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
Settler attacks push Palestinians to abandon West Bank village, residents say
The Israeli military said it was “looking into” the legality of the outpost at Maghayer Al-Deir
MAGHAYER AL-DEIR, Palestinian Territories: Palestinian residents of Maghayer Al-Deir in the occupied West Bank told AFP on Thursday that they had begun packing their belonging and preparing to leave the village following repeated attacks by Israeli settlers.
Yusef Malihat, a resident of the tiny village east of Ramallah, told AFP his community had decided to leave because its members felt powerless in the face of the settler violence.
“No one provides us with protection at all,” he said, a keffiyeh scarf protecting his head from the sun as he loaded a pickup truck with chain-link fencing previously used to pen up sheep and goats.
“They demolished the houses and threatened us with expulsion and killing,” he said, as a group of settlers looked on from a new outpost a few hundred meters away.
The West Bank is home to about three million Palestinians, but also some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements that are considered illegal under international law.
Settlement outposts, built informally and sometimes overnight, are considered illegal under Israeli law too, although enforcement is relatively rare.
The Israeli military told AFP it was “looking into” the legality of the outpost at Maghayer Al-Deir.
“It’s very sad, what’s happening now... even for an outpost,” said Itamar Greenberg, an Israeli peace activist present at Maghayer Al-Deir on Thursday.
“It’s a new outpost 60 meters from the last house of the community, and on Sunday one settler told me that in one month, the Bedouins will not be here, but it (happened much) more quickly,” he told AFP.
The Palestinian Authority’s Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission denounced Maghayer Al-Deir’s displacement, describing it as being the result of the “terrorism of the settler militias.”
It said in a statement that a similar fate had befallen 29 other Bedouin communities, whose small size and isolation in rural areas make them more vulnerable.
In the area east of Ramallah, where hills slope down toward the Jordan Valley, Maghayer Al-Deir was one of the last remaining communities after the residents of several others were recently displaced.
Its 124 residents will now be dispersed to other nearby areas.
Malihat told AFP some would go to the Christian village of Taybeh just over 10 kilometers (six miles) away, and others to Ramallah.
Uncertain they would be able to return, the families loaded all they could fit in their trucks, including furniture, irrigation pipes and bales of hay.
WFP says ‘handful of bakeries’ making bread again in Gaza
- “A handful of bakeries in south and central Gaza have resumed bread production,” WFP said
ROME: The UN’s World Food Programme said Thursday a “handful of bakeries” in Gaza had begun making and distributing bread again after Israel allowed aid trucks into the Strip.
“A handful of bakeries in south and central Gaza... have resumed bread production after dozens of trucks were finally able to collect cargo from the Kerem Shalom border crossing and deliver it overnight,” the WFP said in a statement.
“These bakeries are now operational distributing bread via hot meal kitchens,” it said.
Morocco to spend $670m to replenish livestock up to 2026
- Six years of drought reduced the cattle and sheep herds by 38 percent this year
- The government also includes aid to farmers
RABAT: Morocco plans to spend 6.2 billion dirhams ($670 mln) on a 2025-2026 program to replenish its livestock herd, which has been reduced following years of prolonged drought, agriculture minister Ahmed El Bouari said on Thursday.
Six years of drought caused mass job losses in the farming sector and reduced the cattle and sheep herds by 38 percent this year, compared to the last census nine years ago.
Under the recovery program, 3 billion dirhams will be allocated in 2025 and 3.2 billion next year to measures including debt relief and restructuring for livestock farmers, as well as feed subsidies, Bouari told reporters.
The government also includes aid to farmers who retain breeding female livestock, along with veterinary campaigns, genetic improvement and artificial insemination, he said.
In February, authorities asked citizens to forgo the ritual of slaughtering sheep on the Eid Adha this year, to help restore the sheep herd.
In north Lebanon, Syrian Alawites shelter among graves
- “We each have our own horror story that drove us to this place,” said a man with sunken eyes
- Around 600 people have sought shelter at the Hissa mosque
HISSA, Lebanon: Behind a ramshackle mosque in Hissa, north Lebanon, the living are making a home for themselves among the dead.
Beside mounds of garbage in the shade of towering trees, men, women and children from Syria’s minority Alawite community seek shelter among the graves surrounding the half-built mosque — grateful to have escaped the sectarian violence at home but fearing for their future.
“We each have our own horror story that drove us to this place,” said a man with sunken eyes.
One such story was of a mother who had been killed in front of her children by unknown militants as they crossed the border, said others staying at the mosque.
All of the refugees that spoke to Reuters requested anonymity for fear of retribution.
Around 600 people have sought shelter at the Hissa mosque. Hundreds sleep in the main hall, including a day-old baby.
On the building’s unfinished second story, plastic sheets stretched over wooden beams divide traumatized families.
Others sleep on the roof. One family has set up camp under the stairwell, another by the tomb of a local saint. Some sleep on the graves in the surrounding cemetery, others under trees with only thin blankets for warmth.
They are among the tens of thousands refugees who have fled Syria since March, when the country suffered its worst bloodshed since Bashar Assad was toppled from power by Islamist-led rebels in December.
Almost 40,000 people have fled Syria into north Lebanon since then, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said in a statement.
The outflow comes at a time when humanitarian funding is being squeezed after US President Donald Trump’s decision to freeze foreign aid and dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier this year.
NEEDS BUT NO RESOURCES
The recent violence in Syria, which has pitted the Islamist-led government’s security forces against fighters from the Alawite minority, the sect to which Assad’s family belongs, has killed more than 1,000 people since March.
