Afghan Refugees Face Two-Tier System in Europe

Some of the Afghan girls across the desk within the neoclassical constructing in central Athens, Greece, had been making notes in leather-bound notebooks as they debated the way forward for girls and ladies of their homeland. They had been legislators, journalists and judges — however they had been additionally refugees, a characterization that a lot of them winced at with disgrace and disbelief.
“For a woman who’s been working for 20 years, to have to come here and be called a refugee, it’s not an easy thing,” mentioned Khatera Saeedi, a journalist, as others within the group nodded emphatically.
The presence of Saeedi and the opposite refugees in Athens introduced into focus an advanced actuality for the tens of 1000’s airlifted after the Taliban takeover: The Afghans Europe desires are those who had by no means wished to be there.

“I had a very nice life back in Afghanistan,” mentioned Wahida, 31, an international-organization employee from Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, who was evacuated to the Netherlands and who wished to be recognized by solely her first title. “I had a very prestigious and challenging job, and I never thought of seeking asylum in another country.”
As Kabul fell to the Taliban in August, and Afghanistan’s elites had been airlifted to Western locations, European Union nations dedicated to absorb as much as 40,000, a lot of whom have already reached Europe.
Farsi interpreter Karime Ganji, left, and others with Melissa Network, a corporation that helps migrants and refugees, with some former Afghan legislators who fled the nation’s new Taliban authorities throughout a workshop on empowerment and trauma, in Athens, Greece. (New York Times)
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 manner overseas by respectable channels.
They stand in distinction to tens of 1000’s of others from their nation who made their manner in recent times to Europe’s doorstep — typically smuggled, typically over arduous land journeys of 1000’s of miles after which a last dangerous sea crossing — solely to be turned away.
Since the Taliban takeover, Afghans have made essentially the most asylum requests within the EU, based on the European Asylum Support Office. But 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 had been bumped to the again of the road, their purposes rejected in favour of refugees from extra pressing and proximate conflicts, equivalent to that in Syria.
Afghans and Iraqis, each fleeing prolonged Western-led wars, confronted related difficulties as asylum-seekers in Europe, mentioned Camille Le Coz, an professional with the Migration Policy Institute, a Brussels-based analysis institute, who has labored in Afghanistan.
But the arrival of 1000’s of evacuees from Kabul dropped at the floor a long-underlying present in EU migration coverage.
“It highlights the dichotomy the EU has been trying to create between people who arrive in Europe to request asylum through safe and legal pathways and those who arrive through irregular means — and the latter are not welcomed,” she mentioned.
But these pathways are all however shut to the overwhelming majority of refugees, a proven fact that forces 1000’s of individuals to reach in Europe by harmful and costly smuggling routes.
Normally, solely about half of the Afghans who utilized for asylum within the EU had been profitable. That acceptance fee jumped to 91% within the final months of 2021, as EU evacuees had been fast-tracked by usually sluggish asylum bureaucracies.

The Dutch authorities, which maintained a army 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 residence to about 170 outstanding Afghan girls and their households, together with one-third of the nation’s feminine legislators, who had been flown there by a coalition of charitable foundations and shall be resettled in Germany and different rich nations.
A bunch of Afghan girls, most of whom had been attorneys, judges or legislators of their residence nation and fled the brand new Taliban authorities, attend a dialogue at Melissa Network, a corporation that helps migrants and refugees, in Athens, Greece. (New York Times)
They have been gathering at Melissa Network, a nongovernmental group in central Athens that helps feminine migrants and refugees. Melissa has been providing them a every day sanctuary, an area to satisfy and speak, and organizing authorized assist and psychological well being workshops.
“There is a significant difference between the way these women became refugees and the experience of other refugees,” mentioned Thalia Portokaloglou, a psychological well being professional with Melissa. “They carry the pain and the fear that we see in all women we work with here, but they also come with a purpose, which helps them find meaning in life.”
The legislators among the many evacuees in Athens had been working feverishly to arrange an in-exile group to advocate Afghan girls’s rights and, by that, to carry on to their identities and senses of goal.

“I think about the people who came and gave me their vote,” mentioned 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.
Most Afghans journey throughout Asia to Turkey and arrive in Greece by placing themselves within the palms of smugglers who place them on precarious dinghies to cross the Aegean Sea. If 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. But her asylum request continues to be pending.
Ganji mentioned she sympathized with the group of outstanding girls she was serving to however added that different Afghans and different asylum-seekers additionally deserved extra assist.
“They came from bloodshed. They are survivors,” she mentioned by tears. “I don’t see them as politicians, just as a small group of innocent people from Afghanistan who need help.”