its military campaign in Gaza on March 18, following the collapse of a two-month ceasefire that had largely halted the fighting in the besieged Palestinian territory.
“Seventeen people have been killed since dawn,” civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said.
He said 11 of the victims, which included women and children, died in an air strike targeting the Yafa school building in Gaza City’s Al-Tuffah neighborhood.
“The school was housing displaced people. The bombing sparked a massive blaze, and several charred bodies have since been recovered,” he said.
Since the war began following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, tens of thousands of displaced Gazans have sought refuge in schools to escape the violence.
Aid agencies estimate that the vast majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million residents have been displaced at least once since the war began.
Bassal said his crew has received distress calls from several areas in Gaza.
“We lack the necessary tools and equipment to carry out effective rescue operations or recover the bodies of martyrs,” he added.
On Tuesday, the Israeli military stated that it had targeted approximately 40 “engineering vehicles,” alleging they were being used for “terror purposes.”
Bassal said air strikes destroyed bulldozers and other equipment needed to “clear debris and recover the bodies of martyrs from beneath the rubble,” as well as to “save lives, pull people from the rubble.”
Elsewhere in Gaza, additional fatalities were reported on Wednesday.
A child was killed in an air strike on a home in the northern Jabalia area, and another individual was killed in a similar incident in the southern city of Khan Yunis, the civil defense said.
Four more people were killed in Israeli shelling of homes in eastern Gaza City. Several others remain trapped beneath the rubble, according to Bassal.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the latest strikes.
Since Israel’s military campaign resumed, at least 1,890 people have been killed in Gaza, bringing the total death toll since the war erupted to at least 51,266, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 that ignited the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Gaza blockade is death warrant for some dialysis patients struggling to get treatment
- They are some of Gaza’s quieter deaths from the war, with no explosion, no debris
- Over 400 patients have died during the 18-month conflict because of lack of proper treatment
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip: Twice a week, Mohamed Attiya’s wheelchair rattles over Gaza’s scarred roads so he can visit the machine that is keeping him alive.
The 54-year-old makes the journey from a temporary shelter west of Gaza City to Shifa Hospital in the city’s north. There, he receives dialysis for the kidney failure he was diagnosed with nearly 15 years ago. But the treatment, limited by the war’s destruction and lack of supplies, is not enough to remove all the waste products from his blood.
“It just brings you back from death,” the father of six said.
Many others like him have not made it. They are some of Gaza’s quieter deaths from the war, with no explosion, no debris. But the toll is striking: Over 400 patients, representing around 40 percent of all dialysis cases in the territory, have died during the 18-month conflict because of lack of proper treatment, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
That includes 11 patients who have died since the beginning of March, when Israel sealed the territory’s 2 million Palestinians off from all imports, including food, medical supplies and fuel. Israeli officials say the aim is to pressure Hamas to release more hostages after Israel ended their ceasefire.
COGAT, the Israeli military body in charge of coordinating aid, declined to comment on the current blockade. It has said in the past that all medical aid is approved for entry when the crossings are open, and that around 45,400 tons of medical equipment have entered Gaza since the start of the war.
Hardships mount for Gaza patients
Attiya said he needs at least three dialysis sessions every week, at least four hours each time. Now, his two sessions last two or three hours at most.
Israel’s blockade, and its numerous evacuation orders across much of the territory, have challenged his ability to reach regular care.
He has been displaced at least six times since fleeing his home near the northern town of Beit Hanoun in the first weeks of the war. He first stayed in Rafah in the south, then the central city of Deir Al-Balah. When the latest ceasefire took effect in January, he moved again to another school in western Gaza City.
Until recently, Attiya walked to the hospital for dialysis. But he says the limited treatment, and soaring prices for the mineral water he should be drinking, have left him in a wheelchair.
His family wheels him through a Gaza that many find difficult to recognize. Much of the territory has been destroyed.
“There is no transportation. Streets are damaged,” Attiya said. “Life is difficult and expensive.”
He said he now has hallucinations because of the high levels of toxins in his blood.
