Afghan asylum bids hit 10-year high

APNewsBreak: Afghan asylum bids hit 10-year high By KAY JOHNSON  Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — More Afghans fled the country and sought asylum abroad in 2011 than in any other year since the start of the decade-long war, suggesting that many are looking for their own exit strategy as international troops prepare to withdraw. From January to November, more than 30,000 Afghans applied for political asylum worldwide, a 25 percent increase over the same period the previous year and more than triple the level of just four years ago, according to U.N. statistics obtained by The Associated Press ahead of their scheduled publication later this year. Many Afghans are turning to a thriving and increasingly sophisticated human smuggling industry to get themselves -- or in most cases, their sons -- out of the country. They pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars to cross into Iran or Pakistan to more $25,000 for fake papers and flights to places like London or Stockholm. Thousands of refugees also return each year, but their numbers have been dwindling as the asylum applications rise. Both trends highlight worries among Afghans about what may happen after 2014, when American and other NATO troops turn security over to the Afghan army and police. The true numbers of people leaving is likely even higher -- since those who are successfully smuggled abroad often melt into an underground economy. Still, the jump in a rough indicator like asylum seekers suggests the total numbers are also on the rise. Smuggling people out of Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan is a $1 billion-per-year criminal enterprise, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates. Those who pay to leave often face a risky journey and detention abroad because many developed countries now see many Afghans who flee as illegal economic migrants, not political refugees. Still, the business finds an eager clientele in Afghans such as Ahmad, an unemployed 20-year-old in Kabul. He has agreed to pay a smuggler $400 to take him over the Iranian border, where he hopes to find work and save up to move on to Europe in a few years. He has no money, but his smuggler is giving him credit -- he’ll have a month to pay up once he’s in Iran. « I don’t think anything will improve in three or five years, so it’s better to leave now, » said Ahmad, who expects to leave for Iran within a few weeks. He asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of being arrested. Ahmad’s family fled to Iran during the Taliban’s late 1990s rule and returned full of hope after the regime fell. But now, he sees no future in his homeland. « If foreign troops leave, the situation will only get worse, not better, » he said. That’s a view shared by many. Tajma Kurt, who manages an International Organization for Migration program helping Afghans who have returned home, says she’s noticed a marked change in ordinary Afghans’ outlook since roughly 2007, when the Taliban insurgency began to gain strength and violent attacks increased. « Before, they were looking for a job, discussing buying a house or whatever, » Kurt said. « Now, they are all thinking of leaving because the situation has deteriorated dramatically and they don’t see that it’s going to get much better. » Devastated by decades of war, Afghanistan is already the world’s biggest source of refugees, with more than 3 million of its total population of 30 million still outside the country, most in Iran and Pakistan, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner of Refugees and the Afghan government. After the 2001 U.S.-led military intervention that toppled the Taliban, some 5.7 million Afghan refugees returned. The vast majority of those came back in the first five years. The numbers have since dwindled, with about 60,000 refugees returning last year, about half the number as the previous year. As the pace of returns slowed, the number of Afghans seeking asylum abroad rebounded. In 2011, 30,407 sought asylum through November, the latest available figures. Driving both trends is not only economic ambition but deep uncertainties about the country’s future, says Abdul Samad Hami, deputy minister of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation. « Who knows what happens when foreign troops leave Afghanistan? Is it going to get better or worse? Who knows what happens with the foreign aid to Afghanistan -- going down or increasing? » he said. Some Afghans fear that once most foreign troops leave, the Taliban will take over more territory and civil war could erupt along ethnic lines, as it did in the 1990s. Others worry the Afghan economy will collapse if foreign aid dries up. The real number of Afghans leaving is unknown, but undoubtedly higher than the asylum figures. The country’s foreign ministry recently said 50,000 Afghans illegally entered Greece in the past two years alone, many of them now stranded without passports or money to move farther into Europe. Most of those arranged their journey with smugglers. For their money, many endure a perilous journey. Esmat Adine nearly drowned after the overcrowded boat he was on sank off Indonesia late last year, killing at least 200 fellow asylum-seekers headed for Australia. He says he left his wife and infant son at home in Afghanistan and paid $5,000 to travel to Australia after the Taliban threatened to kill him for working with American aid workers. He flew from Kabul to Dubai, then boarded a plane to Jakarta, Indonesia. From there, he was taken to eastern Java and was packed onto the doomed boat. When the vessel capsized, Adine managed to survive by swimming to a nearby island. « I swam and swam until I reached the shore, » Adine, 24, told The Associated Press in an Indonesian detention center, where he is awaiting a ruling on his legal status. « I thought of how my wife and children are counting on me, of how I must earn a good life in Australia, free from intimidation. » He says he still hopes to be able to enter Australia and send for his family. Australia has vowed to crack down on asylum-seekers but has been forced to relax a policy of mandatory detention because its detention camps are dangerously overcrowded. Hami, the Afghan refugee official, says the country has come a long way and if the transition goes smoothly, fewer people will want to leave. But he conceded that depends on whether the government can provide security and jobs. « If the situation gets worse, people will go out. If the situation gets better, people will return. » — Associated Press reporters Massieh Neshat in Kabul and Ali Kotarumalos in Indonesia contributed to this report. © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Last news

By Shantan Kumarasamy
29 December 2011

Last October marked the tenth anniversary of the US-led military assault and occupation of Afghanistan. The ongoing neo-colonial war has had a devastating impact on the Afghan people. According to some estimates, up to 100,000 refugees left Afghanistan in the first five months of this year alone, most of them youth.

Only a few thousand Afghan refugees complete the long and dangerous trip to Europe. Those with English-language skills attempt to make the UK their final destination but closure of the Calais detention centre in 2009 has meant that most are unable to cross the English Channel and remain stranded in France.

The following multimedia presentation tells the story of three homeless Afghan refugees in Paris. These young men, like their older companions, face tremendous suffering. Homeless and lacking food or money, they spend their days in public parks or walking the city searching for a warm place to sleep. On weekdays some secure a rudimentary meal from refugee or welfare organisations. During the weekends and public holidays they are left to starve. Police harassment is constant.

According to a 2010 UNHCR report, Afghanistan had the largest number of refugees—a total of three million spread across 75 different countries. The same report concluded, however, that there were no Afghan refugees in France. In other words, the refugees interviewed in Paris for this slideshow do not even exist as a statistic.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/afgh-d29.shtml

 

Cessons de criminaliser la solidarité !

Carte Blanche publiée dans le Soir du 25 mars -- Il y a près de dix ans, 18 membres des Collectifs contre les expulsions des sans-papiers étaient poursuivis devant le tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles pour avoir, par divers moyens non violents, manifesté leur solidarité avec les sans-papiers et les demandeurs d’asile.

 

Tout en reconnaissant la noblesse des mobiles qui avaient guidé les inculpés, le tribunal n’en avait pas moins condamné sept d’entre eux à des peines de prison de huit jours à deux mois, assorties d’un sursis d’un an.

Aujourd’hui, des membres du Comité d’action et de soutien aux sans-papiers (CAS) sont menacés des foudres de la justice pour deux actions distinctes. Trois d’entre eux attendent en effet le verdict du tribunal, prévu le 6 mai prochain, pour avoir manifesté leur solidarité avec des sans-papiers afghans qui occupaient le hall du CGRA (Commissariat général aux réfugiés et aux apatrides) et avoir refusé de se disperser. D’autres doivent passer en Chambre du conseil à la fin mars pour avoir perturbé le lancement de la campagne des libéraux européens le 16 avril 2009. Ils souhaitaient à nouveau y interpeller la ministre belge de la Politique de migration du moment, Annemie Turtelboom.

