Erik Moberg ©:
8. THE ASYLUM SEEKERS FROM IRAN
Iran has a population of 81.6 million (Table 2 above).
In this population 99.4 % are Muslims (Table 3 above), and among these Muslims
some 90-95 % are Shiites. Iran is in fact the dominating Shiite country in the
world. Now, considering the asylum seekers it could first noted that as a
percentage of the population they are quite few, only 0.2 % (Table 2). But even
if they are few in that sense their distribution over time fluctuates considerably
as shown in diagram 7. There is a great increase in 2015 and similarly in 2016.
And then an equally considerable decrease in 2017. So
it seems quite natural to ask for the reason for this pattern? Did there, for
instance, happen anything particularly harmful in 2015 which triggered the
expansion in that year?
Diagram 7: Asylum seekers in the EU/EFTA from Iran
Well, no, and in fact rather the opposite. But in
order give a more complete picture of all of this we have to go back in
history. Thus, as we remember, the Iranian revolution occurred in 1979, a
revolution in which the Shah was overthrown and the ayatollahs took power. Or,
in other words, the former secular state became a Muslim state, in this case a
Shiite one.
Then, in due course, this new Iranian regime started
an atomic energy program including, among others, uranium enrichment with
centrifuges. Many countries in the surrounding world interpreted this as the
start of a program for producing atomic bombs, and the
reaction was trade embargos against Iran and freezing of Iranian assets. There
were several sanctions of this kind, some ones taken within the United Nations
and other ones taken by individual nations, in particular the United States. All
of this hit Iran with its great dependence on oil exports most severely.
And so we can turn to 2015. In that year the negotiations between Iran
on the one hand, and the sanctioning states on the other, started by the US
president Barack Obama, were most strikingly brought forward and almost
concluded. The final deal came in January 2016. The sanctions were lifted and
Iran agreed to stop important parts of its atomic energy activities. This, as foreseen
by the Iranian population already in 2015, was utterly important for the
Iranian economy and for the welfare of the people. Thus we have reached the
conclusion that nothing harmful occurred in 2015 and 2016 but rather the
opposite. In those years things became much better in Iran, not worse.
And this means that the reason for the sudden migration has to be something
else than worsening conditions of some kind. About this I can only speculate
but when doing so the similarity between migration curves of Iran, on the one
hand, and those for Afghanistan and Iraq on the other, is striking. In all of
these three curves there are sharp increases in 2015 and 2016. The one relevant
for Iran seems to Afghanistan’s. Here one may guess about some kind of
contamination or influence. I have not found any data about the way taken by
the asylum seekers in EU/EFTA from Afghanistan, but it seems most likely that
they have had to pass through Iran–Afghanistan is, we remember, a landlocked
country. And if so many Iranians may just have been stimulated, or
contaminated, to behave similarly, or they may have been offered migration
possibilities by those, if any, arranging the migration from Afghanistan for
gaining profits. All of this is compatible with the fact that many Iranians, in
particular young ones, have long felt life in their own country unpleasant.
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