Last week, Russian migration authorities accepted an application for asylum from a Kurdish family—husband, wife and four children ages three to 13—who had fled from Iraq earlier this fall. The officials issued the family documents identifying them as asylum seekers and transferred them to a temporary accommodation center a few hours’ drive from Moscow. But these actions followed a shameful nightmare: the family had been stuck for more than two months at Moscow’s main airport, living in a glass cubicle, formerly a smoking lounge, surviving on charity from sympathetic passengers.
Khassan Akhmed Abdo and his wife Gulistan Issa Shakho had lived in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This past summer, with ISIS attacks in the area and Kurdish authorities arresting ISIS recruiters in Erbil and environs, they resolved to flee to Russia.
‘We decided to go to Russia to save our children from the war,’ Gulistan explained to a Russian court, after the family were tried on charges of attempted illegal border crossing, a criminal offense. Why Russia? Because Gulistan’s sister lives here and is eager to host the family.
