Marcus Bensmann in yesterday’s TAZ writes about thousands of Kyrgyz pilgrims that are stuck in Iran because of the poor state of the busses they’re travelling with, bird-flu, and a corrupt institution that is meant to support those willing to undertake one of the five pillars of Islam.

The Kyrgyz muftiate was allocated with 4,500 Hajj-places in 2006 (Saudi-Arabia regulates the number of visiting pilgrims due to the exorbitant demand). However, the Kyrgyz Islamic authorities gave away 7,500 places and made each one of these people pay the upfront fee of US$700.

On top of that, the tricked and angry Kyrgyz devotees also blamed the muftiate to have sold Hajj-tickets to citizens from neighbouring Central Asian countries. In these (e.g. Uzbekistan), the secret service screens all those who want to pilgrim to Mecca, and a Kyrgyz ticket is deemed easy and uncomplicated.

And, even those lucky Kyrgyz that had everything sorted out and were sitting on one of the 90 or so busses that left the Central Asian republic were by no means done with all trouble: Only seven (!) busses eventually arrived in Saudi-Arabia.