Afghan Refugees in "Nightmare Neverland" Europe

by Una Vera

Published October 29, 2009 @ 10:45AM PT

It’s difficult to keep up with all the reports of European governments abusing, detaining, and forcibly returning refugees, but I’m sure going to try. Let’s start with the mistreatment of Afghan refugees.

Last month, French authorities razed an Afghan refugee camp known as “the jungle” in the town of Calais. Yes, you read that correctly: an Afghan refugee camp in France. Hundreds of mostly adolescent boys and young men living in the Calais woods were driven from their shanties during an early-morning police raid. Some were placed in detention, others scattered.

Now, Deutsche Welle reports: "The result is that downtown Calais has become a kind of nightmarish Neverland - with mostly under-age Afghan migrants, some as young as 12, taking refuge under its bridges and in its parks."

Most of the Calais refugees intended to travel on to the United Kingdom, where they expected to find more job opportunities and social support.

But the UK is not the welcoming promised land the Calais refugees hoped for. A three-judge immigration panel ruled last week that the violence in Afghanistan is not severe or widespread enough to warrant granting general humanitarian protection to Afghans seeking asylum.

The UNHCR, unsurprisingly, disagreed.

“We are in disagreement with the conclusion that there can be returns during the winter months,” a spokesperson said, “The UNHCR has consistently advised that returns should not take place over the winter months and only individuals from Kabul with family or other support structures may be returned.”

The UNHCR spokesperson’s warning reflects the grim reality on the ground. Winter is lethally harsh in much of Afghanistan. Roads are impassable for several months out of the year in parts of the mountainous central and northern regions, making it difficult for relief agencies to get aid to Afghans in need. As a result, people starve and freeze to death.

Almost a quarter million Afghans are internally displaced at present, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Many of the displaced are stranded in IDP camps in the embattled southern and eastern parts of the country, beyond the reach of the central government and most aid agencies.

Reacting on his blog to the Independent (UK) headline “Immigration judges: ‘Afghanistan is not in a state of war’,” Kandahar-based journalist Alex Strick van Linschoten wrote:

I didn't really know what to do with the article except to formally and publicly invite the three judges who sat on the Immigration and Asylum Tribunal to stay with me down in Kandahar and take a look for themselves… Come have a stroll with me in the local market… Lovely place… and no war at all...

No word yet on whether the judges have accepted Alex’s generous invitation.

[Photo: An Afghan boy, who says he traveled to France from Afghanistan overland, is among the hundreds of people living at a makeshift settlement near the city of Dunkerque. UNHCR / H. J. Davies / July 2009]