EU’s Afghan refugee repatriation policy is nonsense, priest says
Like Pakistan and Iran, the EU is planning to repatriate some 3 million Afghans to a country still at war.
Brussels (AsiaNews) – Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees in Europe, Pakistan and Iran will be forced to return to their country which is still in every respect a war zone.
The Afghan government has no resources to help these refugees, and is still involved against the Taliban defending the country’s cities and funding the military.
People connected to Afghanistan told AsiaNews that the result of the decision will be another major humanitarian crisis for a population already battered by war.
Pakistan and Iran have decided to repatriate Afghan refugees. Islamabad plans to send back about 2.6 million people whilst Tehran wants to expel a million Afghan refugees from its territory.
The EU is basing its decision on that fact that it no loner considers Afghanistan a country at war. According to the EU, unlike Syria, Afghanistan is a safe country that is ready to welcome its citizens.
At a conference in Brussels on 5 October, 70 international donors, including the European Union, pledged .2 billion for Afghanistan's development budget until 2020. Funding for the Afghan military – some US billion a year – will follow separately.
In return, the country will take back its refugees; more than 200,000 Afghan refugees arrived in Europe in 2015 alone. This worries experts and representatives of civil society groups.
For Jamil Danish, an Afghan journalist and refugee in the UK, this decision will lead to a major humanitarian crisis. "I am an Afghan refugee living in the UK. Thankfully I am now a legal resident here – but if I were sent back to Afghanistan, I would risk being killed by the militias that forced me to flee in the first place.”
For him, the Common European Asylum System will break its own rules by sending people to a war zone. The decision will also affect negatively other registered refugees already in Europe. This is a bad example for other countries - not the least Pakistan where, “tens of thousands of these people [Afghans] are second- or third-generation immigrants who were born and raised in Pakistan. These refugees made Pakistan their home, started businesses, went to college. For most of them, Afghanistan is a foreign country.”
Another important voice is that of Father Giovanni Moretti, a Barnabite priest who for years was the only Catholic clergyman in Afghanistan. In his view, the country still has many problems that make refugee repatriation extremely difficult.
"Every year about 100,000 Afghans die before the age of five. About 41 per cent are malnourished. The number of child soldiers has doubled compared to 2014. The average literacy rate is 38 per cent and only 21 per cent for of girls finish primary school. Lest we forget, the Taliban appear to have taken the city of Konduz just few days ago. It is clear that the situation in Afghanistan is not that of a country at peace."
Speaking about the EU, the clergyman noted that "Although the situation is not comparable to that in Syria, if Afghans are fleeing Afghanistan, that means that fighting continues. The EU’s decision to help the government and repatriate Afghans is nonsense.”
What is more, “How exactly will EU funds for the government be used? We asked the same question when huge amounts of international funds came between 2002 and 2015.”
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