ARBIL: Hundreds of Iraqis returned home on Thursday on an Iraqi Airways flight from Belarus, where thousands of migrants have camped on the Polish border for weeks hoping to enter the EU.

It was the first repatriation flight of migrants — many of them fleeing war and poverty-wracked Middle Eastern countries — since the Poland-Belarus border crisis began.

A total of 431 people were aboard the Boeing 747, said a spokesman for the government of the autonomous region of Kurdistan where many of the repatriated Iraqis came from. Iraq’s government has said the repatriation was voluntary.

The flight was to continue later in the evening to Baghdad but most of the passengers disembarked at Arbil.

Some hid their faces, so as not to be identified on local TV images as they stepped down from the plane. The smile of one woman, however, was clear as she entered the terminal carrying an infant. Many of the children and adults wore thick winter coats and hoods, images from a regional Kurdish TV station showed. Some carried their belongings in backpacks or plastic bags.

Inside the terminal, blue-suited workers administered Covid tests to the arrivals.

The situation on the border created a stand-off between the European Union and US on one side and Belarus and its ally Russia on the other, with the migrants stuck in the middle and living in freezing temperatures. At least 11 have lost their lives at the border.European governments accuse Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of luring thousands of migrants — mainly Iraqi Kurds — to the border as revenge for sanctions slapped on his regime after its suppression of protests last year.

The Belarusian strongman and his main ally Russian President Vladimir Putin have rejected the accusations and criticised the EU for not taking in the migrants seeking to cross over into Poland.

Published in Dawn, November 19th, 2021