Trafficked: Kurdistan’s trade in human lives

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – It was four in the morning in mid-September when Lydia* saw her opportunity to escape. She quietly let herself out of the Erbil house where she had been abused for the past month and fled, taking nothing but the clothes she was wearing. She had no shoes on her feet, spoke no Kurdish, and had only recently learned she was in Iraq and not Turkey where she had been led to believe she would have a good job in a cleaning service.
 
The sun had not yet risen when she was found in tears and huddled behind a car. The men who found her, guards for a guest house on the eastern edge of the city, brought her to local tribal leader Nawzad Anwar Betwata. 

“I saw her crying. I told her that she’s like my daughter and she shouldn’t be afraid,” Betwata recalled. He brought the 38-year-old to the home of his daughter where she told her story.
 
Lydia’s eldest daughter is studying accounting in university and another is in primary school. Her youngest, a boy, is just five years old. Providing for the three has sent Lydia and her husband around the world seeking better jobs than they could find at home.

She is one of thousands of victims caught up in human trafficking networks that move people around the globe, buying and selling them like a commodity. Trafficking is a form of modern slavery that shackles some 24.9 million people worldwide and targets society’s vulnerable populations, including foreign workers, the poor, women, and children. It is a multifaceted crime that crosses legal and societal boundaries and demands a holistic strategy to combat it. 

It’s a well-publicized problem in the wealthy Gulf nations, but the Kurdistan Region too is a source, transit zone, and destination.The Kurdistan Region has been called a Middle Eastern hub because of its relaxed visa rules and the problem is compounded by the kafala residency system, whereby a worker is tied to their employer through immigration sponsorship. Some 100 employment agencies are bringing tens of thousands of foreign workers into the Kurdistan Region and Iraq annually. 

The Kurdistan Regional Government, which last year passed Iraq’s law criminalizing trafficking in persons, is developing its strategy and making progress. But gaps remain. Experts warn that victims are still not safe in the Kurdistan Region and perpetrators are able to act with impunity. Many individuals and organizations declined to speak openly, if at all, because of the sensitivity and fears around the issue. 

Neglected by the government in Baghdad for decades, standards of living in the Kurdistan Region drastically improved with increased autonomy after the fall of Saddam Hussein, an influx of foreign investment, and oil wealth. Foreign labourers were recruited to construct the office blocks and apartment towers that sprouted up and over the past decade it has become fashionable among the middle class to hire domestic help. 

Dozens of these foreign workers are abused, mistreated, unpaid, and their passports seized to prevent them from leaving. Lying, deception and outright cruelty are an inseparable part of life for these workers who often suffer in silence. 

Lydia had worked for several years in Abu Dhabi, cleaning hospitals. Earlier this year she was told about a good opportunity working for a similar cleaning service in Turkey. As is common in these cases, she paid a fee, $1,000, to an intermediary and was provided with a plane ticket that brought her to Sulaimani International Airport where the employment agency took her passport. 
 
The job was not what she expected. Instead of cleaning hospitals, she was placed in a private home and expected to care for an elderly man who was partially paralyzed, in addition to her household chores.

She worked every single day, rising at 7am to start cleaning, scrubbing the floors and carpets on her hands and knees. She then helped her patient perform exercises and clean himself. A petite woman, Lydia said she had to physically carry the much larger man – straining her back doing specialized work she had no training or experience in. If she was tired or slow, she said the family would hit or kick her. She never made it to bed before 2am. 

Meals were scarce. “This house, one day eat rice, one day no,” she said, explaining in broken English that she was given a meal of yellowed rice every other day. At other times she had some stale bread, but never any meat.

When she asked to leave to return home to her native country, they threatened to lock her in a room. When she asked to be paid her salary, they refused. She was told she could leave only if she paid $4,000 – an enormous sum of money she did not have.

Trapped in the house and with her phone confiscated, Lydia didn’t know how to get out of this abusive situation, leaving her feeling that her pre-dawn barefoot escape was the only option. 

“We will try to help her in every way possible,” said Betwata, her rescuer, his eyes welling with tears. His family, like many Kurds, had seen their own share of troubles in life, having to leave their home and make a new life in a new country. For decades, Kurds have been part of the global flow of refugees and migrant workers. Kurdish communities in Nashville, Toronto, London, and Hamburg send regular money transfers to their families back home. 

With this shared history, Betwata feels a kinship with Lydia. “I’ve faced a lot of calamities. When I see people like her, away from her country in such a situation, I remember myself and I feel for her. I know what she’s feeling. That’s why I do everything to help.”

