EU split over returning migrants to Afghanistan as another city falls

SIX EU member states have told the European Commission to ignore Kabul’s request not to return failed asylum seekers to Afghanistan, despite recent major advances by the Taliban.

“Stopping returns sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU,” the letter from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece and Denmark said.

The Afghan government told the EU in July that it was suspending its forcedreturn operations for three months.

“We urge you to intensify talks with Afghan government on how returns to Afghanistan can and will continue,” the letter to the European Commission, dated Aug 5, said.

The Taliban has made sweeping gains as Us-led foreign forces pull out of Afghanistan after two decades of war.

The letter sparked anger as the Islamists captured Farah city in western Afghanistan yesterday, the seventh provincial capital to fall since Friday.

Farah fell after a “brief” fight with security forces and militants, officials said, as the city of Mazar-i-sharif, the largest in the country’s north, also came under attack. Reports also suggested Pul-e-khumri, another provincial capital, had fallen after intense fighting that forced security forces to abandon their compounds. That victory would give the insurgents control of a strategic road junction linking the capital, Kabul, to the north and west of the country.

The Pentagon said there was “not much” it could do to help. A spokesman said: “It’s their country to defend now.”

Campaigners said the letter showed a disregard for the lives of vulnerable people. “I am sometimes ashamed to be Dutch,” said Anne-marie Snels, the former leader of a Dutch military union, who has campaigned for Europe to take in Afghan interpreters and others who helped foreign armies. Finland has said it will suspend deportations to Afghanistan in a sign of EU divisions over the issue, which is expected to be discussed at a meeting of EU domestic affairs ministers next Wednesday.

Asked if war-torn Afghanistan was considered a safe country to which asylum seekers could be returned, a commission spokesman said it was up to individual member states to make that judgment.

The Netherlands’ Safety and Justice Ministry said that if individuals had the right to asylum they could get it, but there could be no blanket conditions for one country.

Sammy Mahdi, Belgium’s state secrethe

‘Stopping returns is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU’

‘That regions of a country are not safe does not mean that each national of that country is entitled to protection’

tary for asylum and migration, defended the letter.

“That regions of a country are not safe does not mean that each national of that country automatically is entitled to protection,” he said.

Since 2015, about 570,000 Afghans have requested asylum in the EU. Afghanistan is the second largest country of origin for asylum seekers in the EU after Syria.

‹ Russia yesterday completed joint drills in Tajikistan with Uzbek and Tajik forces near the Afghan border. Moscow also said it was bulking up its military base in Tajikistan with assault rifles and other weapons.