“The occupation does not care about the suffering or the sick,” he said, referring to Israel and its soldiers.
A health system gutted by war
Six of the seven dialysis centers in Gaza have been destroyed during the war, the World Health Organization said earlier this year, citing the territory’s Health Ministry. The territory had 182 dialysis machines before the war and now has 102. Twenty-seven of them are in northern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of people rushed home during the two-month ceasefire.
“These equipment shortages are exacerbated by zero stock levels of kidney medications,” the WHO said.
Israel has raided hospitals on several occasions during the war, accusing Hamas of using them for military purposes. Hospital staff deny the allegations and say the raids have gutted the territory’s health care system as it struggles to cope with mass casualties from the war.
The Health Ministry says over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s offensive, without saying how many were civilians or combatants. Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 251 in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that triggered the war.
Officials say hundreds of patients have died
At Shifa Hospital, the head of the nephrology and dialysis department, Dr. Ghazi Al-Yazigi, said at least 417 patients with kidney failure have died in Gaza during the war because of lack of proper treatment.
That’s from among the 1,100 patients when the war began.
Like Attiya, hundreds of dialysis patients across Gaza are now forced to settle for fewer and shorter sessions each week.
“This leads to complications such as increased levels of toxins and fluid accumulation … which could lead to death,” Al-Yazigi said.
Mohamed Kamel of Gaza City is a new dialysis patient at the hospital after being diagnosed with kidney failure during the war and beginning treatment this year.
These days, “I feel no improvement after each session,” he said during one of his weekly visits.
The father of six children said he no longer has access to filtered water to drink, and even basic running water is scarce. Israel last month cut off the electricity supply to Gaza, affecting a desalination plant producing drinking water for part of the arid territory.
Kamel said he has missed many dialysis sessions. Last year, while sheltering in central Gaza, he missed one because of an Israeli bombing in the area. His condition deteriorated, and the next day he was taken by ambulance to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital.
“The displacement has had consequences,” Kamel said. “I am tired.”
Trump’s return boosts Israel’s pro-settlement right: experts
- “Since Trump’s election in November, we’ve started to hear more and more rhetoric about annexation in the West Bank, and seen more and more actions on the ground,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst from the International Crisis Group
- Trump has made clear statements on Gaza, demanding the release of Israeli hostages and making plans for the territory, but he has remained silent on Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank, which have escalated since the war in Gaza began
JERUSALEM: US President Donald Trump’s return to power has emboldened Israeli leaders’ push to increase military presence in Gaza and reinvigorated right-wing ambitions to annex the occupied West Bank, experts say.
After a phone call Tuesday with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said on social media: “We are on the same side of every issue.”
In Gaza, where the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel has raged for more than 18 months, Trump’s comeback meant “big changes” for Israel, said Asher Fredman, director of Israeli think-tank Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy.
“The arms embargo imposed by (former President Joe) Biden’s administration has essentially been lifted,” Fredman said.
“That, together with the fact the northern front (Lebanon and Syria) now is quiet and we have a new defense minister and a new (army) chief of staff, is allowing Israel to move forward in achieving its military goals in Gaza.”
Fredman said Trump has a good grasp of the situation in Gaza and understands Israel’s fight against Hamas.
“If Israel decides to stop the war and have a ceasefire with Hamas, he’ll support it... but he also listened closely to released hostages who told him how terrible Hamas treated them, and his instinct is to get rid of Hamas,” Fredman said.
Trump has made clear statements on Gaza, demanding the release of Israeli hostages and making plans for the territory, but he has remained silent on Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank, which have escalated since the war in Gaza began.
Just days after taking office, Trump proposed removing Gaza’s 2.4 million Palestinian residents to Jordan or Egypt, drawing international outrage.
Although he has since appeared to backtrack, the remarks emboldened Netanyahu and Israeli far-right ministers who continue to advocate implementing the plan.
Analysts say Trump’s silence on the West Bank has encouraged hard-line ministers who openly dream of annexing the territory, which Israel has occupied since 1967 and Palestinians see as part of their future state.
