Is Europe failing to absorb a new wave of Afghan immigrants?

• A wave of Afghan exodus to Europe has become inevitable.

  Reuters

• Fear of the future appears on the face of the newly displaced after their arrival in Germany.

  Reuters

• Europe is afraid of repeating its experience with the displaced Syrians.

  Getty

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At a time when Europe has begun to breathe a sigh of relief to some extent, after the huge wave of immigrants that knocked on its doors during the past few years, especially from Syria and Libya, due to the turbulent conditions in the two countries, a crisis is currently unfolding and warns of the influx of a new wave of immigrants due to the current conditions in Afghanistan. .

Writer and analyst Andreas Kluth, who served as editor-in-chief of the German economic newspaper "Handelsblatt Global", says in a report published by Bloomberg News Agency, that the scenario of the migrant crisis in Europe in 2015, which was characterized by the arrival of a large number of people to the European Union by sea, should not be repeated. the Mediterranean, or overland through southeastern Europe.

Kluth adds that there is a reluctance on the part of politicians across the EU as they watch the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, which could sooner or later be expected to cause a renewed exodus.

Worried about the elections

Among those European politicians, according to Kluth, are German chancellor candidates who are concerned about the national elections scheduled for September 26, and leaders such as Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, who has already ruled out accepting any refugees from Afghanistan, or French President Emmanuel Macron, who is demanding A "strong response" to any new influx of migrants.

They also include the leaders of Lithuania and Poland, who are now building a physical fence on their border with Belarus to keep refugees out.

Then there is Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, accused of rigging last year's elections and now a target of EU sanctions. In response, he is using refugees as leverage, bringing in migrants on planes from Iraq, including Afghans, and then pushing them towards the EU border.

Kluth says Lukashenko's use of humans as political leverage is ironic, but by no means unique.

He cited precedent, saying that although Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan struck a deal with the European Union in 2016 committing him to preventing refugees from crossing into Greece, he threatens to force migrants into the European Union whenever he gets into trouble with Brussels, Berlin, or Paris, or Athens.

He says that what the likes of Lukashenko and Erdogan have realized is that the migration file is "wrapped with human and geopolitical dynamite" and thus can be used as a weapon against the European Union, which they can detonate more destructively than any bomb.

He adds, "The autocratic rulers know that they can expose the European Union, which says it cares about people, by portraying it as weak or hypocritical or both."

This is the legacy of 2015, when nearly a million men, women and children, mostly Syrians but also Afghans and others, fled to Europe within a year.

These desperate people came in boats across the Aegean, walked across the Balkans, or rode in trucks that often became death traps.

xenophobia

In their large numbers, these refugees almost overwhelmed Greece, which was already in the midst of the euro crisis.

They openly turned the Hungarian government into xenophobic and anti-EU, rather than hiding it.

All this fuels populism across Europe, says Kluth, as it divides partners like Germany and Austria, and then the entire European Union, into irreconcilable camps over the question of how to deal with immigration in general.

One of the things that 2015 clearly did not do was incentivize the EU to tangibly reform the immigration system.

This still depends largely on the dysfunctional Dublin system, where refugees can apply for asylum only in the first country they actually enter the EU, at least officially.

This leaves the peripheries of the EU, Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece, as we have seen in the past, and possibly Latvia, Lithuania and Poland then to act on their own considerations.

The leaders of those countries face an awkward decision between accepting migrants and thus encouraging more to follow them, or violently pushing them back, as Greece is doing in the Aegean.

"Failure to control immigration has brought down empires before," says Kluth.

The European Union does not need to end in the same way.

Unlike the United States, the EU is unable or unwilling to deploy force when threatened, and is therefore doomed to either follow the US's lead or try to curry favor with governments in Africa and the Middle East, hoping to keep their people at home.

However, Europe in 2021 may prevent a repeat of what happened in 2015. But migration is a phenomenon that will repeat forever. The European Union, like ancient Rome, can do little to control it, and yet it has to pass its tests repeatedly, which are tests Europe may eventually fail.

Unlike the United States, the European Union is unable or unwilling to deploy force when threatened, and is therefore doomed to either follow the US's lead or try to curry favor with governments in Africa and the Middle East, hoping to keep their people at home.

• Tyrants realize that they can expose the European Union, which says it cares about people, by portraying it as weak or hypocritical or both.

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