NY Times: A bleak future awaits migrants deported from Belarus in Iraq

He returned to Iraq this weekend and, having just been deported from Belarus, was sitting on the cold floor of a small unfinished concrete house.

Nearby was a little boy, one of a dozen children, crammed into a house trying to warm his hands to a single broken kerosene heater.

Shamsaldin, a simple worker, and 35 of his relatives risked everything to get to the West. Like many of the hundreds of other Iraqis deported last week, they are now heavily indebted and desperate.

Iraqis are at the epicenter of the crisis that has erupted since Belarus eased visa rules this summer, luring migrants who were later pushed across borders to punish the European Union for sanctions against the autocratic president of Belarus.

Sometimes in Belarus, many migrant families were left deep in the woods without shelter, food or water, and sometimes involved in dangerous confrontations when trying to enter Poland, Lithuania or Latvia, all of which are members of the EU.

“A Belarusian police officer pointed a gun at my head, so I had to return to Lithuania,” said Shamsaldin, 24, who was traveling with three young children. – In Lithuania, officers also pointed guns at me and said, “If you don’t go back, we’ll kill you.”