Europe fears Afghan refugee crisis after Taliban takeover
From above, the new border wall separating Turkey from Iran looks like a white snake winding through the barren hills. So far it only covers a third of the 540-kilometre border, leaving plenty of gaps for migrants to slip across in the dead of night.
Traffic on this key migration route from central Asia to Europe has remained relatively stable compared with previous years. But European countries, as well as Turkey, fear the sudden return of Taliban rule in Afghanistan could change that.
Haunted by a 2015 migration crisis fuelled by the Syrian war, European leaders desperately want to avoid another large-scale influx of refugees and migrants from Afghanistan. Except for those who helped Western forces in the country’s two-decade war, the message to Afghans considering fleeing to Europe is: If you must leave, go to neighbouring countries, but don’t come here.
“It must be our goal to keep the majority of the people in the region,” Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said, echoing what many European leaders say.
European Union officials told a meeting of interior ministers last week that the most important lesson from 2015 was not to leave Afghans to their own devices, and that without urgent humanitarian help they will start moving, according to a German diplomatic memo.
Austria, among the EU’s migration hard-liners, suggested setting up “deportation centres” in countries neighbouring Afghanistan so that EU countries can deport Afghans who have been denied asylum even if they cannot be sent back home.
The desperate scenes of people clinging to aircraft taking off from Kabul’s airport have only deepened Europe’s anxiety over a potential refugee crisis.
Even Germany, which since 2015 has admitted more Syrians than any other Western nation, is sending a different signal today.
Several German politicians, including Armin Laschet, the centre-right Union bloc’s candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor, warned last week that there must be “no repeat” of the migration crisis of 2015.
French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that “Europe alone cannot shoulder the consequences” of the situation in Afghanistan and “must anticipate and protect ourselves against significant irregular migratory flows.”
Britain, which left the EU in 2020, said it would welcome 5,000 Afghan refugees this year and resettle 20,000 Afghans in coming years.
Besides that, there have been few concrete offers from European countries, which besides evacuating their own citizens and Afghan collaborators, say they’re focusing on helping Afghans inside their country and in neighbouring countries such as Iran and Pakistan.
Greece, whose scenic islands facing the Turkish coast were the European point of entry for hundreds of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others six years ago, has made clear it doesn’t want to relive that crisis.
Migration Minister Notis Mitarachi said Greece won’t accept being the “gateway for irregular flows into the EU,” and that it considers Turkey to be a safe place for Afghans.
Such talk makes Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan see red. His country already hosts 3.6 million Syrians and hundreds of thousands of Afghans, and he has used the threat of sending them to Europe for political leverage.
“Turkey has no duty, responsibility or obligation to be Europe’s refugee warehouse,” Erdogan warned in a speech Thursday.
In Turkey, migrants from Syria and Afghanistan, once treated like Muslim brethren, are increasingly viewed with suspicion as the country grapples with rising inflation and unemployment.
Acknowledging the public’s “unease” about migration, Erdogan noted how his government has reinforced the eastern border with Iran with military, gendarmerie, police and the new wall, which has been under construction since 2017.
AP journalists near the Turkish border with Iran encountered dozens of Afghans last week, mostly young men, but also some women and children. Smuggled across the border at night in small groups, they said they left their country to escape the Taliban, violence and poverty.