Le CAS est un mouvement spontané né à l’ULB lors de l’occupation des bâtiments par des sans-papiers chassés des locaux de Sibelga-Electrabel. Rappelons qu’au moment de leur action à la réunion des libéraux européens, cela faisait plus d’un an que l’on attendait l’application des critères de régularisation négociés dans le cadre de l’accord gouvernemental.

Ce si long blocage politique avait mis tous les acteurs concernés dans un état d’indignation sans pareil : non seulement les sans-papiers, mais aussi les syndicats, les communautés philosophiques, les associations solidaires et les universités qui ont accueilli durant des mois des centaines de sans-papiers dans l’indifférence politique générale. Les ordres des avocats des trois communautés du pays s’étaient joints à eux pour réclamer la circulaire promise.

Les membres du CAS n’étaient donc pas seuls à se mobiliser mais se retrouvent, aujourd’hui, seuls face à la justice. Cette procédure judiciaire engagée contre l’élément le moins structuré du mouvement ressemble à ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler bien une criminalisation de mouvements sociaux. Elle vise à museler le CAS en incriminant leur action mais au-delà, elle vise à discréditer l’ensemble du mouvement de solidarité avec les sans-papiers, banalisant du même coup l’arbitraire de l’Office des étrangers et la répression policière.

Cette tendance inquiétante s’inscrit hélas dans l’air du temps. Plusieurs tentatives d’intimidation ont été proférées par nos différents ministres en charge des questions migratoires. En 2007, notre ministre de l’Intérieur affirmait haut et fort – il n’était hélas pas le premier, ni le dernier – que toute aide apportée aux illégaux serait punissable par la loi.

Certaines autorités communales ont interdit des rassemblements de plus de trois personnes autour des lieux où s’étaient établis des sans-papiers. En avril 2008, deux avocats tentant d’entrer en contact avec leurs clients sans-papiers incarcérés ont eu à subir insultes et violences de la part des forces de l’ordre. En juillet, la ministre en charge de l’asile et des migrations déclarait que l’on ne pouvait pas interdire aux sans-papiers de faire la grève de la faim par la loi, mais qu’elle étudierait les moyens de « responsabiliser » ceux qui les aidaient et les conseillaient. Et en mai 2009, la ministre de la Politique des migrations et le ministre de l’Intérieur signaient une circulaire relative à l’identification d’étrangers en séjour irrégulier, dont certains passages invitent à la délation.

Nous considérons que manifester sa solidarité ne constitue pas un crime mais un devoir. Tenter par tous les moyens, en ce compris l’intimidation et la criminalisation, d’étouffer les mouvements sociaux qui s’émeuvent de situations discriminatoires constitue une grave menace à la liberté d’expression et de manifestation.

C’est pour ces raisons que nous ne manquerons pas d’exercer notre vigilance quant au sort réservé aux différents inculpés du CAS et d’interpeller nos responsables politiques sur ces questions.

Signataires : Henri Wajnblum, coprésident de l’UPJB ; Anne Grauwels, co-présidente de l’UPJB ; Benoît Van der Meerschen, Président de la Ligue des droits de l’Homme ; Emmanuelle Delplace, co-directrice de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme ; Fouad Lahssaini, député fédéral, groupe Ecolo-Groen ; Joëlle Baumerder, directrice de la maison du livre ; Véronique De Keyser, députée européenne ; Mateo Alaluf, Président du CA de l’Institut Liebman ; Mejed Hamzaoui, Président de l’Institut des Sciences du travail de l’ULB ; Jean-Claude Grégoire, enseignant à l’ULB ; Yaron Pesztat, député au Parlement bruxellois ; Zoé Genot, députée fédérale Ecolo ; Anne Morelli, Professeure à l’ULB ; Simone Susskind, Présidente Actions in the Mediterranean ; Marcelle Stroobants, enseignante à l’ULB, Pierre Marage, professeur à l’ULB ; Estelle Krzeslo, chargée de recherches, ULB ; Jean Vogel, professeur suppléant à l’ULB, coordonateur de l’Institut Liebman ; Ignace Lapiower, mensch de l’année 2010 ; Marie-Louise Oruba, Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, La Louvière ; Jos Orenbuch, Président du Centre d’expression libre et de créativité en milieu carcéral, Administrateur du CAL de la Province de Liège ; Antoinette Rouvroy, Chercheur qualifié du FRS-FNRS ; Françoise Michel, CGSP-Enseignement ; Pierre-Arnaud Perrouty, Juriste, spécialiste droits de l’homme ; Benoît Van Keirsbilck, Président de Défense des Enfants-Belgique ; Pierre Galand, Président du CAL ; Dan Van Raemdonck, Président d’honneur de la Ligue des Droits de l’Homme, professeur à l’ULB ; Claude Semal, auteur et comédien ; Jean-Maurice Arnould, avocat ; Céline Delforge, députée bruxelloise Ecolo ; Yasmina Vanalme, Fondatrice de SolidaritY ; Serge Gutwirth, professeur de droit à la VUB ; Tom Nisse, auteur

http://www.liguedh.be/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=863:cessons-de-criminaliser-la-solidarite&catid=110:communiques-de-presse-2010&Itemid=283

Arrêtons de criminaliser la solidarité

Arrêtons de criminaliser la solidarité

Il y a près de dix ans, 18 membres des Collectifs contre les expulsions des sans-papiers étaient poursuivis devant le tribunal correctionnel de Bruxelles pour avoir, par divers moyens non violents, manifesté leur solidarité avec les sans-papiers et les demandeurs d’asile. Tout en reconnaissant la noblesse des mobiles qui avaient guidé les inculpés, le tribunal n’en avait pas moins condamné sept d’entre eux à des peines de prison de huit jours à deux mois, assorties d’un sursis d’un an.

Aujourd’hui, c’est au tour de membres du Comité d’action et de soutien aux sans-papiers (CAS) d’être menacés des foudres de la justice pour deux actions distinctes. Trois d’entre eux attendent en effet le verdict du tribunal, prévu le 6 mai prochain, pour avoir manifesté leur solidarité avec des sans-papiers afghans qui occupaient le hall du CGRA et avoir refusé de se disperser. D’autres doivent passer en Chambre du conseil à la fin du mois de mars pour avoir perturbé le lancement de la campagne des libéraux européens le 16 avril 2009. Ils souhaitaient interpeller la Ministre belge de la Politique de migration du moment, Annemie Turtelboom.

Le CAS est un mouvement spontané né à l’ULB lors de l’occupation des bâtiments par des sans-papiers chassés des locaux de Sibelgaz. Rappelons qu’au moment de leur action à la réunion des libéraux européens, cela faisait plus d’un an que l’on attendait l’application des critères de régularisation négociés un an plus tôt dans le cadre de l’accord gouvernemental.

Ce si long blocage politique avait mis tous les acteurs concernés dans un état d’indignation sans pareil: non seulement les sans-papiers, mais également les syndicats, les communautés philosophiques, les associations solidaires et les universités qui, elles, ont accueilli pendant des mois des centaines de sans-papiers dans l’indifférence politique générale. Les ordres des avocats des trois Communautés du pays s’étaient joints à eux pour réclamer la circulaire promise.