While telling her story, Lydia cried and physically curled herself inward whenever her employer and the agency were mentioned. Both have denied any abuse took place and Lydia’s allegations have not been proven in a court of law. Her story, however, is typical of foreign workers who find themselves in abusive situations. 

“People are willing to tolerate a lot of risk, a lot of abuse, deprivation of their rights because they’re desperate to send money home to their families,” explained Sherri Kraham Talabany, president of the development organization SEED Foundation, speaking in the conference room of her office with a panoramic view of Erbil. 

Nannies and maids are especially vulnerable, working as they do behind closed doors. This summer it was revealed that four women were raped and killed after being trafficked through the Kurdistan Region. The endemic discrimination against women throughout the Middle East compounds the problem for foreign women working here, but men and educated professionals are also victims. 

Vikram*, an engineer, was suspended from his job in the Kurdistan Region, denied his salary, and locked in a room when he lobbied for better conditions after working 12-hour days, six days a week for ten months. He was eventually let out of the room, but his employer held onto his passport and immigration documents. Vikram tried to apologize and negotiate a solution, but his employer wanted to make an example of him and said she’d keep him, without pay, until the end of his two-year contract. 

With his family at home dependent on his remittances, Vikram found SEED and got the help he needed. 

Like Lydia, he paid for the privilege of working in the Kurdistan Region - in his case $2,000 to a recruiter in Dubai. His passport was then seized on his arrival in Erbil. 

“Recruitment agencies are at the heart of some of these problems,” said Talabany. “When people are abusive to their employees, they can just hire somebody new. There’s no restrictions on the employer.”

Employment agencies bringing foreign workers into the country must be licensed by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and are subject to random checks. They must ensure that employers provide a clean, healthy, and safe work and living environment, though multiple agencies said they don’t inspect conditions themselves. 

In the office of Varin Express on Erbil’s Gulan Street, carefully labelled packages of clothing, shoes, nutritional supplements, and cosmetics are strewn around the room. The company opened its doors just a couple of months ago and imports and exports “everything,” said manager Mohammed Hadim. They also bring in foreign workers from Indonesia, Philippines, Uganda, South Africa, Georgia, and Ukraine, as well as Iraqis. They match foreigners up with jobs that Kurds don’t want to do - cleaning domestic and commercial buildings. 

Hadim also hires nannies, where racism is a factor in choosing who will take care of the kids. Clients prefer Indonesian women because they are Muslim and look “friendly and pretty,” Hadim explained, adding that most parents don’t want to hire Africans because they worry black faces may scare their children. 

Different nationalities also cost different amounts. For a worker from Indonesia or the Philippines coming on a one-year contract, the fee paid to the employment agency is $5,500 to $6,000, Hadim explained. The workers themselves receive a wage of $400 per month. For men and women from African nations, the fee is $3,000 and their wages are $300 per month.

Hadim’s clients are “rich people who have money to pay.” 

If there is a suspicion that a worker is being abused, the employment agencies are quick to wash their hands of the matter. “Whoever is being mistreated, they can go to the government office and make a complaint,” said Hadim, who later conceded that foreign workers may not know how to make that contact. 

The lawyer for another employment agency said it is their policy to inform the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and “the matter will take its legal course and the court will make the final decisions.”

In July 2018, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) passed a law criminalizing human trafficking, as cases of the inhumane practice skyrocketed during the Islamic State (ISIS) conflict and the war in Syria, but its regulation of the foreign worker market is still “inadequate,” according to SEED, and the traffickers are not being brought to justice. 

“The penalties for companies that are blacklisted are not sufficiently stringent to act as a deterrent to TIP [trafficking in persons] and other forms of exploitation, and agencies often simply close and open under a new name. Further, agencies often have connections within government offices helping them to circumvent the system and continue their criminal activity,” SEED stated in its 2018 report on human trafficking.

Under-reporting, cultural taboos, and foreigners’ lack of awareness about their rights are exacerbating the situation, the organization added. SEED documented 100 cases in 2018 (and 2017 in Duhok), but believes the actual number is far higher. 

Foreign workers who do file cases with the police or try to take an abuser to court frequently face retaliatory charges. Their employers will often accuse the foreign worker of theft. Or they refuse to hand over the passport unless the foreigner drops their legal case or pays them off. Most cases therefore end with negotiation, sometimes mediated by a diplomatic representative of the worker’s home country . 

With the help of her embassy, Lydia was offered a deal that gave her a way out, freed from the abusive situation, and released from her contract if the agency and her employer were similarly able to walk away with no repercussions. Lydia took the deal. All she wants is to go home.

*Names have been changed to protect the identity of victims