FAO (Iraq), Oct 29: Eighteen Afghans alleged on Monday they had been thrown out of Kuwait and cast adrift in Gulf waters in the wake of last month’s attacks on the United States.
Iraq’s information ministry bussed journalists down from Baghdad to this town on the Gulf coast, close to Kuwait, to hear from the men who said they were saved by Iraqi fishermen.
The group, aged 21 to 51, described themselves as lucky because there was no news of a second boatload of 20 Afghans with whom they lost contact at sea after being expelled from the emirate.
They met journalists with a protest and carried banners in Pushto proclaiming, “We want our money back from Kuwait” and “What did we do to get kicked out after faithful service?”
Mohammad Bagher Gholam, 51, speaking in Arabic, said he had worked as a baker in Kuwait for 25 years until police came to arrest him for “no reason”.
“I was in detention for 14 days before being pushed out to sea with the other Afghans,” he said.
“We were not even allowed to contact our Kuwaiti employers,” added Mohammad Gholam, let alone collect money.
“We do not want to go back to Kuwait, we just want our things back that we left there,” he said.
Painter and decorator Ali Mohammad, 27, accused Kuwait of “running a campaign against Afghans”.
“I was taken to prison in my work clothes. Is this an Islamic way to do things?” he asked.
Ali said the group were “three days adrift, without food and water”.
Indian fishermen working from Saudi Arabia had given them some food and towed them into Iranian waters. “But Iran refused to take us in,” he said.
“Some of us were unconscious by the time the Iraqi fishermen saved us,” Ali said.
“The second boat remained close to us the first day but we lost sight of it after,” added Khaled Haidar, 35, also a painter.
Ahmad Ibrahim Hammash, governor of the southern Iraqi town of Basra, released a statement saying Iraqi fishermen had found the Afghans “in a sorry state”.
“They were taken to the town of Fao and the representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross was alerted to meet them,” Hammash said.
According to the governor, the rescued Afghans were arrested and then expelled from Kuwait following the Sept 11 attacks.—AFP