Les membres du CAS n’étaient donc pas seuls à se mobiliser mais se retrouvent aujourd’hui seuls face à la justice. Cette procédure judiciaire engagée contre l’élément le moins structuré du mouvement, le CAS, ressemble bien à ce qu’il est convenu d’appeler une criminalisation des mouvements sociaux. Elle vise à museler le CAS en incriminant leur action mais au-delà, elle vise à discréditer l’ensemble du mouvement de solidarité avec les sans papiers, banalisant du même coup l’arbitraire de l’Office des Etrangers et la répression policière. Personne ne peut ignorer que des demandeurs et demandeuses d’asile, ainsi que des sans-papiers sont quotidiennement incarcéré-e-s et expulsé-e-s dans la violence.

Cette tendance inquiétante s’inscrit hélas dans le temps. Plusieurs tentatives d’intimidation ont été proférées par nos différents ministres en charge des questions migratoires. En 2007, notre Ministre de l’intérieur affirmait haut et fort – et il n’était hélas pas le premier.　 Ni le dernier au demeurant. 　- que toute aide apportée aux illégaux serait punissable par la loi. Certaines autorités communales ont également interdit des rassemblements de plus de trois personnes autour des lieux où s’étaient établis des sans papiers. En avril 2008, deux avocats tentant d’entrer en contact avec leurs clients sans papiers incarcérés ont eu à subir insultes et violences de la part des forces de l’ordre. En juillet, la Ministre en charge de l’asile et des migrations déclarait que l’on ne pouvait pas interdire aux sans papiers de faire la grève de la faim par la loi mais qu’elle étudierait les moyens de «　responsabiliser　» ceux qui les aidaient et les conseillaient. Et enfin, en mai 2009, la Ministre de la Politique des migrations et le Ministre de l’intérieur signaient une circulaire relative à l’identification d’étrangers en séjour irrégulier dont certains passages invitent purement et simplement à la délation.

Nous considérons que manifester sa solidarité ne constitue pas un crime mais un devoir. Tenter par tous les moyens, en ce y compris l’intimidation et la criminalisation, d’étouffer les mouvements sociaux qui s’émeuvent de situations discriminatoires constitue une grave menace à la liberté d’expression et de manifestation. C’est pour ces raisons que nous ne manquerons pas d’exercer notre vigilance quant au sort réservé aux différents inculpés du CAS et d’interpeller nos responsables politiques sur ces questions

 

Afghanistan: campagne de Paris et Londres contre l’émigration clandestine

AFP | 23.03.10 | 17h29

La France et la Grande Bretagne vont mener en Afghanistan une campagne pour informer les Afghans des risques d’émigration clandestine, ont annoncé mardi Eric Besson et Phil Woolas, les ministres français et britannique en chargé du dossier. « Une campagne sera menée en Afghanistan pour informer les populations des risques d’immigration clandestine », a déclaré M. Besson en soulignant qu’ »il est temps de mettre un terme à la désinformation pratiquée par les trafiquants pour mieux exploiter et rançonner les candidats ». « Nous voulons leur montrer qu’il risquent d’être pris et renvoyés chez eux », a justifié de son côté Phil Woolas en rappelant que son pays avait déjà mené des campagnes similaires dans les Caraïbes et l’Afrique de l’Est qui se sont avérées « payantes ». La campagne sera concentrée sur la partie orientale de l’Afghanistan où Paris et Londres vont mobiliser des « moyens de communication et de publicité », selon le ministre britannique en charge de l’immigration sans donner la date se son lancement. Eric Besson et Phil Woolas se sont rencontrés au port de Calais où ils ont inauguré symboliquement un Centre de coordination opérationnel conjoint ouvert le 8 février. Ce centre réunit des fonctionnaires français et britanniques de la Police aux frontières, des services de l’immigration et des douanes. Il contrôle les 6.000 poids-lourds transitant quotidiennement par le port de Calais. « Cette structure permettra un meilleur ciblage de notre surveillance et une capacité d’intervention en temps réel sur les principaux points de montée clandestine dans les poids-lourds », a dit M. Besson. Six mois après le démantèlement de la « jungle » le 22 septembre 2009, les deux ministres ont estimé que la pression migratoire avait été réduite de 90% dans le Calaisis. « Le Calaisis n’est plus une plateforme du trafic international de migrants », a observé M. Besson en citant le chiffre de 75 tentatives d’embarquement clandestin dans le port de Calais en mars contre 1.452 en septembre 2009. Selon lui, le nombre d’étrangers en situation irrégulière dans le Calaisis n’est plus que de 150 à 200 contre un millier il y a quelques mois. Lors du démantèlement de la « jungle », 278 migrants avaient été arrêtés, dont 132 mineurs, essentiellement de jeunes hommes, afghans

 

Les offensives en Afghanistan risquent de pousser plus de jeunes à s’exiler

AFP | 21.03.10 | 08h00

L’intensification récente des offensives des forces internationales contre les talibans en Afghanistan risque d’inciter davantage de familles à envoyer clandestinement leurs fils à l’étranger, redoutent plusieurs organisations humanitaires. « Nous craignons d’assister à une nouvelle augmentation du nombre d’enfants cherchant à quitter le pays », a déclaré mercredi Daniel Toole, directeur du Fonds des Nations unies pour l’enfance (Unicef) pour l’Asie du Sud.

En visite à Kaboul, M. Toole était interrogé sur l’impact de la nouvelle offensive alliée inaugurée en février dans la province du Helmand (sud), et dont les prochaines cibles connues sont Kandahar (sud) et Kunduz (nord). « C’est un problème qui commence à faire surface », a poursuivi M. Toole: en 2009, l’Unicef a observé une augmentation « très significative » de mineurs afghans arrivés seuls en Europe. Dans un rapport publié en février, l’agence onusienne précise qu’entre 2007 et 2009, le nombre d’adolescents afghans demandeurs d’asile en Norvège est passé de 89 à 1.719 (18 fois plus) par an, et de 984 à un nombre estimé à 1.750 (+80% environ) au Royaume-Uni. « Nous sommes persuadés que dès que l’opération commencera à Kandahar, beaucoup de gens partiront vers Kaboul, en majorité des femmes et des enfants », a confirmé samedi à l’AFP Salvatore Grungo, délégué de Terre des hommes pour l’Afghanistan et le Pakistan. « Certains ont déjà gagné la capitale à cause des combats dans le Helmand », a-t-il renchéri. En revanche, peu décideront de fuir jusqu’en Europe, selon lui.

« La plupart préfèrent le Pakistan ou l’Inde, où ils peuvent trouver un travail saisonnier ». « Leurs motivations sont d’abord financières », estime Nadir Farhad, porte-parole du Haut Commissariat des Nations unies pour les Réfugiés (HCR) à Kaboul, interrogé par l’AFP. « Cela ne veut pas dire que les demandeurs d’asile n’ont pas des raisons politiques ». Les deux sont liés, estime Daniel Toole, puisque la guerre déstabilise l’économie du pays. « Lorsque des familles sont démembrées, que leurs moyens d’existence sont compromis, elles cherchent à gagner leur vie par des moyens de plus en plus désespérés », souligne M. Toole. Le rapport de l’Unicef, qui s’appuie sur l’étude de 20 cas, tous masculins, et des témoignages recueillis en Europe et en Afghanistan, pointe, pour au moins 7 d’entre eux, des motivations directement liées au conflit. Menacés par le gouvernement et/ou les talibans, les adolescents interrogés par l’agence onusienne, âgés, selon leurs dires, de 14 à 17 ans, sont pour la plupart originaires des provinces de Nangarhar (est), Kaboul, Balkh (nord), Ghazni (sud), Herat (est) et Wardak (est).

