Europe makes deal to return Afghan refugees
$3.75bn pledged as part of aid package
BRUSSELS/KABUL: The European Union and Afghanistan announced a deal on Wednesday that would send tens of thousands of Afghan refugees who had reached Europe back home to an increasingly hazardous warzone.
The agreement is the most specific effort yet by Europe to divert or reverse a wave of hundreds of thousands of refugees from wartorn countries including Afghanistan and Syria. But unlike a major agreement with Turkey this year to have that country host more Syrian refugees, the new deal as worded would forcibly send Afghans whose asylum applications were rejected directly back to an intensifying war that has taken a severe toll on civilian life — seemingly at odds with international conventions on refugees.
“The EU and the government of Afghanistan intend to cooperate closely in order to organise the dignified, safe and orderly return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan who do not fulfill the conditions to stay in the EU,” the agreement read.
The repatriation deal was announced alongside an international conference in which governments pledged US$3.75 billion (130 billion baht) in annual development aid to Afghanistan over the next four years. But few of the keynote speakers even hinted at the worsening security in the country in recent weeks, and none publicly discussed the repatriation deal, which was reportedly signed on Sunday.
As speakers at the conference praised improvements in Afghanistan, the very idea that even important Afghan cities could be secured was under direct assault.
Taliban fighters on Wednesday attacked Afghan security forces who were fighting for a third day to maintain control of the main government buildings in Kunduz, a vital provincial capital that briefly fell to insurgents last year. In the Afghan south, another of the few remaining governmentheld districts in Helmand province has been seized by the insurgents this week. At no time since before the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan have the Taliban controlled more territory in the country.
“While donors are preoccupied with deterring refugee flight, they should focus instead on security force and Taliban abuses and children’s lack of access to education, and address the reasons people are so desperate to leave,” said Brad Adams, the Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
In 2015 alone, some 213,000 Afghans arrived in Europe, with 176,900 of them claiming asylum that year, according to European Union data. More than half of such Afghan requests have been denied so far, meaning that tens of thousands of people could be returned to Afghanistan under the deal.
European officials denied that the repatriation deal was a condition for aid to Afghanistan. Federica Mogherini, the high representative of the European Union for foreign affairs and security, told reporters: “There is never, never a link between our development aid and whatever we do on migration.”
But Ekram Afzali, head of Integrity Watch Afghanistan and part of the Afghan delegation meeting with the Europeans in Brussels, said delegates were told by both Afghan and international officials that the repatriation deal was a quid pro quo for European aid. A leaked European Union memo dated March 3 discussed openly making pledges of aid at this week’s conference conditional on Afghanistan’s agreement with the repatriation deal.
At the conference, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday that US funding of civilian programmes would continue “at or near current levels, on average, all the way through 2020”. Such funding in the current year is about $1.1 billion, according to John Kirby, the State Department spokesman.
Europe pledged €1.3 billion (50 billion baht) annually, making it the single biggest donor, while British officials were expected to provide aid of more than $900 million a year.
None of those aid commitments were tied to the security situation, but they were linked to progress by the Afghan government in meeting goals outlined by an international donors’ conference that was held in Tokyo in 2012. This year’s conference was one of a series in which Afghanistan’s progress on benchmarks, called the Tokyo Framework, was evaluated.
Participants at the conference seemed determined to look on the bright side.
“The past four years have not been easy,” Mr Kerry said. “But Afghanistan’s upward trajectory continues.”
President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan cited success on many fronts: “Our new development partnership with the United States is condition-based, and we’ve met all the conditions.” But this year’s conference was distinguished less by what was publicly discussed than by what was not — among them some of those benchmarks for aid.
Transparency International, for instance, criticised the progress on fighting corruption charging that of 22 central commitments of anti-corruption measures made by the Afghan government, only two had been carried out.