DUHOK, Kurdistan Region - The hospitality towards the Syrian Kurds fleeing to Iraqi Kurdistan is no longer unlimited, says an aid worker who returned to the Kurdistan Region recently. The arrival of over 200,000 Syrian refugees is having its effect on Kurdish society.
Tineke Ceelen, director of the Dutch aid organization Refugee Foundation saw open arms and camps without guards when she first arrived in August to assess needs, after the influx of tens of thousands of refugees in Iraqi Kurdistan. Returning in November, she is shocked about the change.
“Most camps are now fenced in, closed, and at one camp they are even digging a canal around it. The military is guarding them, even with watchtowers. Without their permission, one cannot get in or out.”
At the same time Iraqi Kurdistan is treating the refugees better than the other Syrian neighbors, she admits. It is giving the refugees a status and allows them to work. “The situation is better than elsewhere. But still, in some camps only the men have a permit to leave the camp, which makes the family some sort of prisoners.”
Ceelen thinks that the measures have been put in place because the crime rate went up with thefts and break-ins that were relatively rare in the Kurdistan Region. There are also complaints about the competition in the labor market. “It is easy to blame it all on the refugees.”
In Duhok, the police have been enforced because of the thefts, and dozens of young Syrians are in jail, says journalist and analyst Khidher Domle.
He mentions that some 10,000 Iraqi Kurds have lost their jobs in the past months, while 30,000 Syrian Kurds found work in the Duhok area. As they agree to lower wages – $15 dollars a day instead of $25 – discontent has entered Kurdish society.
Problems have arisen too in some areas where Syrian Kurds have claimed equal rights with their Iraqi brothers, as they feel as entitled to ‘Free Kurdistan’ – that is Iraqi Kurdistan for them - as the locals do.
At the same time local governments try to cope with all these extra citizens, Domle says. More police is needed, more schools and teachers, more spaces in university and the already stretched healthcare cannot really cope with the extra patients who often have trauma related illnesses.
Yet, the positive effects of the influx are not to be discarded, Domle says. “The local economy in the Duhok area is growing, because of all the businesses Syrians started, and because of the extra consumers.”
Most visible are the Syrians at work. In most of the Kurdistan Region they have almost taken over the greenery sector, pushing out Asian and local laborers. Their influence is even bigger in the hotel and restaurant sector, where services and quality have greatly improved.
“Some of the Syrians are teaching the local staff,” says Chairman Hearsh Ahmad Karem of the Kurdistan Hotels & Restaurant Association. He denies that the improved services are all due to the Syrians, as at the same time Lebanese firms invested in new hotels and restaurants and the association provided training for the local staff. “But we did have a lack of good staff,” he admits. “We really needed the Syrians.”
“But they take the jobs of my graduates!” laments Aram Dilan, who teaches tourism in the Technical Institute in Erbil. “They are sitting at home now.”
Dilan agrees Syrian workers are better, “because they work harder, and they speak Arabic and often English.” Many Syrian Kurds are working below their level, he says, as many have master’s degrees and PhDs. “Often they are dissatisfied with the poor jobs and the long hours they have to accept.”
On the other hand, Syrians in Sulaimani are finding it hard to get work, because their Kirmanji dialect is not understood easily here. Independent journalist Khaled Suleiman, who has close connections to the Syrian Kurds, points out that the camps in this area house more of the poor and less educated who fled the poverty in Syria.
“The artists who came for the cultural atmosphere of Sulaimani are active, but have a hard time to survive as they get little attention or support,” he adds.
Both Suleiman and Domle predict an even more important effect of the Syrian presence on the longer term. The Syrians may give their more liberal attitudes to the local community, they say.
In conservative Duhok, Domle already sees more local women working in shops and restaurants, as a result of the fact that Syrian women have no scruples to work there. “Syrian women are higher educated, they mix more easily with men and they dress more liberal. In the future, that will have its influence.”
Suleiman: “You see Syrian men and women together in public places. People talk about it. And that is just the beginning of the change.”
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