For more than 50 years, Assad and his father before him crushed any opposition from Syria’s Sunni Muslims, who make up more than 70 percent of the population. Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, took many of the top positions in government and the military and ran big businesses.
Alawites now accuse the new government of President Ahmed Al-Sharaa of exacting revenge, but Sharaa says he will pursue inclusive policies to unite the country shattered by civil war and attract foreign investment.
Trump said last week he would lift sanctions on Syria, triggering hopes of economic renewal. But this has provided little comfort to the refugees in northern Lebanon, who are struggling to meet their basic needs.
“UNHCR, but also other agencies, are not now in a position to say you can count on us,” said Ivo Freijsen, UNHCR representative in Lebanon, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation in April.
“So, in response to new arrivals, yes, we will try, but it will be less (than before).”
More refugees come from Syria every day. Almost 50 people arrived over two days last week, said one camp representative, who asked not to be named for security reasons.
UNHCR is equipping new arrivals with essential items like mattresses, blankets and clothes, as well as providing medical help and mental health support, said a spokesperson.
“UNHCR is also conducting rehabilitation works in shelters to make sure families are protected,” the spokesperson added.
’FORGOTTEN’ REFUGEES
At the mosque, food is scarce and the portable toilets provided by an aid group have flooded. Garbage is piling up and is attracting vermin. Snakes have been killed in the camp, and one refugee spoke of the “biggest centipedes we have ever seen.”
The camp’s children have nowhere to go.
It can be difficult for refugee children to access Lebanon’s school system, Human Rights Watch has said, while the refugees at the mosque say private schools are too expensive and may not accept children enrolling mid-year.
“We are becoming a refugee camp without realizing it,” said another man, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We need schools, we need toilets, we need clinics.”
He said he fled his home in Damascus after being warned by his neighbor that militants were asking about him. He never expects to go back and is hoping to move abroad.
But in the meantime, he said he needs to create a life for his children.
“What’s his fault?” he asked, beckoning to his nine-year-old son. “He was a computer whiz and now he is not even going to school.”
The refugees sheltering in the mosque are among the millions of people affected by Trump’s decision to freeze US funding to humanitarian programs in February.
The UNHCR has been forced to reduce all aspects of its operations in Lebanon, Freijsen said, including support to Syrian refugees.
The UNHCR had enough money to cover only 14 percent of its planned operations in Lebanon and 17 percent of its global operations by the end of March, the UN agency said in a report.
“Our assistance is not what it is supposed to be,” Freijsen said. “In the past, we always had the resources, or we could easily mobilize the resources. These days are over, and that’s painful.”
The people in the mosque fear that they have been forgotten.
“Human rights are a lie,” a third man said, his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. “It is just something (that the powerful) instrumentalize when they want.”
More than 70 UN member states demand protection of civilians amid mounting fears over Gaza
- Joint statement ahead of UN debate on the issue highlights plight of Palestinians as Israel launches major offensive
- ‘Today, we come with one clear message: The protection of civilians is not optional,’ the states say
NEW YORK CITY: More than 70 UN member states signed a joint statement calling for the urgent protection of civilians in armed conflicts, amid fears that thousands of Palestinians in Gaza could face starvation.
The statement preceded an annual open debate at the UN on the issue of protecting civilians, which included a briefing from the UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, who this week warned that 14,000 babies in Gaza were at risk of dying from hunger. Israel launched its latest major military offensive in the territory this week.
“Civilians in armed conflicts continue to live under unthinkable conditions of constant danger, insecurity and suffering,” the joint statement said.
At least 36,000 civilian deaths were recorded in 14 armed conflicts last year, and tens of thousands of people were injured as a result of explosive devices, it added.
It cited reports from the UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, that warned Gaza is facing the “worst humanitarian crisis” since the war between Israel and Hamas began in October 2023.
“This cannot continue,” the statement continued. “Today, we come with one clear message: The protection of civilians is not optional. It is a legal obligation under international humanitarian law, and a moral imperative we cannot afford to neglect.
“Civilian women and men, children, older persons, and persons with disabilities, all suffer. Health workers, farmers, teachers are killed, injured and forced to flee. Civilians are too often targeted or simply abandoned in the calculus of war.
“Their protection must not be a secondary consideration — it must be central to all military planning and political decisions.”
The UN debate on Thursday also included a briefing by Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The organization has repeatedly warned of imminent famine in Gaza, following Israel’s implementation in March of a blockade on humanitarian goods entering the territory.
Although the blockade was lifted this week, the UN has still struggled to transport desperately needed aid into the enclave. UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday that the Israeli military has provided aid trucks with access to Gaza only via an unsafe road. Discussions between the international organization and Israel are ongoing, he added.
The joint statement said: “We commend the vital role of humanitarian actors, and we condemn all acts of violence and threats against them. Last year was the deadliest year on record for humanitarian personnel, when more than 360 humanitarians were killed in 20 countries.
“This has to stop. We reaffirm our determination to take concrete measures and use diplomatic means to ensure the safety and security of humanitarian personnel, and to enable them to carry out their activities and mandate in accordance with humanitarian principles.”
Several major countries were absent from the list of signatories, but those who did sign included the EU, China and France, as well as Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Arab world.
“Let us reiterate our collective responsibility to protect the most vulnerable, to uphold international law, to prioritize the safety, dignity and rights of civilians, and to ensure that their faces and voices — so often invisible and silenced behind statistics — remain central to our actions,” the statement added.
“Let us recommit not only to words, but to concrete steps — toward protection, toward accountability, and ultimately, toward peace.”
