Naseir's daughter was 7 when a local gang leader saw her on a Baghdad street and passed on the word: She was beautiful, and in a year or two, the man would take her as his wife. Until then, she would need to begin wearing a veil when she went out playing, and practice the principles of Islam, even though she wasn't Muslim.
To Naseir, this meant two things. One: "Basically, he was talking about raping my daughter." And two: "We had to get out of there."
Naseir paid a driver to get him and his family across the border into Syria, then launched a desperate odyssey alone by taxi, truck, plane and rubber dinghy to reach Sweden, long Europe's most hospitable gateway for people fleeing the war in Iraq.
But amid a refugee flood that has taxed even this Scandinavian nation's traditional liberal compassion, Sweden has dramatically narrowed the standards for granting asylum to people from Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
Naseir, who imagined that he would soon be calling his family to join him in Sweden, now finds himself facing deportation, and has gone into hiding to avoid the police.
The change in policy stems from a new immigration law and an appeals court ruling this year that found, incredibly to many Swedes and refugee advocates, that legally there is no internal armed conflict in Iraq -- allowing deportation of asylum seekers to their home country.
"They say there is no armed conflict in any part of Iraq. There is no armed conflict in Somalia; there is no armed conflict anywhere in the Middle East. There is armed conflict in five or six of the most southern parts of Afghanistan," said Kalle Larsson, a Left Party member of parliament who has sought to preserve asylum opportunities in Sweden.
"I'm afraid that what is really happening is the system is sending political signals to the courts and to the migration board," he said. "And these signals are saying, 'There are too many people coming to Sweden.' "
For hundreds of refugees across Sweden, the deportation orders seem to amount to death sentences.
"How can we go back? After what happened to us, Iraq to me was no longer a country," Naseir, who does not want his last name published, said as he slumped over at a coffee shop one recent afternoon to hide the tears streaming down his face. "Iraq became a graveyard."
Last year, more than 18,500 Iraqis sought asylum in Sweden. By comparison, the U.S. processed 734 Iraqi asylum applicants in 2007, and Britain handled 2,075, although these countries are the main military forces in the war.