 Le voyage coûte entre 7.000 et 10.000 dollars (entre 5.000 et 7.300 euros environ) et peut durer plus d’une année, via le Pakistan, l’Iran, la Grèce, l’Italie et la France. Il s’effectue dans des conditions effroyables, précise le rapport: longues marches de nuit, transit dans des containers, jeûne. « Une fois parti, on ne peut plus faire marche arrière », raconte Khaibar, un Pachtoune de 17 ans, incité à fuir par son oncle, après la capture — par des Américains — de son père, employé comme livreur par les talibans. Maïwand, un Pachtoune de 14 ans, également interrogé par l’Unicef dans la banlieue de Londres, était, lui, pris entre deux feux. Les talibans voulaient lui faire poser une bombe tandis que le gouvernement lui reprochait un séjour dans une madrasa: « tu dois quitter le pays », lui aurait dit son oncle maternel, en le mettant entre les mains d’un passeur

Les troupes de l’OTAN doivent partir le plus vite possible

Conférence sur l’Afghanistan: « Les troupes de l’OTAN doivent partir le plus vite possible! »

Le 12 février a eu lieu la soirée de clôture de la « tournée anti-guerre en Afghanistan » organisée par la plate-forme anti-guerre et Mariam Rawi, de l’organisation progressiste des femmes en Afghanistan RAWA. A la conférence de Bruxelles, trois autres interlocuteurs ont exprimé leur opinion sur la situation et les perspectives en Afghanistan aujourd’hui.

Mariam Rawi a, sur base de son expérience du terrain, un avis très prononcé sur le sujet : toutes les troupes étrangères doivent immédiatement partir ; la société civile afghane s’occupera elle-même du terrorisme et du fondamentalisme; et la communauté internationale peut donner un coup de main en jugeant les criminels de guerre qui se trouvent actuellement dans le gouvernement Karzaï.

Jan Vandemoortele (coordinateur des Nations Unies au Pakistan de 2005 à 2008, également connu comme un des pères fondateurs des Objectifs du Millénaire) a apporté une argumentation très claire contre la présence des troupes de l’OTAN en Afghanistan: « Les troupes étrangères ne peuvent plus faire partie de la solution, elles sont elles-mêmes devenu le problème central. A la différence des années 2001-2002, les Afghans ne considèrent à présent plus l’OTAN comme une force du bien. Nous devons partir de là et dès à présent. » Mais retirer les troupes occidentales n’équivaut pas à tourner le dos à l’Afghanistan. Vandemoortele: « Nous devons rester concernés par la communauté civile, en coulisses, afin d’aider à la reconstruction. Et il faudra certainement, du fait de la mauvaise situation de la sécurité, une phase de transition ainsi qu’une certaine aide militaire pour ‘faire régner la paix’. Mais de la part de pays qui ont une autre perception que les partenaires de la coalition actuelle, par exemple des pays musulmans comme l’Indonésie et le Bangladesh. »

La jeune politicienne Juliette Boulet (Membre de la chambre pour Ecolo, membre de la Commission des Affaires Étrangères et de la Défense) a fait sa thèse sur l’Afghanistan et connaît donc très bien la problématique. Elle plaide également pour un départ des troupes étrangères, aussi vite que possible, c’est ce que le peuple afghan demande : « Dans un rapport d’avril 2009 les ONG afghanes ont confirmé que la présence des militaires étrangers constituait un obstacle dans l’exercice de leurs travaux ». Boulet croit à une solution régionale pour la crise en Afghanistan.

Antonio Gambini (Conseiller auprès de l’Institut Emile Vandervelde du PS) avait la tâche ingrate de défendre plus ou moins la position du gouvernement: le PS soutient effectivement les décisions du Gouvernement belge afin d’envoyer plus de 600 soldats et 6 « F-16 » en Afghanistan. Gambini renvoie à la position de la Belgique lors de la guerre en Irak, à laquelle notre pays n’a pas participé directement : « Après, vu la pression des États-Unis, ce fut très difficile de ne pas aller en Afghanistan ». Le PS espérait avec les élections récentes à Kaboul voir se développer « une véritable démocratie » (sic)… Qu’est-ce qui devrait changer selon Antonio Gambini? A la façon d’Obama, il parle « d’un changement complet », notamment « une mise en avant des efforts civils -- y compris la formation de la population en politique et en droit – avec des efforts militaires loin derrière » (murmures dans la salle). Et devons-nous quitter l’Afghanistan? « Pas dans la précipitation, selon Gambini, »et chaque stratégie de retrait doit permettre aux Afghans de maîtriser eux-mêmes leur sécurité ».

La plupart des questions dans la salle étaient adressées à Mariam Rawi. Voici ses réponses en style télégraphique :

• L’OTAN est en Afghanistan à cause des intérêts économiques et géostratégiques, à cause des pipelines de pétrole et de l’importance des pays voisins.
• Lorsque les troupes de la coalition se retirent, les talibans prendront probablement le pouvoir. Mais à présent, ils sont déjà au pouvoir dans la majorité du pays. Et dans les cercles de l’OTAN, on parle de plus en plus de négociations avec une participation au gouvernement des talibans « modérés »: alors où est la différence avec une prise de pouvoir des talibans? Car après toutes les violations des droits des femmes, le fondamentalisme et le terrorisme sous le régime de Karzaï est à peine moindre que celui des talibans.
• Bâtir des écoles et des hôpitaux n’est pas une bonne idée, car l’Afghan moyen ne fait pas la différence entre les militaires et les gens de la coopération au développement issus des mêmes pays occidentaux. (Ce que Jan Vandemoortele a confirmé.)
• A l’intérieur et autour de Kaboul, il y a des centaines de milliers de réfugiés, vivant dans des conditions lamentables. Ils se sont souvent enfuis suite aux bombardements de l’OTAN à Helmand, Kandahar et Kunduz, donc il est probable qu’ils aient du fuir également les bombes des « F-16 » belges.
• L’information et la conscientisation sont très importantes, car on connaît trop peu la réelle situation en Afghanistan. Des actions de protestation contre la guerre et l’occupation et des campagnes de solidarité en faveur des populations afghanes, sont d’autres formes d’un engagement sensé.

Juliette Boulet a encore donné des informations très intéressantes sur les militaires belges, qui selon elle sont souvent « choqués » lors de leur retour d’Afghanistan. « La désinformation à laquelle ils sont exposés lors de leur départ, est monstrueuse », dit-elle. « Les Afghans sont présentés dans les briefings comme étant de potentiels Ben Laden. » Boulet critiquait également le Ministre de la Défense De Crem: « Même dans les Commissions spéciales privées de la Défense, il refuse de donner des informations sur le nombre de victimes civiles lors d’actions militaires belges. Il ne prétend même pas dire combien de fois les Belges ont du tirer. » Antonio Gambini en a profité pour dénoncer encore un peu plus le « va-t-en guerre ultra atlantiste » qu’est De Crem, mais Josy Dubié (ancien sénateur Ecolo et spécialiste de l’Afghanistan), présent dans la salle, a fait gentiment remarquer que le prédécesseur de De Crem, Flahaut, « était peut-être plus réservé mais il est finalement aussi parti en Afghanistan ».

