Repatriation and the Return to a Safe Iraq?

12.00.00am BST (GMT +0100) Sun 2nd May 2004

On the 16th of June 2003, ten weeks after the cessation of hostilities in Iraq the Home Office changed the status of the country to 'safe.' Such a change of status automatically had an impact on the tens of thousands of Iraqi's who had previously lodged asylum applications in the UK.

In the press release from the Home Office, Beverley Hughes went on to state that "we believe there has been a real and sustained improvement in the situation in Iraq and, while it is obviously in the initial stages of regeneration, the country is now safe for many Iraqis to return to." The item went onto state that the processing of asylum applications from Iraqi nationals had been suspended at the start of military operations on Iraq on the 20th of March 2003. The suspensions on the processing of these claims were to be lifted as of the 16th of June and allied to this new 'liberation of administrative functions' was the "development of a coherent returns programme." The Home Office was looking to assist Iraqi asylum seekers who wanted to voluntarily return home. Whilst the notion of voluntary repatriation to a 'safe Iraq' was being legitimised, the next phrase of the press release suggested that the voluntary repatriations would inevitably and within a short space of time turn into forced ones.

The press release which came out 8 weeks after the end of the initial phase of conflict in Iraq could have been construed as a very late and belated April Fool's joke, one that had got lost in the sands of time and the dust bowls of the conflict zones in Iraq. However, here was a Home Office Minister expecting members of the public to believe that Iraq was now a safe and secure nation. Safe and secure enough for Iraqi's to migrate back to even though on the 18th of June 2003 the Foreign Office Minister Baroness Amos declared to the Times that she was so concerned about the dangerous security situation in the Iraqi capital the she had postponed a trip there. So, if Baghdad was so bad, how about the outlying areas and towns such a Tikrit, Kerbala and Mosul? She went on to add that "the safety and security situation, which we really need to get right to enable us to really go for the reconstruction effort, is slightly hampering things." Slightly being the operative New Labour spin on 'there is a very real problem and things are not going to plan.'

A few hours after reading the press release on the 16th of June, a gruesome headline flashed through CNN which announced that 180 Iraqi's had been killed and injured in a vicious fire-fight in Central Iraq. Only a few days ago there had been another major fire-fight near the Syrian border and pot-shots were being taken at American troops on a daily basis. American soldiers were dying in the post-war 'safe Iraq' of New Labour.

It is easy to forget in all of the spin and counter spin that blurs the truth, that human beings who have fled from tyranny and persecution have sacrosanct rights laid down almost 50 years ago through the UN Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and through the Convention for Refugees. The most basic premise that underlies asylum is the provision of shelter to someone who believes their life is in danger. Additionally, the European Council on Refugees an umbrella organisation comprising of 74 refugee assisting agencies in 31 countries stressed in March 2003 that "humanitarian action in the region (Iraq) must safeguard the fundamental right of Iraqi nationals to seek and enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution."

Iraq created in the 1920's out of the whims and straight geometrical lines of Gertrude Bell the British traveller and social scientist, is a country which holds a cluster of people of differing ethnic and religious groups. The war on Iraq has brought out ethnic tensions between the Kurds and Arab communities and rivalries based on turf wars and historical grudges have been reborn, given new life by young American GI's chewing gum and talking about the lack of fast food outlets in Iraq. Added to this, members of the Mukhabarat (the dreaded secret police under Saddam Hussein), simply dissolved away into the population when they realised that the massive onslaught of American military power was trudging relentlessly towards Baghdad and past fields and rivers that saw great civilisations rise and fall.

So, as old feuds, rivalries and vendettas continue to play a daily role in past war Iraq, how can the Home Office consider Iraq to be safe? Why is it safe to send Iraqi asylum seekers back to a conflict zone that is not suitable for even a flying visit by the International Development Minister? Are Iraqi lives cheaper than others? Is it safe to send back an asylum seeker who was tortured under the Mukhabarat, knowing that the likelihood that his / her torturer simply melted away into the population is quite high? More importantly, on what information did the Home Office regard Iraq as safe on the 16th of June 2003. I have one final question which I hope may be answered. Has Labour's spin machine quite simply spun out of control?