Riders on the Storm.(Kurds from Iraq escape to Europe)(Brief Article)

The 33-year-old doctor took off his blue overcoat to answer a visitor's question. Why had he fled northern Iraq, paying smugglers $2,000 to take him through Turkey to "somewhere in Europe"? He rolled up the sleeve of his plaid shirt. Why had he and about 900 other Kurds squeezed into the hold of a derelict freighter called the East Sea, only to be abandoned off the southern coast of France when it ran aground? Dr. Ihsan Ibrahim held out his withered arm. A ragged scar wound its way over the shrunken biceps and under his shoulder. In Iraq, he said, he was attacked one night and stabbed several times because he'd been agitating against Saddam Hussein. "If I hadn't made this trip," said Ibrahim, "I would be dead now."

In the gravel parking lot of a holding center at Frejus, not far from the fashionable resorts of the Cote d'Azur, many of the refugees from the East Sea seemed lost last week. The French government finally gave them permission to apply for political asylum. But many were unsure where they would go--or even where they were. Experts on immigration see the castaways of the East Sea as a sign of crises to come. They may well foreshadow a flood of Kurdish refugees from Iraq (more than 3.5 million live in northern Iraq) if sanctions are lifted and the protection of U.S. and British warplanes is taken away. Last year Iraqi Kurds were the largest group of refugees petitioning for asylum in Germany. Last month the Italian government inaugurated a center to handle Iraqi Kurdish refugees, who have been pouring into southern Italy since 1996. "The Kurdish 'problem' is a European problem," says Kendall Nezan, head of the Kurdish Institute in Paris.

These independent-minded people, with their long history of rebellions and suffering, are no longer contained by martial law in Turkey, the assassination of their leaders in Iran or nearly genocidal repression in Iraq. Of the world's 20 million to 25 million Kurds, in fact, an estimated 1 million already live in the European Union. In Germany there are about 500,000, descended from the guest workers who came on Turkish passports in the 1960s. But the number from Iraq is growing quickly, with large concentrations in Sweden, the Netherlands and Britain, as well as Germany. About 150,000 have come to Europe in the last decade, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees--more than 30,000 a year since 1996. Most have been granted asylum.

Kurds have begun to integrate into the social and economic fabric of several European cities. By one estimate, there are 3,000 Kurdish sandwich shops in the Paris area alone. The Kurdish-born singer Dilba is a pop star in Sweden, while the actress Amira Casa is featured in several French comedies. Kurds have also shown increasing political clout. Falaknas Uca, a 24-year-old Kurdish German, was elected to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in 1999. Yet Kurdish nationalism is growing among the second generation in Europe, not subsiding. Uca sits on the committee that oversees Europe's relations with Turkey. "If Turkey wants to be part of Europe, it can't deny Kurds their basic human rights," she says. When Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured by the Turks in 1998, it was European cities that erupted in violence. Mass protests filled the streets; buildings were occupied; some young Kurds even burned themselves alive.

For the moment, European leaders have found it impossible to agree on general immigration guidelines, much less the particular problems of the Kurds. "Each country thinks that its neighbor is the one that will be affected," says Nezan of the Kurdish Institute. A senior European Commission official reluctantly agrees. "There's lots of talking, but not many decisions." Yet events looming in Iraq could force the Europeans to formulate ...