Stranded!
Life since the fall of Baghdad has been particularly difficult for certain people who have long called Iraq their home, Galal Nassar discovers at the border crossing to Iran near Basra
It was nearing 3pm and a blazing 49 Centigrade as Patrick Bourgeois, the International Red Cross Committee representative in Basra, and I set off from this port city for the Iraq-Iran border. The road was poorly paved and littered on both sides with the vestiges of years of war. Dozens of burned out hulks of military vehicles lay strewn across the desolate area.
In spite of the protracted war that cost both sides billions of dollars, left several hundred thousand people dead and wreaked untold destruction, the Iran-Iraq border hadn't shifted so much as a centimetre. Nonetheless, both sides effectively lost vast tracts of land which had become perilous fields of unexploded land-mines.
The checkpoints faced each other across the border. On the Iranian side stood a domed structure painted the same green as that of the dome of the Mosque of the Prophet in Mecca and shaped similarly to the structures topping the Shi'ite mausoleums in Najaf, Basra and Karbala. A large number of Iranian soldiers were there to protect the border crossing and alongside them stood passport control officials, customs officers and various other border-control personnel. Some of them were busy inspecting vehicles and their passengers, concentrating on those heading into Iran. They gave even greater attention to trucks, especially the empty water tank vehicles that were returning to Iran after having distributed their precious contents to the predominately Shi'ite areas of Iraq and to the Iranian refugees temporarily residing in camps inside Iraq as they await permission to return to their homeland.
On the Iraqi side of the border was a much larger two- storey structure, occupying a more spacious plot of ground. On approaching it, it appeared empty. There were no soldiers, no passport or customs officials, no one remotely connected to the process of checking who was leaving or entering the country. But, sitting in the doorway was an elderly man surrounded by a group of children who were distracted from their play from time to time by the sight of the comings and goings on the Iranian side of the border.
After exchanging brief pleasantries, we learned that the elderly man was called Sheikh Sirhan Al-Tamimi. Aged 61, Sirhan is an Iraqi of Iranian origin who had been living in Iraq since the end of the Iraq-Iran war. Head of a family of 19, he has five children, two of whom are married, and with children of their own.
I was dumbfounded that what had been one of the most important, tightly-secured and difficult-to-pass border crossings had been so totally abandoned, making it possible for Sheikh Sirhan and his family to take up temporary residence while waiting for permission to enter Iran. Only a few weeks earlier, crossing the checkpoint legally had been a major feat, while crossing the border illegally was to jeopardise one's life. Today, the Iraqi side is open and unguarded. During the short time I was there I saw dozens of cars and hundreds of people entering Iraq without anyone asking them where they were coming from or where they were headed. Many have taken this situation as indicative of the strong ties linking Iran to predominantly Shi'ite southern Iraq -- explaining in part US-British anxiety over the area.
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Sheikh Sirhan's grandchildren face a hazard not usually confronted by youngsters: land-mines lie just a few metres away from where they play
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Sheikh Sirhan used to work as an itinerant butcher who plied his trade in the livestock markets and slaughterhouses in exchange for a portion of the meat, offal and sometimes hides. He and his family had decided to return to Iran because, following the fall of Saddam, non-Iraqis -- Iranians, Egyptians and Palestinians, in particular -- had become targets of vengeance. He said, "The Iraqis are attacking and destroying our homes, fields, stores and cars, and kicking us out of our homes. They say that Saddam Hussein and his regime brought us into Iraq and sheltered us while we profited materially and socially and that now that the regime has gone, we, too, must go and leave everything behind us."
Thus, after more than a decade in Iraq, the 19-member family, of which 10 are children, pulled up stakes and registered themselves with representatives from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Sirhan relates, "I told them I wanted to go back to Iran where my people and my larger family are. Days and weeks passed without progress. All I got were a couple of visits from the UN. And once two officials from the Iranian Foreign Ministry -- or perhaps they were from Intelligence -- came and told me that they were studying my case and I would receive clearance soon. These days, the only person to give us a reasonable amount of care and attention is our friend, the Red Cross representative Patrick Bourgeois. He visits us twice a week and brings us food, water, milk for the children and other necessities to help us live in this isolated spot. Sometimes Iraqis and Iranians crossing the border give us food and drink when they hear our story."