Jan Vandemoortele a dit encore que finalement le but est que les Afghans soient eux-mêmes capables de se hisser à la tête du pays et de s’occuper de leur propre développement, et que nous devons moins nous focaliser sur nous-mêmes, sur nos propres politiques et perceptions. « Il s’agit d’eux et pas de nous », a-t-il conclu.

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From Kabul to an M1 service station via a dinghy: the Afghans dying to get into Britain

 

By CHRIS ROGERS and NADENE GHOURI

 

 

Last updated at 12:21 AM on 22nd February 2010

 

Samos: boatloads of mainly Afghans slash their own craft so watching police are forced to render them from Turkey into the EU. Many of them  -  especially children  -  drown. In a special report covering 4,000 miles from Kabul to a service station on the M1, Live follows the surge of Afghan immigrants driven by one belief: our Afghan campaign means the UK owes them a living 

Already this year, 14 migrants have drowned in the Aegean Sea, and Commander Moutzouvis blames Turkish traffickers. The seas around the Greek island of Samos are an important waypoint for migrants

The small dinghy is so absurdly overcrowded, so unstable, it seems certain to capsize at any moment. The engine can’t cope either; it cuts in and out as it struggles to shift the weight of its cargo. Now the Greek coastguard patrol boat powers closer to the floundering craft. One of the officers on board points his machine gun into the air and fires a stream of bullets.

Around 20 young men, some in their early teens, and a woman and two young children cower lower and shoot their hands above their heads. One man holds a large knife. The armed officer knows exactly what will happen next.

The man repeatedly stabs the side of the dinghy. Within seconds it begins to deflate and fold inwards, forcing everyone on board into the water. What was a border-control operation has now turned into a rescue, which is exactly what the people on the boat want. They are mainly illegal Afghan immigrants, and know their safety is ensured if they’re being rescued rather than arrested.

The coastguards have to move quickly to save them. Panic sets in as those in the sea not wearing life jackets cling onto, and drag down, those who are. The five coastguards are outnumbered. All they can do is throw ropes into the water and try to drag people to safety. 

‘It’s pulling the dead from the sea that’s the worst part of the job,’ says Commander Constantinos Moutzouvis. 

‘We can never be sure we have saved them all. Most of the migrants can’t swim. They end up floating dead in the sea and wash up on the beaches.

‘The traffickers tell the migrants to sink the boat and jump in the water if they’re caught by us.’ 

Immigrants entering Greece from Turkey on an inflatable boat

Already this year, 14 migrants have drowned in the Aegean Sea, and Commander Moutzouvis blames Turkish traffickers. 

‘They’re cashing in on the refugee crisis caused by the war. Four days ago we pulled the highest number yet from the water -- 70 Afghans.’

The seas around the Greek island of Samos are an important waypoint for migrants. There’s less than a mile of water between the rugged Turkish coast and the island’s pebble beaches; or, from a migrant’s point of view, Asia and the EU. 

As increasing numbers of Afghans and their traffickers try to break into the EU, coastguards have responded with more patrol boats searching the invisible border day and night. They use radar, satellite navigation and sophisticated night-vision equipment, backed up by army observation posts on hilltops, to scan the sea. 

There has been a surge of Afghans abandoning their country. They’re prepared to hand over their life savings and take huge risks to journey to Europe, where they hope to apply for asylum. This is a lesser-known side of the war in Afghanistan, which has displaced thousands of people; and, because of Britain’s involvement in the campaign, has given them a sense that they’re entitled to come to the UK. To satisfy this growing demand, an entire business has emerged to exploit those who decide to follow their dream.

Live has tracked their route from their homes in Afghanistan to Iran, Turkey and Greece, then up through Italy and France to the ultimate goal for so many -- the UK. This is no simple, two-week dash across Asia and into Europe. Most of those who set out never reach the UK, and journeys can take months or even years. Along the way, the immigrants are fleeced by traffickers and risk beatings and imprisonment by border guards. Many die trying. 

The journey begins in Kabul

KABUL

A feral dog ambles across the road in front of a row of tattered-looking wooden stalls, where bags of cashew nuts and out-of-date Mars bars in faded wrappers are on sale. Around the stalls rows of cars and buses rev their engines loudly. A family huddles by one brightly painted bus, the burka-clad mother crouching on the ground with three children, while her husband stands guard over a large bag of rice and a pile of cloth-covered packages. This is Kabul bus station, on the edge of the city and ringed by mountains. From here, several buses a day set off for Pakistan and Iran. 

There are a few families, but most people getting on and off the buses are young men under the age of 30. The tension in the air is obvious: people glare, a few hiss insults and several ask what we want. A bus comes in from Peshawar in northern Pakistan and some of the passengers getting off ask the crowd who we are. Voices are raised and a gun appears from under a man’s kameez tunic. We’ve been here less than ten minutes, but we’re clearly not welcome.

For many of those making an illegal journey to the UK, this is where it begins. Those travelling will have already paid money to the controller of a smuggling ring, at one of the barber shops and restaurants that act as money middlemen. But this is where those desperate or naive enough to pay a people-smuggler tens of thousands of U.S. dollars to take them to the UK start their epic and dangerous journey. 

‘Everyone wants to get to Britain. It’s the best place… All Afghans have heard the stories of people getting support from your government. I know the tricks now’

It’s a decision Faisal Aryan’s family wish they’d never taken. Sitting on floor cushions in their basic two-room house, I’m shown a heartbreaking photo. At the centre of the family group, a boy in faded blue dungarees stares out from the picture. Faisal was eight when the picture was taken; five years later he was shot dead by Iranian border guards as he tried to reach the UK and what his mother Fawzia believed would be ‘safety, a free house and free education’.

So sure were they that the UK would offer this that the family paid traffickers $17,000 -- their entire savings -- to get Faisal and his 17-year-old brother Omid to Britain. The trafficker told them the journey would take two weeks and was simple -- ‘almost like a holiday’. 

When they set off the boys were giddy with excitement. Six weeks later, they’d only got as far as Iran and were hungry and constantly on the move through snowy mountains to evade the authorities. Faisal cried a lot, telling his brother he wanted to go home and he feared they would die.

From left: Afghans seeking a new life pay traffickers before and during the trip; and Sharib Khan working at his uncle’s barber shop -- he capsized off the Greek coast on his first attempt to reach the UK, but his family are borrowing $7,000 so he can try again

 

When the group of 40 men and boys they were travelling with came under fire from border guards, the traffickers simply ran away and abandoned them.

Tears flow down Fawzia’s cheeks as she struggles to get the words out. 

‘I told Omid to never let go of Faisal’s hand.’ 

Her son winces: ‘They shot at us, Mama. We ran. I just lost him. I’m so sorry.’ 

Faisal was shot through the head. Omid was caught, arrested and, after six weeks in an Iranian jail, deported back to Afghanistan. The traffickers offer no refund for death or arrests.

