i spent $12,000, sold my car, and i will try to leave even if takes me 20 times. reporter: so many more heartbreaking stories that we heard from people in the airport. some people arriving there didn t have enough money. families to take a taxi to leave the airport even. but iraqis, laura, are considered to be some of the luckier ones here because the government is evacuating them. it is bringing back whoever wants to come back. you have thousands of others currently stranded in belarus including syrians and afghans and no one really knows what is going to happen to them right now. the politics of this is one thing. this is truly a humanitarian story, humanitarian crisis. jumanna, thank you for your reporting. let s close out the week looking at business. asia, stock index futures are unconvincingly mixed here. it was a mixed day thursday.
border and being flown back to iraq. along with hundreds of afghan and syrian migrants, today the iraqi government repatriated sorry, 431 of its citizens. cnn s jumanna qkarachi joins us. what can you tell us? reporter: this is the first flight by the iraqi government. more than 400 people on the flight, iraqi officials saying there are going to be more flights in the coming days for these voluntary returns for whoever wants to come back. president iraqi government accuses smugglers and traffickers of exploiting their citizens, but they also accuse the government of belarus of using migrants and refugees essentially as political pawns in this standoff with the e.u. we heard from the foreign minister of belarus in that exclusive interview with cnn yesterday saying this was not an orchestrated crisis. but whatever this is, whatever officials are saying, it is