Iraq Exodus: Wages Frozen, Egyptians Head Home

CAIRO — Nearly 3,000 Egyptian workers a day have begun streaming home from Iraq in a massive exodus triggered by the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq War and Iraq’s decision to hold up an estimated $300 million in wages.

As thousands of Egyptians crowded the airport terminal at the Iraqi capital of Baghdad this week demanding tickets, authorities said they were also investigating reports that more than 100 Egyptian corpses were flown home from Iraq last month.

Bodies have been arriving at Cairo International Airport at the rate of three or four a day. Death certificates, which originally listed many of the causes of death as “bullet wounds,” have recently attributed the deaths to “accident” or “butane gas cylinder explosion,” according to the Egyptian state-owned newspaper, Al Akbar.

Five new bodies arrived Wednesday, two of them with smashed skulls, the newspaper said. But Iraqi government authorities said the number of deaths is not unusual in light of the number of Egyptian workers in Iraq, estimated at more than 1 million.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry official said Wednesday that he could not confirm the number of deaths or the circumstances behind them, but he said Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki is scheduled to meet Saturday with a high-level Iraqi delegation to discuss the worsening Egyptian worker crisis.

“We have been working on it through diplomatic channels, and we hope in the days to come we can come up with a satisfactory solution,” the official said.

The exodus from Baghdad corresponds with Iraq’s decision six weeks ago to limit the amount of money that unskilled foreign workers can transfer out of the country to 10 dinars a month (about $55), which amounts in many cases to less than 10% of their earnings. Previously, workers were allowed to send up to half their salaries home.

The decision comes in the wake of Iraq’s eight-year-long war with Iran. A U.N. cease-fire in August brought an end to much of Iraq’s foreign military aid, leaving the country strapped for foreign currency and burdened with a flood of soldiers competing with foreign workers for civilian jobs.

Many Egyptians have lost their jobs, and others have complained about a deterioration in working conditions, including unilateral wage reductions, non-payment of wages and occasional outbreaks of violence, together with the new limits on transferring their earnings home.

To handle the flood of returning Egyptians, Iraqi Airways has increased its flights to Cairo from two a week to 10, and EgyptAir has added three additional weekly flights. For the last several days, more than 2,800 workers a day have been airlifted out of Baghdad, and others have gone home by bus through Jordan.

In interviews at Cairo airport, Egyptian workers complained that they were arriving home virtually penniless because of the ceiling on wage transfers.

Adel Said Sayed, a plumber who went to work in Baghdad last March, said he is taking home only $300 for eight months’ work because of the transfer limit and because his employer refused to pay him all he was due. When he complained, Sayed said, “The man brings his gun and said, ‘You must work. You should work or I will kill you and bury you here.’ ”

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein discounted claims that Egyptians have been mistreated in Iraq and dismissed reports of an increase in the number of workers who have died.

“There have been millions of Egyptians here . . . and it is natural that, like Iraqis, some of them die, are killed in car accidents or in quarrels with Iraqis or among themselves,” he said in a report on Iraq’s official radio.

Hussein also said some incidents of violence could be expected in the wake of the Iran-Iraq War. “People were in a continuous state of fighting a war for eight years . . . and we expected them to use their hands in quarrels when the war ends,” he said.