Abdul and his family live in Glasgow in a dilapidated 30-storey tower block
earmarked for demolition, and the view from the tiny balcony is
unremittingly bleak: other hideous Sixties blocks, graffiti-covered walls,
litter-strewn tarmac and derelict buildings where drunks and drug addicts
loiter. The council disclaims responsibility for cars parked outside.
This is Abdul’s reward for spending five years risking his life interpreting
for British troops in Basra, for the murder of his son, for the loss of his
home, livelihood and savings. The 71-year-old Iraqi feels let down. “I
regret so much that I worked for the British,” he says, as he sips tea from
a British Army souvenir mug. “I would not be here, I would not have lost my
son, if I hadn’t worked for them.”
Gone is the happiness and relief he felt two months ago when he, two other
Iraqis hired by the British Army and their 15 dependants were flown secretly
out of Basra – the first beneficiaries of the Government’s reluctant
agreement to give sanctuary to Iraqis whose “collaboration” made them
targets for the rampaging militias.
The Iraqi exiles ended up in one of the most deprived areas of one of
Britain’s toughest cities. In place of the draconian moral code enforced on
pain of death by Islamic extremists, they are now surrounded by alcohol and
drug abuse, mindless aggression and loose sex. They no longer fear execution
by death squads, although none of the exiles will give a full name lest
relatives in Basra face reprisals, but they still fear for their safety, and
venture out with trepidation. They say that they have had stones, beer cans
and insults thrown at them. Their children have been hit and spat at. A girl
of 9 had her hijab torn off. A youth recently dropped his trousers and
exposed his buttocks to Abdul’s wife – a grotesque insult in Islamic eyes.
Only Abdul speaks English. The rest are marooned in an alien country, in
spartan flats, without jobs or friends and surviving on meagre handouts from
the council. They while away their time watching Iraqi television on
satellite channels and wait to sign up for English courses and for their
children to start school this autumn. They do not know where the nearest
mosque is and some cannot use buses because they cannot read the numbers.
Abdul has blunt advice for the scores of Iraqi employees seeking refuge in
Britain (a second batch arrives in July). Unless they face extreme danger –
as he did – they should stay in Iraq. He suggests that they use Britain’s
alternative offer of one-off cash payments to move somewhere safer in their
homeland.
Before the 2003 invasion, Abdul ran a transport business; it closed when
Iraq’s roads became too dangerous. He spoke good English, so went to work as
an interpreter for the British and later became a supervisor. Then the
militias began to kidnap, torture and kill Iraqi “traitors” working for the
British. Abdul keeps a photograph of five Iraqis surrounding Tony Blair
when, as Prime Minister, he visited the Basra air base in December 2005.
Abdul is the only one of the five still alive.
On March 14 last year 20 armed men arrived at Abdul’s house in a fleet of
vehicles. Only his wife and daughter were home. The men smashed his
furniture, stole his car and money and demanded to know the whereabouts of
Abdul and his son, Wissam, 24, a chef for the British. Abdul’s wife refused
to say. The men left, but later telephoned to say they were holding Abdul’s
oldest son, Saad, 25, who worked for the British as a barber. As she pleaded
for his life, Abdul’s wife heard Saad begging for mercy, then four shots as
the gunmen killed him.“It was a nightmare,” says Abdul, who was at the base
and powerless to help.
Abdul’s family fled to Syria, but he and Wissam stayed on the base for a year.
After a Times campaign, the Government offered its endangered
employees refuge in Britain. On April 7 the first three families were flown
to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire.
After a brief orientation course in Slough, the 18 Iraqis were driven
overnight to Glasgow, which has a big proportion of social housing and whose
local authority volunteered to take them. The next morning they were shown
their new homes on two estates which The Timesagreed not to identify.
“All the families were shocked when we saw these flats,” says Abdul, who had
lived in Basra in a spacious house with a garden. “When we arrived in Slough
we saw nice houses and thought we were going to live in one of those,” his
wife says, with her husband translating. “Slough was good, but not here.
There are nice places in Glasgow, but not this area.”
“I can understand their shock,” said Shahid Iqbal, the Muslim owner of the
neighbourhood’s small, ill-stocked grocery shop (the supermarket burnt down
a few years ago). “All they see is drink and drugs. That’s absolutely what
it is here.” Children start drinking aged 10 or 11 and teenage pregnancy is
rife. “I wouldn’t bring my children up here. No way.”
The chemist next door – which admits only one customer at a time – provides
methadone on prescription to more than a hundred drug addicts and runs a
needle-exchange scheme for 30 people a week. Asked if he would want to bring
up children in the area, Kashif Butt, the manager, says: “Hell no! I don’t
think anyone would like that.”
Abdul’s family enjoy some aspects of British life: supermarkets, uninterrupted
electricity, the health service, the cool weather, rain and the greenery so
alien to Basra. They are fortunate that Abdul speaks English, and that his
sons, 24 and 18, are old enough to play football with some of the
asylum-seekers who live nearby. But mostly they stay in their sparsely
furnished flat. For three months, until they qualify for benefit payments,
they must survive on £176 a week from the council, and, although the flat
and utilities are free, Abdul has already exhausted his savings of $3,000
(£1,530). Until they learn English, his sons and 21-year-old daughter have
little hope of finding work. “I live as a poor man here,” Abdul says. “I
feel let down . . . I gave a lot of loyalty to the British Government and
British people.”
Abdul’s fellow exiles are grateful that Britain has taken them in, and less
critical because they come from humbler homes, but they, too, are
disappointed. Abdullah, 31, who ran a shop on the Basra air base, lives in
the same tower block with his wife and five children. He no longer lets them
out of the flat. “We expected to live in a house with peaceful surroundings
but we found quite the opposite. When I worked on the base the officers
treated me nicely and brought back presents from holiday. We were expecting
more of this from people in Britain,” he says. “The officers told us we
would have nice comfortable lives over here, but it’s not been like that.”
Abdullah tells lies when he calls friends in Iraq. “We tell them we are living
happily in a luxury house and get good pay,” he says. “We tell them we’re
living in paradise so they won’t criticise us for leaving”.
The head of the third family, a 58-year-old mechanic, lives with four children
in a slightly better area of Glasgow, and insists that he is thrilled to be
in Britain, but his wife longs to go home. She is suffering from depression,
has no friends and no English and never goes out. She had to leave behind
five of her children – all grown-up – and she, too, wishes her husband had
never helped the British.
Glasgow City Council says that it has a good record of helping refugees to
integrate. The Iraqis, a spokesman says, reported only one incident and do
not live in areas with high crime rates. They would also receive police
visits and English tuition over the summer. “Our experience is that as an
individual’s grasp of English improves, living in this city gets a lot
easier,” he said.
Abdul’s wife must hope so. She still weeps for her dead son, whose portrait
hangs on a wall of their flat above an Iraqi flag. However difficult they
find life in Britain, they have no choice but stay. “I can’t go back to Iraq
or I could lose another son,” she says.
