Shahab Smoqi's story reads like a bureaucratic nightmare: His asylum application was rejected twice by Germany. Once as an asylum seeker, and once for a work permit.

When his first application was rejected in 2021, he was given only 30 days to leave Germany. He managed to take action in court at the time to stop deportation procedures. In September 2023, he submitted a new application, which also was rejected. 

But that is nothing compared to the nightmare he might be facing if he is indeed forced to return home:

"Sooner or later, I will face the risk of being killed, either through another genocide in Iraq or amid the conflicts between various groups in northern Iraq," Smoqi told InfoMigrants. 

His current protection status -- issued in 2021 when Iraq was still deemed an unsafe safe country of origin -- will now come to an end in February, and the 21-year-old Yazidi is once again threatened with deportation.

"Three years of building my future here in Germany -- my Bachelor's in Computer Science, my proficiency in the German language, my job as a SAP consultant, and my Master's in Financial Management and Accounting -- all of these are now in jeopardy," Smoqi said.

More deportations to Iraq

Smoqi had started a new life with his family in Hamburg after a harrowing journey through land and sea from Iraq to Turkey. He passed through Greece and made his way to Germany via the Balkan route, escaping persecution in Iraq.

"I had one hope: to go to a country that would respect me, my religion, and hopefully protect me and my family against those who hate Yazidis," Smoqi told InfoMigrants.

But the latest rejection of his asylum request comes as the German government has been bolstering efforts to send back asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected, with a particular focus on Iraq.

To this end, Germany was even reported to have signed a secret agreement with the Iraqi government to work much closer together in repatriations and other areas of mutual interest. The deal also affects Yazidis, who had been given protection in Germany until recently.

However, Germany's rejection of Smoqi's asylum application also comes at a time when the European country is urgently seeking more skilled workers to join its workforce, leading to even more questions about the decision.

Who are the Yazidi people?

The Yazidi people are an ancient religious minority with prominent communities in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Many Yazidis from Iraq and Syria, like Smoqi, now live in Western Europe, primarily in Germany, due to persecution -- most recently under the terror regime of the so-called Islamic State (IS) organization between 2013 and 2018.

The United Nations declared that IS crimes against Yazidis constitute a genocide. German lawmakers in 2023 also recognized the crimes committed by IS militants against minority Yazidis in Iraq as genocide.

IS killed thousands of Yazidis, enslaved 7,000 Yazidi women and girls and displaced around 550,000 Yazidis from their ancestral home in northern Iraq.

Being Yazidi in Iraq: synonymous with death

But that's by far not the only instance of persecution the minority has suffered in its history: Yazidis speak of surviving 74 genocides throughout their history. Militant groups like IS view Yazidis as devil worshippers who combined Zoroastrian, Christian, Manichean, Jewish and Muslim beliefs.

"Because we, as Yazidis, knew that Iraq never protected us against any terrorism or genocide, it had always been my goal to leave Iraq," Smoqi explained. "Each time I listened to my parents when I was a little kid, to other people, and all those Yazidi songs describing the horror of previous genocides, fear gripped me."

This threat of persecution and genocide continues to fuel migration: From January to September 2023, almost 4,000 asylum applications were submitted by Yazidis in Germany, according to figures from the Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF).

Nearly 2,900 of those who lodged applications are believed to be from Iraq. 

A genocide without protection?

Last year, when Germany declared the persecution of Yazidis in Iraq tantamount to genocide, the government claimed to host the biggest Yazidi diaspora in the world. While the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, promised to work harder to protect Yazidis in Germany, the situation isn't clean-cut, as deportations to Iraq are on the rise.

On December 18, the German federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) became the first state to stop the deportation of Yazidis -- and so far the only one.

"Reports on the situation for this group in northern Iraq are worrying," NRW minister for refugees, Josefine Paul, said in an interview with the German news magazine Spiegel. 

"In the view of the [German] Foreign Office, the Iraqi government is not in a position to guarantee the protection of religious minorities in many regions," she added.

Paul has been pushing for a nationwide moratorium on deportations of Yazidis -- without success. 

Waiting years to enter Germany

Escaping the terror reign of IS, Smoqi says he and his family first had to flee to Turkey, where he lived for almost three years in five different refugee camps -- with no access to education.

By the end of 2015, Smoqi's 15-year-old brother and one of his sisters decided to journey onwards to Germany, where his brother later had his asylum case approved -- paving the way for a potential family reunion for Smoqi later.

However, Smoqi did not have any documentation or ID on him in Turkey, and had to return to Iraq to obtain the necessary documents to apply for the family reunion program. This is when he realized the full scope of IS' destructive mentality:

"IS was everywhere … I had to visit almost every dangerous area in Iraq to find all the documents -- even Mosul while IS was controlling half of it. I said, I will either die here or leave Iraq forever," Smoqi recounts.

It took almost six months to get all his papers in order between Iraqi authorities and the German embassy -- or so he thought. When he went to the embassy to pick up his visa, "I saw only one visa, which was my mom's visa."

"They rejected mine and my sister's visa. We had to wait three more years!"

Police detainment in Greece

By August 2020, Smoqi decided to leave with his sister -- and this time for good. Once more, the pair traveled to Turkey and one month later, they started their journey to Greece.

"The first attempt was horrible. We went by car the border, then we had to walk in a forest for more than 10 hours," Smoqi remembers. They stayed in the forest for two days, having nothing on them but the clothes they wore: "It was colder than any winter I had seen," he remembers.

The siblings then entered Greece on boats, where they soon would be met by Greek police, who didn't offer them a warm welcome either: Smoqi said he and his sister, along with around 80 other people -- including elderly citizens and women carrying babies -- were all stripped off their clothing and shoes and were put into a single room for more than 12 hours without any food.

"They took us to a prison, took off our clothes, took my phone, and [an official] broke it with his shoes in front of my eyes," he explains.

In the middle of the night, Greek police officers pushed back the group to the other side of the border on a boat. Smoqi and his sister then walked through dense forest for another 10 hours until they reached a road, from where they made their way to Athens.

"We stayed there for a bit and then made our journey from there through all the countries between Greece and Germany until we finally got here," Smoqi highlights.

Studying under the fear of deportation

Living in Germany came with its own challenges, he says. In his first six months in Germany, Smoqi was shuffled from one camp to another. But in the end, his perseverance and hard work paid off:

"I had to continue studying for university plus start learning German. Unfortunately, [the German government] did not give me a German language course, so I had to learn by myself until I found a non-profit organization, which provided me with a German teacher. That helped me a lot!"

Smoqi says he studied German for 10 to 12 hours daily, throwing in an additional five hours for his university studies on top: "I spent two years ... barely seeing sunshine until I mastered German and could speak it fluently. I finished my university studies, and got my bachelor in computer science," Smoqi recalls.

"And I had to do all that facing the fear of deportation anytime."

Now, the 21-year-old has to start 2024 living under the same fear: "My biggest worry is returning to a country where we, as Yazidis, have experienced more than 74 genocides -- a country that has never accepted me as a normal civilian."

But there's even more at stake than the ultimate threat of facing persecution. Even in his immediate environment, there could be life-altering changes as a result of the rejection of his asylum application, as most of his family has managed to settle in Germany:

"[Deportation] means I can't see my family anymore. … (Germany) now claims that Iraq is a safe country, and that you can return there."