Fawzia grips my arm. ‘Tell everyone,’ she says. ‘These traffickers are liars. They lie for profit.’

Ahmed Quyeum agrees. A thin man in his late twenties, he has twice attempted to reach the UK, once getting as far as France, another time to Bulgaria. He shows me the scars on his arms after Bulgarian guards set dogs on him. 

‘It was their country, I was there illegally; they had the right to do it,’ he shrugs.

Quyeum’s attempts to reach Britain cost him $10,000 each time. He didn’t feel he got value for money (no food, and little shelter), so he’s now setting himself up in business as a DIY trafficker. After much negotiation, he agrees to meet in a local restaurant.

We are in the Red Rose, a well-known Kabul kebab house; the scent of freshly cooked meat wafts through the air. He picks at his food with grubby fingernails and taps his fingers lightly on the floral plastic tablecloth to emphasise his point: for $5,000 he promises to undercut the big-business traffickers (usually Pakistani or Iranian, though they use Afghan middlemen).

‘Everyone wants to get to Britain,’ he says. ‘It’s the best place. France, Germany and Italy are racist countries. The UK government is good. The British people are good. All Afghans have heard the stories of people getting support from your government. I know the tricks now. I know the journey. The big traffickers only take your money. What did I pay for? This time I know how to get there. I will fund it by taking others. 

Fawzia Aryan and son Omid with a photo of son Faisal, who was shot dead by Iranian border guards on his journey to the UK

‘But these people are mafia. If they find out I’m undercutting them, they’ll kill me and whoever is with me. So, yes, I’m offering a cut-price deal, but with discount comes risk.’ With that he roars with laughter. 

The standard trafficker patter -- wherever they’re from -- doesn’t differ much. The journey is sold as simple, short and easy. A portion of the cash is paid up front with the rest paid en route. So organised is the system that money can be transferred via Western Union between safe houses along the way. One man I spoke to ran out of money in Germany. His trafficker arranged for his parents to pay cash, and the funds -- minus a handling fee -- were transferred to an Afghan family in Germany for the trafficker to collect.

The first down payment gets you to Europe -- Turkey or Greece. From there to France is another $1,000-2,000. 

‘In Calais I was handed to another trafficker, an Iraqi Kurd,’ says Quyeum. 

‘He demanded $2,000, too. Then he took us to a lorry park and told us to jump on or under a truck. We had five goes. If we failed that was it. If we got caught that was our responsibility.’

Every country has its own dangers; it can take months just to get out of Iran, where most of the travelling is by foot across treacherous mountains. Get caught and you end up in a Tehran prison nicknamed Black Oil. 

Sometimes lorry drivers are involved in the smuggling operation, but immigrants have become experts at breaking into container sections without the drivers realising

‘Worse than Guantanamo,’ is how one former inmate described it to me. The Turkish and Bulgarian border guards are said to be the most vicious, while the traffickers in France and Greece are said to be the most ruthless, especially the Kurds, who have a reputation for violence. Often the only place to eat and rest is in temporary camps supported by the UN, which supply food and medicines.

Yet curiously, the horror stories don’t appear to get back to Kabul. Instead, people like to share the successes: the Afghans who send enough money back to support entire extended families, or the one who trained as a plumber and makes £2,000 a week, while at home the average wage is $50 a month.

These are the stories 17-year-old Sharib Khan dreams of as he works in his uncle’s barber shop. As he snips away he tells me he wants to study medicine. 

‘If I reach the UK, the government will pay for it.’ 

He’s so naive that he doesn’t think being semi-literate and having not even graduated from high school will be an issue.

Khan first made the journey aged 15, and after five months got as far as Turkey. 

‘It was the first time I’d seen the sea. Five of us in a little boat. I screamed to Allah. We capsized. We were arrested and deported.’

Khan’s uncle tells me the family paid $12,000 for the first trip, but the trafficker has offered to try a second time for $7,000. They have borrowed the sum from moneylenders who took the shop as collateral. If Khan doesn’t make it, his uncle might lose his livelihood. I point out that the $19,000 it has cost them would have paid for an education in Kabul University. His uncle looks at me for a moment, then swivels his customer around and starts to shave the back of his head.

‘No, we will pay for this journey. The UK is a good place. People have a good life there,’ he says.

SAMOS

As the rising sun creeps over Ireon, a small fishing town on Samos, it reveals evidence of those who have escaped the vigilance of the night patrols. The town’s pebble beaches are littered with dozens of black life jackets, shredded dinghies, wet clothes and shoes.

‘It’s like D-Day -- an invasion of migrants every few days,’ a local tells me as he picks through the piles of possessions looking for anything he can salvage. 

‘My neighbours fight over the engines from the dinghies. They have quite a collection now.’ 

Wet clothes left on a beach after crossing the sea to Samos

In 2007 the Samos authorities built a €2 million detention centre. Its grey cabins with red roofs, behind barbed-wire fencing, are a temporary prison for the immigrants who land here -- 10,000 last year, almost double the population of Samos. Migrants stay for a few weeks before they’re moved to the mainland. The facility often exceeds its capacity of 250 people, forcing staff to erect tents to provide more accommodation.

The detention centre is full when today’s arrivals are brought to its gates in a convoy of armoured police vans. The young men, some in their teens, and a woman in her late thirties with a young child are put in single file by armed police and escorted to a yard surrounded by barbed-wire fencing. They’re searched and scanned for weapons.

‘They all claim to be Afghan or Palestinian, but they have nothing to prove their identity,’ a guard tells us. 

‘The traffickers tell them to bring nothing with them that can give away their identity.’

Greece’s detention centres have been condemned by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR), whose staff were particularly shocked by the conditions at the Pagani centre on the island of Lesbos, where one room housed over 150 women and 50 babies, many suffering from illness related to the cramped and unsanitary conditions. 

Samos, however, is a showcase, with social workers and lawyers available. Nurses and doctors conduct routine medical checks, and after being handed a goody bag of clothes and toiletries all 102 new arrivals are taken to their private rooms, where they can shower, play games and watch satellite TV.

The new arrivals are clearly relieved to be here. But in a few weeks they will leave the shelter of the detention centre and will have to struggle for survival. 

ATHENS

Lall Mohammad, 18, spent seven weeks at the Samos detention centre and is now taking his first steps on the Greek mainland. 

‘I feel so close to the UK now,’ he says. ‘I can almost see Big Ben!’ 

He is among hundreds of Afghans arriving at Piraeus, the port of Athens.

The refugees regarded as most likely to be genuine are granted a six-month asylum-seeker visa, a red card that states their case is being investigated but which doesn’t entitle them to benefits or free accommodation. Meanwhile, Mohammad, like most, has been issued with a deportation card stating he must leave the country in 30 days or head to the Athens migration centre, where he can apply for asylum.

Those with enough money to move on ignore this and head by train or bus to Patras, another port 150-odd miles away, where they try to smuggle themselves onto ferries to Italy. But Mohammad has spent his last €2,000 on traffickers to get as far as Greece.

He joins more than 1,000 asylum seekers circled round the migration centre on an industrial estate in the early morning sun. Two police officers stand nervously behind the closed front gates. Hundreds of hands poke through the railings, all gripping paperwork to claim asylum. There are screams from women, and children are swept aside in the rush. 

