Disappointed Iraqis leave Germany back to Iraq

(3 Feb 2016) Dozens of Iraqis purchased flight tickets to board the weekly flight from Germany's capital Berlin to Iraq on Wednesday, adding to a steady stream of migrants heading home after experiencing Germany's backlogging bureaucracy. Khdeeja Khanees made the same trip nearly 1.1 million fellow asylum-seekers embarked on in 2015 in search for a new life in Germany: a gruelling thousand-mile (-kilometres) journey with borders to cross, smugglers to pay and miles (kilometres)to walk on foot in difficult weather conditions. She said what she found when she arrived disappointed her. Saman Salim, a 29-year-old Iraqi Kurd of Kirkuk, was stopped by the Danish authorities and imprisoned on his journey to Germany. He, too, said his experience at his destination led him to decide to return home despite the hardship he faced to get there. Iraqi Airlines said last week that about 40 of the 180 passengers on the weekly Wednesday flight from Berlin to the Iraqi city of Erbil were asylum-seekers who had decided to head home. She said the airline sees about the same numbers each week, with similar numbers on flights from Duesseldorf to Erbil and from Frankfurt to Baghdad. As Germany struggles to cope with the sheer number of arrivals, the government has been encouraging people to return home on their own, and 37,220 people did so last year. All but about 5,000 of those, however, were from Balkan nations with little hope that their asylum request would be granted. Of the nearly 122,000 Iraqis who arrived in 2015, only 724 went home. Similarly, 309 Afghans voluntarily went home, as did 148 Pakistanis, seven Somalis and 13 Syrians. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...