A few of the Afghan ladies across the desk within the neoclassical constructing in central Athens have been making notes in leatherbound notebooks as they debated the way forward for ladies and ladies of their homeland. They have been legislators, journalists and judges — however they have been additionally refugees, a characterization that lots of them winced at with disgrace and disbelief.
“For a lady who’s been working for 20 years, to have to return right here and be known as a refugee, it’s not a straightforward factor,” stated Khatera Saeedi, a journalist, as others within the group nodded emphatically.
The presence of Ms. Saeedi and the opposite refugees in Athens introduced into focus a sophisticated actuality for the tens of hundreds airlifted after the Taliban takeover: The Afghans Europe desires are those who had by no means needed to be there.
“I had a really good life again in Afghanistan,” stated Wahida, 31, an international-organization employee from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, who was evacuated to the Netherlands and who needed to be recognized by solely her first title. “I had a really prestigious and difficult job, and I by no means considered in search of asylum in a foreign country.”
As Kabul fell to the Taliban in August, and Afghanistan’s elites have been airlifted to Western locations, European Union nations dedicated to soak up as much as 40,000, lots of whom have already reached Europe.
Many are these educated and expert sufficient to be related to the huge worldwide presence that outlined Afghan life for the previous 20 years — in the end additionally giving them the connections to make their approach overseas by means of reliable channels.
They stand in distinction to tens of hundreds of others from their nation who made their approach in recent times to Europe’s doorstep — generally smuggled, typically over arduous land journeys of hundreds of miles after which a last dangerous sea crossing — solely to be turned away.
Because the Taliban takeover, Afghans have made probably the most asylum requests within the European Union, in line with the European Asylum Help Workplace. However even earlier than final yr, Afghans constantly made up one of many largest teams in search of asylum from overseas.
For a few years, they have been bumped to the again of the road, their functions rejected in favor of refugees from extra pressing and proximate conflicts, like that in Syria.
Reporting From Afghanistan
Afghans and Iraqis, each fleeing prolonged Western-led wars, confronted comparable difficulties as asylum seekers in Europe, stated Camille Le Coz, an professional with the Migration Coverage Institute, a Brussels-based analysis institute, who has labored in Afghanistan.
However the arrival of hundreds of evacuees from Kabul delivered to the floor a long-underlying present in E.U. migration coverage.
“It highlights the dichotomy the E.U. has been attempting to create between individuals who arrive in Europe to request asylum by means of secure and authorized pathways and those that arrive by means of irregular means — and the latter are usually not welcomed,” she stated.
However these pathways are all however shut to the overwhelming majority of refugees, a proven fact that forces hundreds of individuals to reach in Europe by means of harmful and costly smuggling routes.
Usually, solely about half of the Afghans who utilized for asylum within the European Union have been profitable. That acceptance price jumped to 91 p.c within the final months of 2021, as E.U. evacuees have been fast-tracked by means of usually sluggish asylum bureaucracies.
The Dutch authorities, which maintained a navy presence in Afghanistan, swiftly granted asylum to the two,000 Afghans it evacuated, however has virtually placed on maintain all claims from Afghans who arrived irregularly.
Athens is now the short-term dwelling to about 170 distinguished Afghan ladies and their households, together with one-third of the nation’s feminine legislators, who have been flown there by a coalition of charitable foundations and will probably be resettled in Germany and different rich nations.
They’ve been gathering at Melissa Community, a nongovernmental group in central Athens that helps feminine migrants and refugees. Melissa has been providing them a each day sanctuary, an area to satisfy and discuss, and organizing authorized help and psychological well being workshops.
“There’s a important distinction between the way in which these ladies turned refugees and the expertise of different refugees,” stated Thalia Portokaloglou, a psychological well being professional with Melissa.
“They carry the ache and the concern that we see in all ladies we work with right here,” she added, “however additionally they include function, which helps them discover that means in life.”
The legislators among the many evacuees in Athens have been working feverishly to arrange an in-exile group to advocate Afghan ladies’s rights, and thru that, to carry onto their identities and senses of function.
“I take into consideration the individuals who got here and gave me their vote,” stated Shagufa Noorzai, who was Afghanistan’s youngest legislator when she was elected to Parliament from Helmand Province in 2019, including that she felt responsible for fleeing as her constituents stayed behind to face the Taliban and hunger.
“A politician must be with their individuals in warfare,” stated Nazifa Yusufi Bek, one other legislator, from Takhar Province. “Now we’re in Europe, we’re secure, however our concern is for our individuals in Afghanistan.”
Whereas most deportations of Afghans from the European Union have stopped in current months, the bloc has tried to discourage unusual Afghans from coming, and is paying neighboring nations tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} to host fleeing refugees in an effort to discourage them from transferring towards Europe.
“The borders stay open to these fleeing violence and persecution,” Margaritis Schinas, a prime European Fee official, stated in an interview with Italy’s La Stampa newspaper on Aug. 15, the day that Kabul fell.
However “we have to be clear,” he added, “we’ll solely settle for those that actually need safety — those that cross borders illegally will probably be despatched again.”
And never solely do Afghans and different asylum seekers in Europe face lengthy waits and poor odds of gaining safety, they’re additionally more and more going through indiscriminate violence and extrajudicial expulsions at Europe’s exterior borders, stopping them from lodging asylum requests within the first place.
In early September, solely two weeks after Kabul fell and as sympathy towards Afghans was peaking, Greek border guards allegedly violently expelled to Turkey a big group of asylum seekers, together with Afghans. Amongst them was an Italian authorized resident of Afghan origin who was in Greece working for Frontex, the European Union border company, and had been mistaken for an asylum seeker by the very border guards he was there to assist.
Most Afghans journey throughout Asia to Turkey and arrive in Greece by placing themselves within the arms of smugglers who place them on precarious dinghies to cross the Aegean Sea. In the event that they handle to lodge asylum requests, they’ve to attend for years in authorized and monetary limbo till their claims are assessed.
That has been the expertise of one other Afghan girl at Melissa who was there to assist the newly arrived group of evacuees: the group’s Farsi interpreter, Karime Ganji.
She arrived in Greece in 2016 after a dramatic overland journey in the course of winter, crossing mountains and rivers together with her two kids, then 3 and 9. Over the previous 5 years in Athens, she has discovered English and Greek, and enrolled at a college in Athens. However her asylum request remains to be pending.
Ms. Ganji stated she sympathized with the group of distinguished ladies she was serving to, however added that different Afghans and different asylum seekers additionally deserved extra help.
“They got here from bloodshed, they’re survivors,” she stated by means of tears. “I don’t see them as politicians, simply as a small group of harmless individuals from Afghanistan who need assistance.”
Monika Pronczuk and Wali Arian contributed reporting.