Most of the migrants have nowhere to live, so will keep coming back. Mohammad buries his head in his hands, crumpling his deportation card into a ball: ‘Thirty days is not long enough. I have to stay here so I can raise funds for food, for clothes, for traffickers.’ 

‘I was too honest. I thought the UK would take care of me because I’m a refugee from a country they are trying to help. But I should have lied like the others do’

Greece says it detained more than 146,000 illegal immigrants in 2008; it expects that figure to jump 50 per cent for 2009. Just three in ten are granted asylum; the rest slip under the radar of the authorities, living in squats and working for little money until they can afford to move further west. 

Last summer the Prefect of Athens, Yannis Sgouros, said, ‘The Greek capital has become a landfill of human misery and cannot absorb any more illegal immigrants.’

On Omonia Square, next to the Athens parliament, immigrants gather to tout for work or just to pass the time. At night, as Athens falls asleep, police officers with batons arrive in a coach, and soon a wall of uniformed men is rushing across the square, dispersing the crowd into the backstreets. It’s here we find Abdul Shinare, dragging a mattress out of a skip and propping it up against a graffiti-covered wall.

‘I was sharing an earthquake-damaged house with 20 other brothers from Afghanistan,’ he says. ‘But last night the police found us. Me and my friend got away but the rest are in a police cell.’

He pulls his dog-eared asylum-seeker visa card out of his pocket. 

‘It’s been extended four times. Two years I’ve been here. This means I have a right to be here, but they hunt us down like animals.’

The 21-year-old’s ultimate dream remains to get to the UK. 

‘They owe me. There they will understand I am a victim of their war.’ 

He has had a 2,000-mile journey so far. It clearly haunts him. 

‘I walked for 20 hours with traffickers across the freezing mountains into Turkey. Then I was put in a local’s house with ten other Afghans. It was tense; none of us knew or trusted each other. They kept us in the attic and I had no idea when the traffickers would come back for us. Two weeks later they returned and piled us into a truck. Some of the people I stayed with were beaten badly by the traffickers because they had no more money. They just left them rolling in pain at the roadside.’

Shinare’s friend Borhan arrives with bread handed out in Omonia Square by a charity. He says he is 25, but looks much older. His face is worn and dirty.

‘Me? Six attempts to get to Greece and I live like a street dog,’ he says, bursting into boyish laughter. 

‘I arrived with just €35. It cost €700 to get across Iran, €1,000 to cross Turkey and €4,000 to reach Greece. The first few times I tried to cross the mainland border. The traffickers took us to a river crossing in trucks, and from there we had to swim, but I was terrified. Next, I headed to the coast and the trafficker put me in a boat with 50 others.’

Borhan pulls out a crumpled piece of paper with a list of British mobile phone numbers scribbled on it. 

‘These are numbers I must call when I get to the UK, but they don’t work any more. My two older brothers live in Manchester. They work in a supermarket, but I think they have given up on me.’

Shinare and Borhan plan to head to Patras, and then on to Italy. They earn money by selling hand-made shoes on the street for a Chinese family; they buy each pair for €1 and sell them on to tourists for €3. 

PATRAS

Last July the authorities razed a shanty town in Patras. At its peak it was home to 1,000 mainly Afghan illegal immigrants. Welfare groups condemned the bulldozing of the camp, which had been built from scrap metal and wood and even had its own mosque.

In a field nearby, thick white smoke billows up from a ragtag community, whose washing lines of boxer shorts, jeans and shirts hang on the entangled branches of dozens of olive trees.

Ten teenagers have lived in the field since the shanty town was torn down. Newcomers Reza and his cousin Sajadani, both 17, who arrived from Athens the night before, are the only ones who are clean and look well fed. 

An Afghan climbs into a truck at the Greek port of Patras

‘We’re not planning to stay here long,’ says Reza confidently. ‘My mother sold our house in Parwan to fund our journey to the UK. She’s already expecting us to be there, working to provide money for the family. But it took weeks to travel across Turkey and then we were trapped in a detention centre for a month.’

Before they reached Athens they were held at the Pagani centre on the island of Lesbos. 

‘It was like a prison, probably worse. It was crowded -- there were about 500 of us. There were sick babies and people crying in the night for medicine. But there were no doctors. There were just two things to do: sleep and eat. We could hear people protesting outside for our release. That helped us get through it. But now we are here in Patras; we arrived last night. We left Athens straight away on the train.’

A boy called Qasen warns them that he has been in Patras for three years. 

‘Get used to this. I have reached Italy many times, but each time they catch me and send me back to Greece. The last time they caught me, they put me in jail and said they were going to deport me back to Afghanistan.’ 

He rolls back the sleeves of his torn shirt to reveal dozens of scars on his arms. 

‘I did this to myself. I lost the plot, so they let me go.’

Later that afternoon I watch as Afghans descend on the grass verges lining the road to Patras ferry terminal, from where boats leave for Brindisi in Italy. They sit in silence, waiting to pounce on the next lorry that stops at traffic lights. On every corner, police watch. Sometimes lorry drivers are involved in the smuggling operation, but immigrants have become experts at breaking into container sections without the drivers realising.

As a lorry slows, a group of Afghans, Reza and Sajadani among them, dash for the undercarriage and back doors. Two police motorbikes ram into the group and the lorry drives away without a human load.

But more groups of opportunists line the security fencing of the port. Here, two young men haul themselves up a tree and leap to the ground on the other side. Ducking and diving between lorries, one is caught and handcuffed by the port police. But the police fail to spot the other youth slipping between the wheels of a lorry, and with one last look over his shoulder, he disappears into the undercarriage.

The Greek authorities insist they have the situation under control, with special forces patrolling the port and checking all vehicles before they enter the boats. But they failed to spot this stowaway, and the lorry slowly makes its way onto a ferry bound for Italy. 

FRANCE

Hiding among boxes and crates in the back of a lorry, Alie froze in terror as he heard the clanging of the wheels rolling along the metal ramps of the ferry.

‘I paid a driver €3,500 to smuggle me to Italy,’ he says. ‘It was my eighth attempt, but this time the lorry kept moving -- no searches, no border guards.’ 

Eighteen hours must have passed; he couldn’t be sure, but hunger and thirst were kicking in. Finally the lorry pulled over and the driver swung open the back doors. 

A cardboard shelter near Dunkirk

‘I asked him where I was and he said Nice. I didn’t know where that was. I had to ask someone, and they told me France. I made my way across the country on trains, hiding in the toilets to avoid ticket inspectors.’

The 13-year-old is among an army of Afghan migrants who have taken shelter near the Dunkirk dunes after fleeing the police and bulldozers that tore down the notorious ‘Jungle’ in Calais. The new camp is already well organised, complete with lookout towers to spot police patrols.

Alie was ten when he left Jalalabad.

‘I am not the youngest here; the other boys are 11 and 12. We were all recruited by the Taliban to be suicide bombers -- that’s why we had to leave.’ 

Fleeing the war is a common asylum claim across the camp, but his young age and the fact that he’s unaccompanied are grounds enough for sanctuary in the UK with free benefits and housing. Under EU rules, minors must seek asylum in the first safe haven they reach. But Alie’s collection of papers show he has been arrested in Greece, Italy and France -- all have released him to carry on his journey.

Aryan arrived six days ago; he hides his thin, chiselled face under his hoodie, sheepishly looking around him. 

