MINSK, Belarus - After spending two weeks in the cold forests along the Belarus-Poland border, Kurdish migrant Farid has retreated with his family to a warm apartment in Minsk.
Originally from the Kurdish city of Qamishli in northeast Syria (Rojava), he says he, his wife, and two kids would have frozen to death if they stayed at the border.
"There was no food, no water, no bed at all. We used to sleep on the ground," said the father of two children under the age of eight.
Thousands of migrants, mostly from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, have been stuck on the Belarus border with Poland, Lituania, and Latvia in recent months.
Hundreds returned to Erbil early Saturday morning in the fourth repatriation flight organized by both the Kurdish and Iraqi governments. A fifth flight is scheduled to land later in the day.
Farid and his family are now paying a hefty $80 a day to rent an apartment in the Belarus capital.
"My daughter who is five years old kept telling me, 'mama, is it really this difficult to reach Germany'. And I would respond to her saying it was not supposed to be this difficult, but they [smugglers] made it this way," said Layla, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure.
"The smuggler told me that in two or three days we will be in Germany. He told us that they would slaughter a lamb for us to celebrate our arrival in Germany," she added. "They made many promises."
At least 8,000 Kurds have traveled to Belarus with the help of Kurdish smugglers, attempting to gain access to western Europe, which has fortified itself against the wave of migration and accused Minsk of luring desperate migrants to the border in protest of sanctions.
The migrants, stuck on the frontier between Polish and Belarusian forces, were fenced in with no food or water and fearing for their lives as temperatures drop. They have also reported being beaten by border guards and attacked by dogs.
At least 13 people have died on the Belarus-Poland border.
Video editing by Sarkawt Mohammed
