Word: sweden
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Most of the Iraqis, some 1.8 million, only made it as far as a neighboring country. They have flooded into Syria and Jordan. The 20,000 or so Iraqis who have fled to Sweden amount to a handful compared to the numbers in the Middle East. Yet Sweden provides perhaps the finest glimpse into how the war is driving the country's large middle class out of Iraq, devastating entire professions. It takes good connections and lots of money - $8,000 to $15,000 - to get to Stockholm from Baghdad, but now it is not just the élite...
...Sweden is rare in allowing entry to any Iraqis who can prove they have just fled central and southern Iraq, no matter what their political involvement or how they reached Scandinavia, according to Swedish Migration officials. (Some Iraqis have been returned to other countries under European rules requiring refugees to claim asylum in the first E.U. country in which they arrive.) As a consequence, Iraqis in Sweden range from Shi'ites like Alaa, who are fleeing Sunni militia, to Sunnis who for decades belonged to the Baath Party and supported Saddam's regime. Until the volume of Iraqis began...
Those professionals who have left feel they have no choice. The refugees describe a pattern of anonymous death threats by faceless armed groups, which some believe is designed to drive out middle-class Iraqis. Among the new arrivals in Sweden are hundreds of Iraqi Christians - including at least five priests - who say their tiny community is quickly vanishing. "My students threatened to kill me if I didn't graduate them, because I don't wear a head scarf," says a female engineering lecturer from Baghdad's University of Technology, one of hundreds who packed an Iraqi church service...
Every Iraqi's flight is a boon for people smugglers. Sweden grants asylum freely, but Iraqi refugees need to get to the country first; for that, they need a fake European passport. Most Iraqis flee first to Jordan; from there smugglers arrange flights to Istanbul, where it is easy to find illegal European Union passports - "red passports," as the Iraqis call them. Thus equipped, it's into the E.U. and on to Sweden. Suad Turky, a 29-year-old Shi'ite religious student from Baghdad, paid a smuggler $10,000 to secure a false passport and a ticket to Stockholm...
...matter, Winston Churchill elegantly replied, "My views are in a harmonious process, which keeps them in relation to the current movement of events." Only fools stick to their ideas after they have been proved wrong. The world awaits evidence that Bush is no fool. Lennart Lordin Karlskrona, Sweden...