I asked Sirhan how he came to reside at that border control building that was once an armed fortress. "It was a long hard road," he relates. "We gathered our few remaining belongings and made our way through the desert until we came to this crossing. When we got here, the Iranian border guards refused to let us pass. We didn't have Iranian identity papers, they said. The only thing I could think of was to try to contact some of my relatives in Tehran. I gave the checkpoint officials some of their names and addresses and they testified that we were Iranian but had lived a long time in Iraq. Meanwhile, as all these procedures and investigations were going on my family and I had to find some place to stay. Entering this building, I found it empty, save for a few rifles, rapid propelled grenade guns and other light weaponry. My older sons and their wives took them to that bunker over there," he said, pointing to a place once manned by Iraqi border guards about 250 metres away from the border. "We cleaned up this place and started to use it as our home while we wait for our permits to come through."
Sheikh Sirhan's wife and his elder son suddenly broke into the conversation, praising Saddam Hussein and his regime -- the first time I'd heard anyone speak favourably about the former leader. The fall of Saddam, they said, put an end to the stability in their lives and had rendered them homeless along with dozens of other Iranian families. "Saddam Hussein had protected us, our interests and our children. Everyone respected law and order. No one would have dared harm us or anyone of another nationality or religion."
Sheikh Sirhan bent over, picked up his two-year-old daughter and said, "This child's mother is ill. We don't know the cause of the illness, but it prevents her from nursing her child. We don't have the means to take the mother to a doctor and we don't have a way to provide milk for this child and the other nine young children in our family."
At that point, Patrick struck up a friendly conversation, during which he reiterated some advice about living in the outpost. He was particularly concerned to warn the adults to keep the children close to the building because of the land-mines that were only metres away. Sheikh Sirhan, in turn, said they needed more food, especially milk and clothes for the children. Patrick promised to do what he could.
As we left Sheikh Sirhan to fight his battle for re-entry into Iran, Patrick told me that the man's case was typical of those handled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is charged under international humanitarian law with protecting and helping civilians harmed by armed conflict. "We had anticipated such cases," he said. "Several weeks before the war began, the ICRC had completed preparations to enhance its capacity to receive and care for Iraqi and other refugees and displaced persons, particularly at the borders of Jordan, Kuwait and Iran. We gathered the necessary stocks of emergency supplies and brought in extra staff in order to handle large inflows of people quickly."
Before heading back to Basra, Patrick took me on a brief detour to a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) camp for Iranian refugees in Umm Tanuma, a village near the Iraq-Iran border, where the ICRC had initiated an emergency relief programme for people who had spent days out in the open without food or water. The ICRC brought in 35 large tents to house the 45 families in the camp, hooked up a water supply system and arranged to bring in regular supplies of food. These people, too, had fled the wrath of Iraqis taking their revenge on foreigners they believe to have profited under Saddam Hussein.
During my tour of the camp, not far from Sheikh Sirhan's lonely outpost, I heard many similar stories. In spite of the religious bond between the Shi'ites of southern Iraq and those in Iran, Iraqis of Iranian origin had suffered physical assault, expulsion, destruction of their homes and property, to name some of the horrors, at the hands of their co-religionists.
But then, in a poignant moment of soul-searching, one of the refugees said, "We paid the price for cooperating with Saddam's regime. Many of us worked for the Ba'ath Party. We were the bayonet pointed at the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. We enjoyed many privileges and we obtained many material advantages. Some of us cooperated out of fear and coercion, others out of lust for money and power. But when the day of reckoning came, we were left out in the open, begging for food, clothing and tents to shelter us."
