AYS Daily Digest 14/09/21 — Will the EU Continue Deporting Afghan People?
By: Are You Syrious
Tags: Digest, Afghanistan, Eu, Migrants, Refugees

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An empty boat drifts past the rescue ship the Geo Barents, the fate of the people on board is unknown. Photo credit: Vincent Haiges via Zeit.de

FEATURE

As UN, EU Reach Out to Taliban, Observers Fear Future Deportations

Despite pledges not to normalize the Taliban’s rule, it seems as if Western leaders are bending over backwards to establish relations. This is leading many to fear that the powers that be will attempt to carry out deportations to the country despite clear evidence that any place controlled by the Taliban is not a safe place for women, religious and ethnic minorities, returnees, and any form of dissent.

UNHCR commissioner Filippo Grandi met with the Taliban Foreign Minister in Kabul.

The Taliban representative said that his government’s wish is that displaced Afghans return to the country and that the Taliban is interested in maintaining good relationships with other countries to allow this to happen. This is stoking fears many Afghans already had, that foreign governments would use good relationships with the Taliban as an excuse to deport people despite clear indications of the danger this would put them in.

Allegedly, Frontex will station a migration liaison officer for Afghanistan in Pakistan, which raises questions both about the expanding scope of Frontex (Pakistan is hardly close to Europe’s borders) and about the intentions of such an operation.

The European Commission’s existing plan for Afghan people already raises grave concerns for the safety of people on the move. Although it says that the agreement allowing deportations to Afghanistan is suspended, the Commission still encourages individual EU states to deport Afghan people to “safe third countries,” a criteria that is always open to interpretation and abuse.

Despite the Taliban’s words at the press conference, there have already been reports of violence against returnees.

Meanwhile, rhetoric in the EU is not getting any less violent even with clear evidence of the dangers that people are fleeing. At the European Police Conference, Austrian interior minister Nehammer received a rousing round of applause for calling on the EU to finance deportation centers and more fencing at the borders. Meanwhile, his boss, Chancellor Kurz, said that Austria will not take any Afghan refugees, citing that they already have too many people from Afghanistan (Austria is home to about 44,000 Afghans. For comparison, neighboring Pakistan is home to 1.4 million registered Afghan refugees alone, not counting people in legal limbo), and making up ridiculous statistics about “differences in values.” The rousing applause Nehammer received as well as Kurz’s open citation of Denmark as inspiration for his asylum policy shows how well the xenophobic elements of European policy reinforce each other and shape the continent’s collective policy.

In the face of such policies, we must be vigilant against any attempt to vacillate about the situation in Afghanistan and harm our friends who are people on the move. Afghanistan is not safe for returns and nobody should be forced to go there against their will, even as the political climate looks as if it might still allow deportations.