Word: stockholm
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...have escaped the grinding violence of Iraq, Sweden's Iraqis face the prospect of having to rebuild shattered lives and find work in an alien society. For many, the trauma of Iraq is inescapable. Recent arrivals like Alaa say they fear being hunted down by sectarian rivals in Stockholm. "We don't know who is who here," says Alaa. In a Swedish government asylum office, he was shocked to see Iraqis in "long beards and short pants" who looked like extremist Sunnis. "I'm scared that among those people who Sweden helps are crazy Salafis who might kill...
...fact that Alaa made it to Stockholm at all qualifies him as one of the lucky ones. Among Western countries, Sweden is unique in allowing entry to all Iraqis who can prove they have fled central and southern Iraq, no matter what their political involvement or how they reached Scandinavia, according to officials at the Swedish Migration Board...
...flee first to Jordan; from there smugglers arrange flights to Istanbul, where it is easy to find illegal European Union passports--red passports, as the Iraqis call them, which contain the refugees' real photos but use other people's names. "Daniel," 23, a Christian Iraqi student sitting in a Stockholm café, said he bought a fake Iraqi passport for $300 in Baghdad and used it to take a smuggler's ride through Syria to Turkey. In Turkey a smuggler traded Daniel's Iraqi passport for a false European passport for $8,000--paid by his parents in Baghdad. Then...
...many Iraqis, the initial relief of fleeing the war is replaced by the shock of being shipped to one of Sweden's overcrowded refugee camps, an hour's drive from Stockholm. Only Iraqis who can prove they will live with relatives in Sweden are permitted to stay outside government housing when they arrive; others slowly try to find accommodations once their refugee status is officially approved, usually within a few weeks of arrival. Most end up in Sweden's heavily immigrant ghettos, like the Stockholm neighborhood of Rinkeby. The area's expanse of characterless high-rise apartment buildings dates back...
Government officials say they try to steer Iraqis to smaller towns, where housing is cheaper and their skills are in greater demand. But Iraqis resist. "It's a major problem for us," says Mattias Sjöberg, a migration officer at the Swedish Migration Board in Stockholm. "We send people to the north or down south, but in the end many Iraqis end up in Stockholm, where there is a [Muslim] community...