For Hewad Sobhani, three years in Brussels gave him a taste of Western society: an apartment, a social life, a job in a cafe. It also gave him hope that he had escaped his conflicted homeland forever, just as waves of other Afghans had done before him.
Today he is back where he started, one of thousands of Afghans deported from Western Europe in the past 30 months after being turned down for asylum. Jobless and living in a rented room in this eastern border city, he is in limbo — a man changed forever by his worldly exposure but now adrift in an impoverished, tribal society that no longer feels like home.
“I worked hard in Belgium,” said Sobhani, now 25. “I paid taxes. I learned French. I had friends and privacy.” But shortly after his asylum claim was denied, he was put on a plane to Kabul. “When I came out of the airport, I saw all the dust and dirt,” he said, “and I saw my sad future unfolding in front of me.”
During three decades of war and upheaval that ended with the fall of Taliban rule in 2001, millions of Afghans were accepted — if not always eagerly welcomed — by other countries. Most simply crossed the border to Pakistan or Iran as refugees. Hundreds of thousands reached the West and built new lives in immigrant enclaves.
But in the past two years, Western Europe has tightened borders, rejected more asylum petitions and speeded up deportations. Even as Afghan and NATO forces continue battling aggressive insurgencies in Afghanistan, European governments say, the country is not dangerous enough for most Afghans to need foreign sanctuary.
Yet that does not mean Afghanistan is prepared to receive even the brightest and most ambitious of the young migrants as they step back in time into one of the world’s poorest countries. Like Sobhani, the returnees came of age in a post-Taliban era that dangled visions of change and freedom but offered few concrete prospects for the future. That frustration propelled them abroad as much as war.
Now they are back, facing bleak job prospects, with unemployment at nearly 40 percent, war refugees being pushed back from Pakistan and Iran, and 400,000 people entering the workforce each year. Families may see them as unexpected burdens, and many owe relatives thousands of dollars they borrowed to make their way west.
And while few of them may be on Taliban target lists, their communities are far from secure. Insurgents control or influence nearly 40 percent of Afghan territory and stage frequent attacks in cities. Some of their families have fled rural fighting, weakening their social support networks. The returnees may not face imminent harm, but they see no way to build a future.
Although international law bars governments from sending migrants back to places where their lives will be in jeopardy, it does not keep them from returning people to lives with little hope.
The question the migrants raise, and that European governments are struggling to answer, is how to decide which people fleeing poor, conflicted nations deserve a chance at a safe and meaningful life. In other words: how to draw a line between danger and despair.
Hardening line
It was not invading forces, insurgent attacks or religious repression that drove tens of thousands of Afghans to flee their homeland and head west in the past several years. They left during a period of democratic rule, supported by the United States and NATO, while their own government was urging longtime refugees to return home.
Most were single young men, like Sobhani and three of his friends. Some came from rural areas where the Taliban were a constant threat; more came from cities where they were not. But when Western troops pulled out in 2014, the foreign-fueled war economy collapsed.
As news spread that refugees from Syria were reaching Europe and being allowed to stay, Afghans decided to take the same risk, joining the largest global exodus from troubled lands since World War II. Often urged on by their families, they traveled thousands of miles across Turkey and Eastern Europe, most with no legal travel documents and no plans except to secure asylum in the sympathetic West.
In 2015, more than 200,000 Afghans reached Western Europe; 80 percent applied for asylum and received temporary shelter in affluent welfare states, especially Germany. People were helpful; lodging and language classes were free. As the months passed, the migrants allowed themselves to believe that eventually they would be granted full legal status.
But attitudes in Europe changed as the tide of migrants swelled, turning compassion to anxiety and fueling anti-immigrant movements. The horrors in Syria had shocked the world, but the plight of Afghans was not as clear-cut. One of Sobhani’s fellow returnees claimed he had been threatened by the Taliban because he worked with the US military, but he had no way to prove it.
In Germany, officials adopted a noticeably harder line. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière, announcing in late 2015 that most Afghan asylum seekers would be rejected, said many were middle-class Kabul residents who should “remain and help build [their] country up.”
Scores of Afghan asylum applicants in Europe began receiving rejection notices. They had been judged not to be refugees fleeing dire harm, but illegal migrants seeking a more comfortable and secure life. Despite pleas from Afghan officials, by early 2017, more than 10,000 Afghans had been transported home — some voluntarily, others under protest and under guard.
Human rights groups denounced the tough new policies and demanded that Europe stop repatriating all Afghan asylum seekers. Last May, after a truck bomb in Kabul killed 150 people, Germany agreed to deport only those with criminal records or other problems.
Today, conditions are arguably worse. Taliban and ISIS have staged dozens of attacks in Kabul and other cities, civilian casualties remain near record levels, and the Taliban control more territory than ever before. But under an agreement last fall with European donor nations, Afghanistan must accept every failed asylum applicant.
“We have security problems. We have economic problems. We have 1.6 million refugees back from Pakistan and Iran,” said Hafiz Ahmad Miakhel, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriations, which strongly objected to the pact. “We have signed the deal and we are cooperating, but we have requested again and again that Europe review its Afghan policies.”
The Washington Post
