Forged Al-Qaeda Threats Open Asylum Gates for Some Iraqis

[Aslan]

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – As a former document forger in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, over the years much of Salim Ali’s income came from producing fake personal threats signed by Al-Qaeda.

“People would frequently ask me to forge Al-Qaeda documents pretending that they have been threatened by Al-Qaeda. They would use the forged Al-Qaeda documents to increase their chance of getting asylum in a Western country,” says Ali, using a pseudonym.

He claims that many of his customers have successfully gained asylum or residency in European countries.

Forging documents has been common and for many years a source of income for some people in the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq.

“Forging documents is not a decent job,” says Ali, claiming to have quit for fear of arrest. “Lots of money can be made but all of it is gone in a blink of an eye.”

Ali’s main job has been forging Iraqi identity cards. “Most of the materials for forging documents such as templates, phosphor and stamps are available in the Muridi market in Baghdad,” he says.

Ali says he has often sold an Iraqi national identity card for $700, particularly to individuals who have wanted to go abroad and claim asylum.

Stealing original documents or templates from government offices in Baghdad is all too common.

“Original templates of documents can be stolen in Baghdad offices and that makes a forger’s job much easier and more credible for customers,” he told Rudaw.

Until the late 1990s, the Kurdistan Region’s two main cities -- Erbil and Sulaimani -- had designated document-forging markets in the city center. But they were later closed down and the security forces have proven intolerant of any such business.

Ali says that his work was not only limited to making national identity cards and other government documents. He did many times forge death certificates for people with an eye on manipulating Europe’s human rights courts.

Some people, especially men, used to ask for death certificates to claim that their spouses had been victims of honor killing in order to increase their chances of getting asylum.

Ali’s customers mainly came from the smaller towns of the Kurdistan Region, he says.

“Fake documents are not only used to mislead the government system,” Ali adds. “There is much demand by married men who are involved in extramarital affairs for forged IDs to prove to their new partners that they are unmarried.”

Despite his successful record and lucrative business for a number of years, Ali admits that he had never attempted to forge Iraq’s new series A and G passports, “Because it is very difficult and dangerous.”

Ali says that he decided some years ago to quit the illegal profession and has vowed not to pass on his skills to anyone else.

“I have made my decision,” he says. “I will never go back to forging documents because it is not a decent job. I was trained by a fraudster but I am not going to train anyone, because if it were a good job I would have done it myself.”