No one quite knows how Syrian dissident Hussein Harmoush went from the safety of a Turkish refugee camp into the clutches of the regime he thought he had escaped. But his case has his fellow political exiles nervous.
It may not be their preferred destination, but increasing numbers of Afghan refugees, seeking to escape the growing insecurity of their homeland, are making their way to Tajikistan. The former Soviet republic on Afghanistan’s northern border is seen as safer than Pakistan, less socially restrictive than Iran, and a more culturally familiar place, as many of the refugees speak a dialect of Tajik.
At a rundown football stadium in Istanbul, Nigerian team members huddled together to say a prayer as they prepared to take on Cameroon. A star-and-crescent Turkish flag fluttered above them in the late afternoon breeze, a couple of hundred African fans were in the stands and, outside, a group of curious Turks looked on as the city’s own version of the Africa Cup of Nations got under way.
Legal options are running out for a group of Uzbek asylum seekers who are in detention in Kazakhstan, facing deportation to Uzbekistan. The case threatens to form an uncomfortable backdrop as Astana prepares to host a December summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The reverberations from US President Barack Obama’s recent declaration on the end of US combat operations in Iraq are being felt in Armenia. Hopes are rising among hundreds of Iraqi-Armenian refugees that they might soon be able to return to Iraq and regain a sense of economic security that has remained elusive in Armenia.
Uzbek refugees living in Kazakhstan’s biggest city, Almaty, say they had a rude awakening on the morning of June 9, when law-enforcement officers carried out a coordinated raid that resulted in the detention of dozens of men.