‘I talk to nobody. One more person is one less chance to make it to Dover.’

Many of the Afghans are covered in cuts from failed attempts to climb the port’s security fence. All have had plenty of time to rehearse their stories of asylum, but whether they’re true or not, something has driven them across five countries towards the UK, a country they believe will accept them as ‘their’ problem. 

WATFORD GAP SERVICES, M1

Faihad trusts no one, and for good reason. The 29-year-old Afghan has been on the run from the UK Border Agency for seven years. We meet at Watford Gap services on the M1. He is on the move again.

‘I was working at a clothing factory, but the Border Agency raided the premises,’ he says. 

‘There were around 50 Afghans working there for £2 an hour, so it was only a matter of time before they came. I was issued with a deportation card and told to report to the immigration centre in Solihull. It’s the same drill every time: they let you go and expect you to turn up to hand yourself in, but I just pack my things and move on to the next job.’

Faihad is well groomed with slicked-back hair and a goatee. He claims he can make up to £1,500 a month working as cheap labour, but he can double his earnings selling counterfeit goods. 

‘Everybody helps each other. You make friends and contacts as you go along. You speak to an Afghan who works in a factory and he will help you get a job there. He’ll know of somewhere to rent a room; sometimes he’ll know someone who has stolen goods -- clothes, DVDs, jewellery -- that need shifting, and you get a big cut for taking the risk to get rid of it. Once a job is over you just move on to the next town and the authorities never catch up, or so you hope.’

When Faihad landed in the UK he believed his dream life was about to begin. 

‘I was hiding in the undercarriage of a lorry; one slip and I was dead. I was pumped with adrenaline. The lorry stopped in a car park and I slipped out and walked into a police station in Dover to claim asylum. I was smiling with joy; I was so wrong to think that that was all I had to do.’

Faihad was placed in a B&B and handed meal vouchers.

‘They know you’re not going to run away because you’re seeking asylum. You want to be granted permission to stay. There were around 20 of us in there, with a hot shower, clean beds and three meals a day. Why would anyone run? It was heaven.’

Six months later he was taken to London to be interviewed by the Home Office.

‘I had no paperwork to prove I’m from Afghanistan, so they tested me using an interpreter to ask me in my language questions about my homeland. Then he asked me why I was claiming asylum. I told them I could no longer live in Afghanistan -- it was too dangerous because of the war -- and that I wanted to live in the UK.

‘I was too honest. I thought the UK would take care of me because I’m a refugee from a country they are trying to help. But I should have lied like the others do. I should have told them the Taliban want me dead. My honesty was my downfall. They told me they were flying me home -- after three years of travelling, three years of my life, which cost me $8,000.’

Faihad was placed in a home run by a charity in Norwich, where he was supposed to stay until his deportation date. But there he met other Afghans facing the same fate. 

‘It was crazy. Did they expect us to just accept our deportation? One morning we all decided to walk. We headed to Wolverhampton, where one of the guys had contacts. We helped each other with money and finding work. Within a month I was a labourer and sharing a room in a house with four other Afghans for £50 a week. The conditions were not good, but it’s better than Kandahar.’

Faihad says his journey was driven by his dream of a job, a home and a wife in the UK. 

‘That dream is shattered now. I was naive. But I cannot go back. What choice do I have? I will always be on the run now. If I go back, I’ll be on the run from the Taliban; if I stay here I’m on the run from the authorities. At least they don’t have AK-47s and grenades. I will stay in the UK, because this is about surviving. Here I can stay alive.’ 

‘People say I’m crazy… what choice do I have?’

Ashgollah Ahmadi, at the back with wife Alima and baby Hasty, and his cousin’s children

Ashgollah Ahmadi, 34, wife Alima and baby Hasty share a tiny basement room in Athens with his cousin’s family, including four children. Ahmadi’s first attempt to travel from Kabul to Britain was six years ago. Once at the Sangatte refugee camp in northern France he was told by traffickers to head to the train cargo depot in Calais.

‘One of the men handed me 16 pairs of trousers and told me to put them on,’ he recalls. ‘Then four of them tied rope around my wrists and ankles, carried me underneath a train and tied me to piping that ran along the undercarriage. Two hours later, the train started to move towards England. I was scared for my life; I could hardly breathe as it moved. They said someone would meet me on the other side, but I didn’t believe them.’

Ahmadi was met on the other side -- but by officers from the UK Border Agency. He was sent to a detention centre in Manchester, where he applied for asylum and failed. Six months later he was back on a plane to Afghanistan. 

‘I refused to go on the plane, so they handcuffed me. I was hysterical; I couldn’t believe I was heading back -- it would take just a few hours to do a journey that had taken me nearly a year on foot, boat and train. I nearly died four times trying to reach the UK, and now I was handcuffed to a plane seat heading back.’

He arrived back in Athens in November, this time with his wife Alima and baby. 

‘People may say I’m crazy to drag my family through all of this -- we could have been beaten by traffickers or imprisoned by police. But what choice do I have?’

Ahmadi grabs his little girl and kisses her rosy cheeks. 

‘She is our ticket to the UK.’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1251750/From-Kabul-M1-service-station-dinghy-Afghans-immigrants-dying-Britain.html#ixzz0gkxoZUtr

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Solidarity shop

 

 

http://couleuraurore.skynetblogs.be/post/7657718/oyez-oyez-le-monde-entier--solidarity-shop-af

Manifestation d’Afghans devant le siège du cdH à Bruxelles

Manifestation d’Afghans devant le siège du cdH à Bruxelles

Le Vif.be, 08/02/2010 13:57

 

Une petite vingtaine de personnes ont manifesté lundi à Bruxelles, devant le siège du cdH, pour protester contre l’expulsion d’Afghans vers leur pays d’origine. « L’Afghanistan est en guerre », pouvait-on lire sur un calicot. L’ensemble de la délégation a été reçue par le secrétaire d’Etat à la Politique de migration et d’asile, Melchior Wathelet.

 

« Nous sommes venus rappeler à la présidente du cdH, Mme Milquet, les promesses qu’elle a faites aux Afghans de ne pas les expulser. Nous demandons au secrétaire d’Etat à la Politique de migration et d’asile d’utiliser son pouvoir discrétionnaire pour mettre un terme aux expulsions d’Afghans », a déclaré l’organisateur de la manifestation Oscar Florès. Les manifestants ont réclamé le gel des expulsions des Afghans ainsi qu’une application plus souple de la protection subsidiaire. « En Italie, 85% des Afghans bénéficient de la protection subsidiaire contre 17% en Belgique. La protection subsidiaire est restreinte en Belgique en raison de son interprétation. On défend aux Belges de se rendre en Afghanistan mais on expulse des Afghans. C’est absurde », a dit Oscar Florès. M. Wathelet a répondu que les décisions étaient prises au cas par cas après enquêtes, par diverses institutions compétentes comme le CGRA (Commissariat général aux réfugiés et aux apatrides) et qu’il existait de nombreux recours en cas de contestation. Le secrétaire d’Etat a reconnu que la situation en Afghanistan était toutefois spécifique. « On ne renvoie un Afghan dans son pays que si on obtient la garantie que sa vie ne sera pas menacée », explique-t-on au cdH. (FCH)

http://levif.rnews.be/belga/generale/78-6-145389/manifestation-d-afghans-devant-le-siege-du-cdh-a-bruxelles.html