In March, Israel’s cabinet approved the construction of a road project near the Maale Adumim settlement that would separate traffic for Israelis and Palestinians, a move Israeli NGO Peace Now likened to “apartheid.”
Shortly afterward, in a joint statement, Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich described Palestinian construction in the West Bank as a “strategic threat to the settlements.”
Smotrich, calling the area by its biblical name, hailed a record year for “demolishing illegal Arab construction in Judea and Samaria” and said the government was working to expand Israeli settlements — which are illegal under international law.
“Since Trump’s election in November, we’ve started to hear more and more rhetoric about annexation in the West Bank, and seen more and more actions on the ground,” said Mairav Zonszein, an analyst from the International Crisis Group.
It is a “combination of Trump’s specific approach and the people that he’s chosen to be around him that have led Smotrich, Katz and others in the Israeli right to be confident that they can move forward with annexation,” she told AFP, mentioning for example the new US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who has openly backed Israeli settlements.
Sanam Vakil of Chatham House said that while Trump “has said he wants to end conflicts, there’s not one plan underway. I think there’s maybe multiple conflicting agendas.”
“There’s no criticism, there’s no condemnation of Israel’s activities, and I think that gives it free rein and confidence to continue its expansionist agenda” in the West Bank, Vakil said.
On Gaza, Vakil said Trump was “giving Netanyahu and his hard-liners a very long runway to get the job done.”
Israel says it now controls 30 percent of Gaza’s territory, while AFP’s calculations based on maps provided by the military, suggests it controls more than 50 percent.
While Trump and his administration have openly supported many of Israel’s policies, particularly regarding the Palestinians, sharp differences are emerging on another key issue, Iran.
Vakil said that by being flexible on the Palestinian issue, Trump was likely “trying to buy himself some room to manage the Iran file.”
The Trump administration has been engaged in indirect talks with Israel’s arch-foe Iran on its nuclear program, a clear departure from Netanyahu’s long-standing policy, calling to address the threat through military means.
“The president is making it clear that the military strategy isn’t going to be the first way to address the Iran crisis,” Vakil said, adding this has Israelis deeply worried.
On Saturday, Netanyahu appeared to push back against Trump’s diplomatic initiative, saying in a statement that he remained “committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Yemen’s Houthi rebels fire a missile targeting northern Israel, a rare target for the group
- The new campaign started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip
- The new US operation against the Houthis under President Donald Trump is more extensive than attacks on the group were under President Joe Biden, an AP review found
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile early Wednesday toward northern Israel, a rare target for the group as a monthlong intense US airstrike campaign continues to target them.
Sirens sounded in Haifa, Krayot and other areas west of the Sea of Galilee, the Israeli military said.
“An interceptor was launched toward the missile, and the missile was most likely successfully intercepted,” the Israeli military said.
Those in the area could here booms in the predawn darkness.
The Houthis did not immediately claim the attack, though it can take them hours or even days to acknowledge their assaults.
American airstrikes, meanwhile, continued targeting the Houthis on Wednesday morning, part of a campaign that began on March 15. The Houthis reported strikes on Hodeida, Marib and Saada governorates. In Marib, the Houthis described a strike hitting telecommunication equipment, which has previously been a target of the Americans.
The US military’s Central Command did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US is targeting the Houthis because of the group’s attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, a crucial global trade route, and on Israel. The Houthis are the last militant group in Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” that is capable of regularly attacking Israel.
The new US operation against the Houthis under President Donald Trump is more extensive than attacks on the group were under President Joe Biden, an AP review found. The new campaign started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting “Israeli” ships again over Israel blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip.
From November 2023 until this January, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. That has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually. The Houthis also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.
Assessing the toll of the month-old US airstrike campaign has been difficult because the military hasn’t released information about the attacks, including what was targeted and how many people were killed. The Houthis, meanwhile, strictly control access to attacked areas and don’t publish complete information on the strikes, many of which likely have targeted military and security sites.
Last week, a strike on the Ras Isa fuel port killed at least 74 people and wounded 171 others in the deadliest-known attack of the American campaign.
