[The repatriation deal was announced alongside an international conference in which governments pledged $3.75 billion 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.]
By Rod Nordland and Mujib
Mashal
 |
|
Afghan
migrants at a temporary camp on the Greek island of Lesbos last year.
Under
a new deal, tens of thousands of migrants, whose asylum applications
were
rejected in Europe, will be forced to leave. Credit Sergey
Ponomarev
for The New York Times
|
BRUSSELS
— The European Union and
Afghanistan announced a deal on Wednesday that would send tens of thousands of
Afghan migrants who had reached Europe back home to an increasingly hazardous
war zone.
The agreement is the most specific effort yet
by Europe to divert or reverse a wave of hundreds of thousands of migrants from
war-torn 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 E.U. and the government of Afghanistan
intend to cooperate closely in order to organize the dignified, safe and
orderly return of Afghan nationals to Afghanistan who do not fulfill the
conditions to stay in the E.U.,” the agreement read.
The repatriation deal was announced alongside
an international conference in which governments pledged $3.75 billion 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
government-held districts in Helmand Province has been seized by the insurgents
this week. At no time since before the 2001 American 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, 213,000 Afghans arrived in
Europe, with 176,900 claiming asylum that year, according to European Union
data. Fifty to 60 percent 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 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, Secretary of State John
Kerry said Wednesday that American funding of civilian programs 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 euros annually, or
about $1.46 billion, 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,
criticized the progress on fighting corruption — one of the Tokyo benchmarks —
charging that of 22 central commitments of anticorruption measures made by the
Afghan government, only two had been carried out.
Other benchmarks that were discussed were
progress on women’s issues, human rights and elections. Afghanistan was to have
held parliamentary elections by 2015, and to have finalized procedures for
future elections, neither of which has happened. That was the one area where
Mr. Kerry was critical, if mildly.
“I urge them to move forward as a matter of
urgency to appoint electoral authorities and unveil a realistic time frame for
parliamentary elections,” he said.
Mr. Kerry was among several leaders at the
conference who repeatedly praised Afghanistan for enrolling millions of girls
in schools, which was not done until 2002, after the Taliban were ousted from
power. Doubts have long been raised that Afghan figures on girls’ enrollment
are exaggerated, however, and recently, there have been reports that girls’
schools have been closing because of rising security concerns.
Progress on human rights and women’s rights
was severely criticized as well. “We’ve actually gone backwards since Tokyo in
the extent that human rights are included in the measurable benchmarks,” said
Heather Barr, a researcher for Human Rights Watch who has worked extensively in
Afghanistan.
Against that backdrop, the new repatriation
deal with Europe instantly rankled Afghan officials and international aid
workers, some of whom said that by any measure of stability, Afghanistan was a
hazardous place.
Though the language of the deal, called the
Joint Way Forward, did not provide information on the number of Afghans who
would be returned home, the details available suggested preparations for a
major undertaking.
“Both sides will explore the possibility to
build a dedicated terminal for return in Kabul airport and express their
willingness to carry out nonscheduled flights at the best convenient time,”
read a document describing the deal.
The government’s agreement to the deal was
bound to anger many in Afghanistan, particularly because the families of a
large number of the government’s senior officials live abroad.
“We call on European countries to suspend the
deportation of Afghan refugees in Europe,” said Maiwand Rahyab, of the Afghan
Institute for Civil Society, a delegate in Brussels. “We call on the
international community to uphold their principles and their European values,
and respect the rights of Afghan refugees until such time as Afghanistan is a
peaceful country.”
Timor Sharan, senior analyst for Afghanistan
at the International Crisis Group, said the European motivation for sending a
large number of Afghan asylum seekers back was not based on the realities in
Afghanistan, but rather on anti-immigration sentiment in Europe.
“This is a political response to a
humanitarian situation,” Mr. Sharan said
Dan Tyler, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s
protection officer for Asia and Europe, said the deal was part of an “extremely
concerning” trend in Europe on what has been called migration-sensitive aid.
“Return conditions are on every indicator
deteriorating: People are faring extremely badly, there are huge spikes in
malnutrition, displacement internally, and the E.U. is striking deals to return
asylum seekers,” Mr. Tyler said.
In addition to the fact that even Afghan
districts and major highways once declared safe are now threatened or overrun
by the Taliban, the returnees from Europe will go back to a dire economic
crisis, with an unemployment rate of about 35 percent and about 400,000 young
people entering the job market every year.
“Their logic is that provincial capitals are
safe. But the reality — look at Kunduz, Helmand, Uruzgan, and even Kabul with
the recent suicide bombings — clearly indicates they are not safe,” Mr. Sharan
said. “With nearly 10,000 troops in Kunduz, the government is not able to
secure a provincial capital.”
In Kunduz on Wednesday, residents fled in
increasingly large numbers despite Taliban roadblocks on the main roads out.
More than 1,000 families arrived in neighboring Takhar Province, its governor
said.
Shops in Kunduz remained closed, and the city
was without electricity and running water for a third day.
Marzia Salam Yaftali, the head doctor at
Kunduz’s central hospital, said the Taliban’s roadblocks left many unable to
bring in their wounded. Even the hospital where she works did not remain safe:
Several mortar shells hit the compound in the afternoon, forcing the workers to
move patients to the basement.
“The opposition group is able to capture the
city in a single day, but government with all its power is not able to
recapture the city in three days,” said Sayid Assadullah Sadat, a member of the
Kunduz provincial council. “The fighting is house to house.”
Follow Rod Nordland @rodnordland and Mujib
Mashal @MujMash on Twitter.
