BERLIN: For Ali and Khaled, two Iraqi refugees who arrived here illegally, Germany is a dream come true, though to date they have seen little of it and the prospects for them being allowed to stay are bleak.

“Germany is a thousand times better than Iraq,” says Khaled, a 20-year-old Yazidi Kurd who arrived 14 months ago, by way of Turkey, hidden in the back of a truck.

Ali, also 20, has been here for six years. He has learnt German, but along with Khaled, still lives in a hostel in southern Berlin where refugees are two to a room with little to occupy them.

They are neither allowed to work, nor leave the greater Berlin area.

Ali and Khaled — neither is willing to give his real name for fear of what might happen to those left back home — dream of settling in Germany for good.

But they have to make do with temporary permits, renewed every six months.

They receive free accommodation at the hostel, along with $272 a month to feed themselves.

Once a month, Ali spends 10 minutes on the phone talking with his family in Baghdad.

They sent him away under Saddam Hussein’s regime so he would not have to serve in the military. Now they just hope he will get a permanent residence permit to allow him to work and, maybe, bring over his relatives.

In the meantime, “it’s very boring. There’s nothing to do. And we can’t even leave town,” says Ali.

Even getting into town can be difficult as public transportation is expensive. Ali says he has never cheated on the underground for fear of being caught, something which would lead to a criminal prosecution and a black mark on his asylum application.Khaled is from one of the villages in northern Iraq where some 400 people were killed by truck bombs in August.

He won’t say why he left, but explains that his father lives in constant fear. “Problems, problems,” he adds in broken German.

The Iraqi community in Germany numbers about 75,000, with most having arrived before the 2003 US-led invasion of their country.

But many only have temporary residence permits, and the German government has started issuing letters warning those who arrived when Saddam was still in power, that they will have to leave as their country now has a new democratic government.

In May however, Berlin decided to grant temporary asylum to new categories of Iraqi refugees, including those from religious minorities and those from the greater Baghdad region who have been forced out of their homes by violence.

“This decision is due to the deteriorating situation in Iraq, especially for religious minorities including Christians, Mandeans and Yazidis,” according to Tatjana Bauer, spokeswoman at the German office for immigration.

As a result, “some 85 per cent of the 1,682 Iraqis who asked for asylum between May and August were allowed to stay,” she added.

In 2006, Germany granted just 8.3 per cent of Iraqi asylum demands, according to the ministry.

Iraq now tops the list of countries whose citizens are seeking asylum in Europe, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Last year, 19,240 Iraqis applied for asylum in the European Union, nearly half of them in Sweden, according to official figures collected by the UNHCR.

But numbers have been going up this year and refugee agencies expect the total number to have at least doubled by the end of the year.

In Germany, 3,812 Iraqis asked for asylum over the same period. In Denmark, some 200 arrived this summer thanks to the Danish government.

They were Iraqis who had been employed by Danish forces in southern Iraq and were evacuated ahead of the withdrawal of Danish troops from Basra for fear they might be a target for reprisals.

In Britain, a Home Office spokesman expressed concern for Iraqis who have worked for the British armed forces in southern Iraq.

“The total number of Iraqis who have worked for us since 2003 with a claim to assistance could be at least 15,000. We therefore need to consider the options carefully,” he added.—AFP