The director of the residency office in Erbil warns Kurdish refugees in the Kurdistan Region

ARK News… To avoid arrest or deportation, an official in the Kurdistan Region warned Syrian Kurdish refugees residing in the Kurdistan Region who are traveling or wish to travel to the Iraqi governorates for the purpose of work or treatment.

Regarding Syrian Kurdish refugees who hold residency permits from the region, the Kurdistan 24 website, the Kurdish section, reported a statement by the director of the Erbil residency office, Sheikh Kamel Muhammad: “The Iraqi provinces do not recognize the residency permits that we grant to Syrian Kurdish refugees, so we would like to warn them against traveling to other provinces or regions.”

Muhammad added in the statement, which was followed by ARK, “We warn every refugee who wants to travel to those areas for the purpose of work or other reasons, because the checkpoints will return them to the region.”

The director of the Erbil Residency Office, Sheikh Kamel Muhammad, attributed the repercussions to “political reasons.”

In the latest official statistics issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the number of Syrian refugees in the Kurdistan Region is estimated at more than 260,000 asylum seekers. After the deterioration of the economic conditions in the Syrian regions, the Kurdistan Region has become a destination for Syrian Arabs as well, and tens of thousands have recently entered it from the areas of Damascus, Hama, Aleppo and others.

Some refugees are forced to travel to the Iraqi governorates for the purpose of treatment or to receive work opportunities, in Baghdad, Mosul, and other areas, and they are often subjected to arrest or deportation to Syria under the pretext of not having regular identification papers.

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