An unprecedented number of at least 23 pilgrims from the Kurdistan Region have died during this year's Hajj, reflecting a generally high mortality rate among pilgrims from all countries.
According to the KRG, the vast majority of these deaths occurred among individuals who entered Saudi Arabia on tourist visas, circumventing the official Hajj visa allocation system. This practice is illegal, as Saudi Arabia assigns a specific quota of Hajj visas to each country.
Estimates suggest thousands from the Kurdistan Region attempted the pilgrimage using tourist visas. Many were initially detained and expelled from Mecca's premises before the Hajj days but reportedly managed to return amidst the massive influx of pilgrims.
This situation, coinciding with the recent deaths of dozens of Kurdish irregular migrants in the Mediterranean en route to Europe, has sparked an intriguing debate on social media. The discussion centers on whether there's an inherent cultural tendency among some Kurds to resort to unofficial or "smuggled" means to achieve their goals, given that using tourist visas for pilgrimage can be considered a form of circumvention.
While we lack concrete evidence to support this hypothesis, it presents an interesting avenue for exploring cultural norms and their influence on behavior. This perspective might offer insights into perplexing statistics, such as why Kurds, despite comprising less than 20% of Iraq's population, accounted for 80% of Iraqi asylum applicants in the UK in 2023. Economic factors or family rule alone seem insufficient to explain this disparity, especially considering that other Iraqis face similar challenges, albeit with slightly different underlying causes.
Organised crime, including smuggling, is prevalent among some Kurdish groups, especially in the UK. Numerous Kurdish-owned "barber shops", now common on high streets across many UK towns and cities, are money laundering fronts for various illicit activities, such as people trafficking, oil smuggling, and narcotics trafficking - most of which is done in the KR. Additionally, many of these barber shops are used by Albanians and others as nodes for drug trafficking.