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Surviving on Pensions in Iraq Means Someone Takes a Huge Risk!
Janet McGiffin / August 2008
A question frequently asked of Iraqi refugees in Cairo is, “How did you survive financially if you were prevented from working under the Saddam regime and sectarian violence after the Americans entered in 2003?” The answer for many is, “We lived on the pension income of our older relatives”—a survival method still used by many Iraqi refugees living in Cairo.
British Petroleum (BP) was an oil company firm that had operated in Iraq for nearly a hundred years. After Saddam nationalized BP, the company continued to send pension checks on schedule to their Iraqi pensioners. The task was carried out by Iraqi couriers who took great risks to find the pensioners and make sure they could turn their pensions into cash. One such messenger was H., a Christian Iraqi who came from a religious family that had carried out similar risky social services during these periods and who now lives in Cairo.
“My maternal grandfather served the church for around 50 years,” says H. “My whole family had close relations with the Chaldean, Latin and Carmelite Catholic Churches in Iraq. My father was a priest’s assistant all his life. As a family, we were all involved in some kind of social, humanitarian and community work. Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, during Saddam’s many wars; we participated in social activities addressed at the elderly and the poor. We collected medicines from foreign NGOs and distributed them. We were generally respected because we did not discriminate. We had no political agenda, although we were often investigated. As head of the family during this period, I helped those who had to defend the church, including the foreign priests who had come to Iraq.”
In 2000, H. became involved in the voluntary distribution of pensions from British Petroleum that were due to workers up until the time that Saddam nationalized the oil industry. “Distributing their pensions was almost a secret operation that went on from Dubai,” says H. “My predecessor, a very old man of Palestinian origin but with Iraqi nationality, had worked for a British auditing company, Wenny-Merry, that had also been nationalized. When he left to seek asylum in the US, he asked me to take over his responsibility for distributing BP pensions.” The BP pensioners lived in four governorates, Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk, and Basra. The money was transferred to H. through a money changer from Dubai. There were around 40 pensioners, all over 70 years old. Part of H’s responsibility was to regularly obtain “life certificates” to prove the pensioners were still alive. These had to be stamped by a lawyer. Sometimes H. opened bank accounts for the pensioners. Every two months he wrote a report on his activities to BP in Britain.
“At the beginning, I transferred the BP monthly entitlements every two months, to their savings accounts. Although the sums were via check, pensioners had no trouble cashing them in Iraqi banks because I and my predecessors had built a secure system. After a while, however, some were paid by check and others in cash. Before March 2003, I delivered a few by hand, either to the pensioners or to their authorised representatives, such as a bank. But after March 2003, all were delivered in cash, by hand, because of mail and security problems. I was taking the risk for them,” he says. “At times I faced investigations by the authorities.”
Not only did Mr. H. take physical risks travelling in Iraq to deliver the pensions before 2003, but it was also dangerous to make the contacts and hand over the money. The Saddam regime had been targeting people who had worked with foreigners; now the militae were targeting anyone associated with members of the Coalition.
By the end of 2003, the situation in Iraq had become too dangerous for H. to continue. He informed his contacts in London that they would have to make some other arrangement. “The problem I had was not the same as during the Saddam's period. During that time, although personally very dangerous, I could still ensure that things were going right. But few weeks after the 2003 war started, I could no longer physically reach the pensioners, and they could certainly not come to me—even those who lived in Baghdad, to say nothing about those living in Basrah, Mosul and Kirkuk.” By 2004, the risks involved plus threats to his life, forced H. to leave Iraq.
Mr. H. said “I don’t know how the pensioners are getting their entitlements now, or even if they are still alive. I do not know who took over for me or even if anyone is still delivering the pensions. I still have copies of most of their files in case they are destroyed in Iraq I can at least provide some information to continue to assist these elderly people. Does anyone still care about these pensioners? No one knows.”
