Mr Official Source at the Egyptian Federation of Industries who preferred not to reveal his name, has stated that Egyptians have three types of outstanding financial claims from Iraq: workers’ remittances (the so-called ‘yellow remittances’), financial transfers, and deposits in Iraqi banks that were frozen under UN sanctions.
According to Mr Source, before the US invasion of Iraq, the total value of these yellow remittances, deposits, and workers’ dues was around $700 million. Meanwhile, Egyptian companies’ claims under the oil-for-food programme amounted to roughly $1.6 billion for exporters who had direct dealings in Iraq, in addition to those trading through Jordanian borders.
This renewed interest in the issue follows the Egyptian foreign ministry’s sudden realisation—bless them—of this long-standing crisis. A series of meetings has been launched to revive discussions on workers’ and companies’ financial claims, attended by representatives from the business sector, the ministry of manpower, the Federation of Industries, and the ministry of trade and industry. However, reports did not mention whether the victims of the yellow remittance scheme were represented—perhaps by a trade union official or anyone else. That, of course, would be typical, given how Egyptian workers’ rights are routinely overlooked in such proceedings.
This latest ‘news’ revives the story of tens of thousands of Egyptian workers who left for Iraq in the 1970s and continued to do so until the invasion of Kuwait. They were all forced to return home, believing that the yellow remittance—essentially a piece of paper confirming that their hard-earned wages had been transferred to Egypt—would be worth something. Mr Morsi (not his real name), now in his fifties, travelled to Iraq as a young labourer in 1977. He loved the country deeply, finding there a level of kindness and respect simply because he was Egyptian—something he had never experienced in his homeland, which, by coincidence, was the very same country that Iraqis loved. Unlike many, he did not flee after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and the US response, which saw Iraq and its people bombed into oblivion. Bomb now, die later.
He lost everything—the success he had built, his home, and his job. But he always consoled himself with the thought that at least he had transferred $700 to Egypt before the war. As conditions deteriorated under US-imposed sanctions that starved and crippled Iraq, he finally decided to return home. He had a small, half-ruined house that he never got around to furnishing. He planned to start over, cash in his yellow remittance, and collect those wretched $700 he had transferred in 1987.
For the past 23 years, Morsi has been waiting for the yellow remittance. He left for Baghdad as a teenager and returned three decades later. Now, as he struggles through his fifties, life has only grown harsher. No job, no income, no wife, no children—just an old man who cracks jokes, always grinning despite missing his front teeth. He insists he lost a part of his mind after devoting his life to believing in a worthless piece of yellow paper.
Now, after all these years, our esteemed foreign ministry has suddenly decided that ‘the time might be right’ to act. Where were they in the late 1990s when the world was busy looting Iraq under the guise of ‘war reparations’? Where were they when every last person in Israel who so much as sneezed during the war received compensation?
Imagine this: in the 1990s, Israel’s foreign ministry successfully secured compensation for a florist in a tourist district, arguing that the poor man suffered financial losses because the war had reduced the number of visiting tourists. How tragic. Their diplomats ensured the world took responsibility for every unsold flower in Israel.
Their foreign ministry works for its citizens. Ours exists solely to serve the regime. And as for Morsi? After 32 years back in his homeland, he still greets everyone he meets with a toothless smile and the same question: ‘Son, have you heard anything about the yellow remittance?’
This article is originally published by AlBorsa in Arabic and later AI-translated by South Push.