BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th August, 2021) A second wave of mass migration to Europe � this time from Afghanistan � has rekindled fears of increased security risks and economic burden on the virus-hit European Union, with EU leaders now speaking in favor of keeping refugees in the region and only a limited resettlement program.
The EU appeared to be taken aback by the effect that its open-arms policy toward refugees from Syria had on migration flows in 2015-2016, when hundreds of thousands arrived on the EU's doorstep to seek asylum, a post-WWII record.
Many Afghans, who were the second largest group after Syrians at the time, faced deportations from Europe up until the Taliban (banned in Russia) onslaught led some of the biggest EU host countries to halt their repatriations on humanitarian grounds.
In recent days, top EU diplomat Josep Borrell and Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni again floated the idea of sharing out migrants between 27 member states, but fewer than ever countries now seem to be on board with their proposal.
Despite a frenzied campaign to airlift EU nationals and their Afghan support staff from Kabul, which fell to the Taliban on August 15, only a handful of Afghan nationals stand a chance of being resettled to Europe, compared with those staying back in Afghanistan's neighborhood.
US Army Maj. Gen. William Taylor, whose country is acting as a gatekeeper to Kabul's airport, said on Wednesday that a total 88,000 people had been evacuated from Afghanistan by the US and its allies since July. Over 4,400 of them were Americans. The share of Afghans among evacuees is not known.
By contrast, the UN refugee agency estimates that Pakistan and Iran were hosting a combined 2.2 million registered Afghan refugees as of early 2021. Over half a million Afghans were forced to flee their homes since the start of the year. Many of those escaping the country will ultimately do so on foot, rather than being whisked away by NATO and EU planes.
WHERE WILL REFUGEES GO IN EUROPE
European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen put a damper on calls to increase Europe's intake of Afghan refugees this week, including by her home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson. She stressed that EU member states would not be pressed to accept Afghans.
So far, Germany, France, Spain and Italy have all stepped forward to take in small numbers of Afghans, mostly interpreters and other support staff who face the Taliban's revenge because of their service to the allied forces.
On a country-by-country basis, the UK has the largest declared number of Afghan citizens it is willing to accept. A total of 20,000 Afghan refugees will arrive over five years, 5,000 of them by the end of 2021. This is on top of those who aided UK operations in Afghanistan.
Germany, which hosts the largest number of Afghans, issued 2,400 visas to Afghan nationals before its troops withdrew in July. Its armed forces said they had airlifted almost 3,700 Afghan nationals from Kabul by Wednesday evening.
In France, President Emmanuel Macron said his country would bring in Afghan allies, activists and others under threat. French jets have so far evacuated at least 1,700 Afghan citizens from Kabul, although it is unclear how many will end up in France.
Spain, Bulgaria and Hungary have promised safe haven to Afghans who helped their forces on the ground. Spain said it could temporarily host up to 4,000 Afghans seeking US visas as well as Afghan allies of Denmark and Baltic countries. Lithuania has begun airlifting 115 Afghan interpreters who worked for it between 2005 and 2013.
Albania, North Macedonia and Kosovo, all aspiring EU member states, said they were ready to temporarily shelter Afghan support staff of the US while it processes their visa applications.
Relocations to Belgium and the Netherlands have not been without trouble. The Dutch police had to break up a protest on Wednesday outside a military base in Harskamp, which is housing Afghan refugees, while the mayor of the Belgian town of Spa complained on Tuesday that the government had sent asylum seekers to the place without a warning, forcing her administration to scramble for supplies.
Austria, Slovenia and Greece have meanwhile refused to open doors to Afghan asylum seekers, having borne the brunt of illegal migrant flows in recent years.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said his government would not take in any more people fleeing Afghanistan, after accepting over 40,000 Afghans in the past few years. He argued that Austria's contribution was already "disproportionately large."
Greece echoed this sentiment. Deputy Foreign Minister Miltiadis Varvitsiotis said his country was home to tens of thousands of Afghans and did not have an obligation to host more refugees from a country that does not share a border with Greece. Matching actions to his words, Greece has begun building a fence on the border with Turkey, the anticipated transit route.
Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa tweeted on Sunday that neither the EU nor his country had a duty to help "everyone on the planet who is fleeing, instead of fighting for their homeland," while Switzerland said it would only evacuate its allies and consider asylum requests on a case-by-case basis.
Francois Asselineau, a French veteran politician and leader of the euroskeptic UPR party who ran in the 2017 presidential election, told Sputnik on Wednesday that the EU and NATO only had a duty to a few thousand Afghans who helped them on the ground.
"What the NATO countries and the EU must do is of course to welcome the Afghans who served us and our armies in Afghanistan, to exfiltrate the Afghans that worked for us, with dignity. But it only means a few thousands people, including their families," he said.
Asselineau warned of Islamist extremists slipping once again into Europe under the guise of asylum seekers. There have already been reports of security suspects escaping to the UK, France and Germany from Kabul, while the Belgian interior ministry said it feared the arrival of Afghan fundamentalists. The mayor of the French resort of Nice, where a Tunisian migrant killed dozens in a 2016 truck ramming, expressed similar concerns.
Asselineau said that Sunni nations, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Oman, should take in their fair share of Afghan refugees, since former Soviet republics in Central Asia "will probably refuse."
"They have practically not welcomed any migrants of the earlier crises, though refugees were Sunni Muslims like them. Why does it have to be Europe that takes them all?" he said.
Maximilian Krah, a member of the European Parliament from the German right-wing AfD party, said in an interview to Sputnik that the EU had again taken "the worst path forward" by organizing air shuttles to the mainland, instead of having the UN refugee agency shelter Afghan refugees in Pakistan.
"How many Afghans will come depends on the resistance that will be put forward by the sovereigntist parties who refused Europe to be submerged by migrants... But fundamentally the faction in power [in Germany] wants a new multi-ethnic Europe to compensate for the declining birth rate," he suggested.
