By Tania Karas
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Obaida, a
22-year-old refugee from an area of Syria controlled by Islamic State, said he
tried hard to get a passport the legal way. In May, he paid his way to Istanbul
from the border town in Turkey where he now lives. He spent five days waiting
in line at the Syrian consulate. He was told to return in a year.
That’s too long for the former
chemistry student, who supports his family in Syria with cash he earns through
odd jobs in Turkey, including work at a nonprofit. He needed a passport — with
a valid Turkish entry visa stamp — to apply for a residence permit that would
give him opportunities beyond those afforded to anyone who registers as a
refugee with the Turkish government.
“I didn’t want to have to ask
anyone for help,” said Obaida, who asked that some identifying details not be
used because he fears both Turkish authorities and Islamic State. Registering
as a refugee would get him a temporary ID card. But it would not allow him
independence: the right to work, rent an apartment or open a bank account.
He saw no other option but to
seek out a growing network of document forgers who are capitalizing on
refugees’ and migrants’ need for civil documents. He says he bought his first
fake passport inside Syria for $1,500, but Turkish border agents would not
accept it. Recently he bought his second for just $250, complete with his photo.
As the Syrian civil war grinds
into its fifth year, refugees are grappling with administrative headaches
stemming from missing documentation. At least 4.1 million Syrians have fled the
country, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and about 1.9 million are registered in Turkey. Many left without their
marriage licenses, birth certificates and ID cards, either because they fled in
a rush or feared being identified or arrested at checkpoints.
But going home to retrieve
paperwork is often a dangerous or impossible task. And while they can
theoretically visit their embassies and consulates for replacements or
renewals, many fear getting in touch with a government they may have opposed.
This includes human rights advocates and activists who supported the 2011
revolution, in addition to opposition fighters.
A 2013 survey by the Turkish
government’s emergency management agency found that fewer than 30 percent of Syrians had entered Turkey — the common starting point for the
long journey into Europe — with a valid passport. That number could be even
lower now as passports expire with challenges for renewals.
Over the past few years,
police across Europe have tried to block tens of thousands of Syrians from
crossing their borders. But with many Syrians unable to obtain or renew their
passports and identity cards, they cannot seek refuge safely and legally via
commercial flights or passenger ships.
Forgeries are sometimes their
only hope. Facebook pages geared
toward refugees advertise not only passports but birth certificates, marriage
licenses, college diplomas, and family books, the official logs of all the
members of a family. User comments attest to the documents’ quality or tell
potential buyers not to bother.
Reached by phone, one
documents forger in Turkey said he sold “genuine” fake passports — original,
blank booklets stolen from a government office in Syria to be filled with the
black market buyer’s personal information — for $1,300. University degrees,
which may come in handy for a job application, sold for $1,000.
Until recently, Syrians in
exile seeking new or renewed passports often had to travel to regime-controlled
areas within Syria — a major security risk for anyone who left the country as a
refugee. In an apparent effort to counter the spread of fakes, the Syrian
government said this spring its embassies would issue passports to Syrians
abroad “even if they left in an illegal manner or they hold non-official
passports or travel documents,” according to the pro-government Al-Watan
newspaper.
But many Syrians do not trust
their government and still prefer illicit routes of obtaining paperwork —
particularly if they think they’re wanted by the regime.
Thirty-two-year-old Mohammad
fled Syria with his wife and son, Rami, two years ago after he defected from
the military.
“I decided to leave when I
knew I was going to be ordered to shoot at people,” said Mohammad, who now
lives in the southern Turkish city of Mersin. The family left Syria without
documents such as their marriage license and Rami’s birth certificate. They are
now having trouble registering the 3-year-old boy for a refugee ID card, which
would grant him access to healthcare, education and social services. But
because he defected, Mohammad said he cannot go to the Syrian consulate.
“I need to prove that he’s my
son to Turkish authorities and I don’t have any legal document that does that,”
Mohammad said. He is now awaiting a forged birth certificate, which cost
$1,000.
Young children are especially
vulnerable in the missing-documents crisis. Most countries to which refugees
flee do not grant automatic citizenship to babies born there. This puts refugee
children at risk for statelessness — and potential trouble returning home when
the fighting ends.
Amid the huge market for
fakes, Syrians with true passports may have trouble proving to authorities they
are real. Two weeks ago, Fabrice Leggeri, head of Europe’s border agency
Frontex, warned of a growing market for stolen or fake Syrian passports among
non-Syrian migrants. Because of the ongoing war in their country, Syrians are
far likelier to be granted international protection in their first application,
according to Eurostat. The preferential treatment means their passports command
top dollar on the black market.
“There are people who are in
Turkey now who buy fake Syrian passports because they know Syrians get the
right to asylum in all the member states of the European Union,” Leggeri told a
French radio station.
When 22-year-old Ashraf
Hammoud and his girlfriend, both Syrian refugees from Aleppo, decided to go to
northern Europe from Turkey with the help of a smuggler, they faced two choices
for a route. They could take a boat from Turkey, then start the long walk
through the Balkans, Hungary and Austria. Or they could fly, an expensive but
less dangerous option that would require fake travel documents.
They decided on a combination.
They first paid $1,500 each for spots in a boat from the Turkish coast to a
small Greek island called Pserimos. “After that, everything got easy,” Hammoud
said.
A second smuggler in Athens
mailed them two fake Portuguese national ID cards for 100 euros apiece. They
dressed as tourists and visited a hairdresser to spruce themselves up after
hiking across another Greek island en route to an airport. “Really we didn’t
look like refugees at all,” said Hammoud, who wears earrings and uses fluent
American Millennial-speak.
It worked. The pair flew to
Amsterdam and claimed asylum in the airport upon arrival.
Interviews with four refugees
who were found out while using fake documents show the stakes for getting
caught are low. Border authorities usually hand back the forged documents, now
worthless.
Hammoud said that when a
friend tried to use a bad fake ID to board a plane in Greece, “The airport lady
said to them literally, ‘Try again.’”
For Obaida, his second,
cheaper fake passport worked much better than the first. Recently he left and
reentered Turkey. Last week, he contacted this reporter via social media to
proudly show off his official Turkish entry visa. And with a string of
happy-face emojis, he declared: “I made it.”
Mowaffaq Safadi contributed reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment