The Taliban’s rapid capture of Afghanistan’s capital last Sunday has drawn worldwide attention. With millions forced to flee their homes, Britain’s offer to resettle 5,000 Afghans in the first year of a new resettlement scheme is meagre, particularly when put into the context of the UK government’s pivotal role in a bloody, 20-year war. F Clark examines the problems associated with the Afghan resettlement scheme and Britain’s draconian asylum policy.
Header image and all other photos by Tom Davies.
On Wednesday night in Cardiff, a crowd gathered outside the UK Home Office on Newport Road. People from different backgrounds and walks of life came together to welcome Afghan refugees, express anger towards the UK government’s resettlement scheme and hit out at the disastrous Nato occupation of the country.
Among the speakers were members of the Stop the War coalition and Black Lives Matter, a 13-year-old school girl, a 21-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, and former Member of the Senedd, Bethan Sayed – the only political figure present.
One of the speakers, Adam Johannes of the Stop the War coalition, critiqued the UK government’s recent resettlement scheme for Afghan refugees, which pledges to resettle just 5,000 Afghans in the first year.
Adam Johannes told the BBC: “I think we have an obligation, our country, having bombed Afghanistan for 20 years, to do everything we can to help people leading lives of desperation… fleeing from the chaos and carnage that we left behind.”
He called for an immediate halt to deportations and an immediate amnesty for Afghan asylum seekers so that they are given refugee status and a right to remain in the UK.
Also in the crowd was Ahmad Shirzai, a member of Cardiff University’s Afghan Society. He knows full well the struggle Afghanistan has faced, having moved to Wales from Afghanistan with his family to seek asylum when he was just two years old.
Watching the news right now is hard for Ahmad, not only because this is his country, but because many members of his extended family are still in Kabul.
“These past few days…even weeks, have been quite worrying,” Ahmad tells me. “I have been in contact with them [my family]…they’re mainly trying to stay at home and not go out too much.”
The Taliban has swiftly asserted authority in Afghanistan after more than 20 years of Nato-backed military presence, with the US and UK-led offensive in the country left defeated.
It is hard to fathom the scale of the situation in Afghanistan and the catastrophe left by the West: since the beginning of the year alone, 400,000 were forced from their homes, joining 2.9 million Afghans already internally displaced across the country at the end of 2020.
Despite having to flee when he was just a toddler, Ahmad naturally feels close to Afghanistan, having grown up hearing his parents’ stories of the country they were forced to leave.
“Even just watching [the news] makes me really upset, because I know that, you know, that’s my home, that’s my hometown,” says Ahmad. “I’d love to go back. I was hoping to go back this year, just to visit family, ‘cause I hadn’t seen them in a while… But now it’s hard to go back – It doesn’t seem like I’ll be going back anytime soon.”
Since the Taliban seized the capital Kabul, the main fear is for Afghan women and girls, as the Taliban forbade women from working and girls from going to school when they were last in power from 1996-2001.
Since the end of May, 80 percent of nearly a quarter of a million Afghans forced to flee their homes are women and children. One female journalist in Afghanistan described a scene where the streets of Kabul were littered with women’s shoes – abandoned in panic as women fled their workplaces.
Circulating social media are the devastating videos of Afghans clinging to moving planes – proof of their sheer desperation. Some lost their lives falling as they tried to cling to planes as they took off, begging to escape the country along with foreign employees on British and U.S planes.
At Kabul airport, 12 people have been killed since Sunday – and these are just the deaths that have made it to the news.
While foreign governments scramble to rescue their citizens working in Afghanistan, there is a clear sense of who is worthy of escape in their eyes, and who isn’t.
But even while media cameras focus on the chaotic airport scenes, hidden from the public view are the millions of Afghans trapped terrified in their homes, or those left internally displaced, with no homes, food or water, jobs or access to medical care.
And this is without considering the invisible wounds inflicted upon them: entire generations will be left scarred and traumatised from decades of Nato-led war and conflict.
In spite of all this, however, protesters have taken to the streets in several Afghan cities in recent days in a show of defiance against the Taliban.
At least 5 people have died in the protests, which were held to mark the 102nd anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from Britain, another instance when an imperialist force in the county was left defeated.
“They should take more responsibility”
Immigration and asylum is not devolved to Wales, so Wales will be part of the UK-wide resettlement scheme. According to BBC Wales – who asked all 22 local councils in Wales about their plans to house Afghan refugees – as of Wednesday morning about 24 houses had been offered, with 17 councils responding so far.
Wales has previously pledged to be a ‘Nation of Sanctuary’, though has acknowledged that ultimately Westminster has the final say on the issue. That said, this does not mean that the Welsh government cannot exert pressure on the UK government to accept more Afghans, as well as more asylum seekers generally, and there is also a need to ensure asylum seekers and refugees in Wales are offered as much support as possible once they reach Wales.
Latest figures show that there are just 2,734 asylum seekers in Wales receiving Section 95 support – a form of financial and housing assistance given to people in particular circumstances as they await the outcome of an asylum application. As a percentage figure, this equates to just 0.86% of Wales’ population.
Earlier this week, the UK government announced it will launch an Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme. The scheme will see up to 5,000 vulnerable Afghans resettled to the UK in its first year, with up to a total of 20,000 in the long-term.
Ahmad believes this figure doesn’t live up to the role Britain has played in Afghanistan. “I personally feel like they [UK government] should take more responsibility for the kind of damage they’ve caused,” Ahmad adds.
Following the U.S-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, somewhere in the region of 238,000 and 241,000 people have been killed in the Afghanistan and Pakistan war zone, and more than 71,000 of those killed have been civilians.
In 2019, the UK government and the British army were accused of numerous war crimes, including covering up the killing of children and the torturing of civilians in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In October 2012, a UK Special Forces soldier shot dead four young people in an Afghan village. Three of them were reported to be children. Any notion that Afghanistan was a “good” or “necessary” war is clearly a delusion.
As the Taliban swiftly captured city after city, with the Western-backed Afghan forces quickly surrendering, attention has also turned to the Doha peace agreement.
Struck between the US and the Taliban during the Trump administration 18 months ago, Joe Biden has honoured the agreement.
Central to the 2020 deal was that the Taliban – once funded by the West – agreed that Afghanistan would not be used by any of its members, other individuals, or terrorist groups to threaten US national security or that of its allies.
The US in return pledged to reduce its number of troops in Afghanistan from roughly 12,000 to 8,600 within 135 days, followed by a full Nato withdrawal by May 2021.
However, while the West is quick to lambast the Taliban’s treatment of women, the four-page document known as the ‘Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan’ does not even mention the protection of Afghan women’s rights. This was merely an opportunity for the west to pull out of a war they had grown tired of.
“Deeply disingenuous”
According to The Independent, the UK resettlement scheme has also been criticised by organisations who facilitate refugee resettlement for being “confusing” and “deeply disingenuous”.
The main criticism has been over the terminology used, as it is unclear whether this will include Afghans who are internally displaced, as well as those externally displaced.
Tim Naor Hilton, the chief executive of Refugee Action, stressed that it would be “deeply disingenuous” of the UK government to claim that any resettlement scheme would protect those “trapped in Afghanistan right now” if it would only include those who already have refugee status elsewhere.
“There is no legal way of claiming asylum”
Hussein Said works as a consultant for Asylum Justice, an organisation that fights for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers in Wales. He says the UK’s Afghan resettlement scheme, similarly to the Syrian scheme, will only work for a segment of those requiring help:
“It works for the women and children that fit that very narrow criteria… but this is going to be thousands and thousands of asylum seekers, and male asylum seekers – men who, you know, deserve just as much freedom [and] safety as women and children, who will be left to essentially risk their lives at the hands of smugglers [and] traffickers.” He also points out that prioritising women and children means that Afghan families will inevitably be torn apart.
Priti Patel has hinted that Afghans seeking refuge in the UK who arrive on small boats from across the Channel will be treated the same as any other migrants and that no exception would be made for those who opt for “irregular” routes, which again ignores the urgency of the situation in Afghanistan and the desperation of those trying to escape.
“I think the key thing a lot of people don’t realise is that, quite simply, there is no legal way of claiming asylum,” says Hussein. “There’s no way for asylum seekers, for Afghans who are in danger, to actually get to the UK without going through those illegal means… [there’s] no asylum visa – and I think a lot of people misunderstand that.”
Humanitarian organisations are also worried about the impacts of the Nationality and Borders Bill which was published in July. It has been called an “anti-refugee bill” by the Refugee Council, and Priti Patel has made no effort to hide her desire to make life difficult for those seeking sanctuary in Britain. Put simply, this bill is designed to punish those who have been forced to enter the country illegally, even in the absence of safe, legal alternatives.
Dominic Raab recently described Britain as “a country that has provided safe haven for those fleeing persecution” – but this is not a picture that will fit with the experiences of many who have attempted to seek safety here, particularly those fleeing Afghanistan.
Until 2016, the Home Office was returning refused asylum seekers to Afghanistan ‘en masse’ via monthly charter flights. Moreover, between 2009 and 2015, the Home Office deported 605 Afghans who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied minors.
There has also been a seemingly tougher approach toward Afghan asylum seekers compared to those from other countries. In the same period, only 6% of unaccompanied Afghan children were given refugee status, compared with 15% of other child asylum seekers.
Just in the past week, a five-year-old Afghan boy who fled the Taliban fell to his death after climbing through an open window on the top floor of a Sheffield hotel used to house refugees.
The Home Office had been told about safety concerns before housing young children there, according to The Guardian.
“I feel powerless”
Ahmad admits he feels “powerless” at times, but he and other members of Cardiff Afghan Society do what they can to show solidarity with friends and family back home.
Ahmad describes how the society has written to MPs, signed petitions, raised awareness on social media and have previously held fundraisers.
“Even the little things I can do, I feel like I’m obligated to do [them],” says Ahmad. “Because you know, I’m here and I’m safe in this country, and I’ve grown up here. I don’t know a lot of difficulties that my cousins and stuff face back home. So the least I can do is kind of help out here.”
Those who really hold the power to make a difference lack this same compassion, however.
The UK government has blood on their hands despite Afghanistan often being depicted as the “good” or “necessary” war. Instead it is another example of the barbaric reality of western imperialism.
This is not the first time Britain has invaded a country under the pretence of ‘humanitarian intervention’ and then left it in a state of chaos.
Millions who marched against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan two decades ago predicted the current catastrophe, yet were derided by the British establishment at the time.
Some politicians are now calling for yet more UK military intervention, under the pretext of defending women.
If the current debacle caused by the West isn’t reason enough to oppose such calls, the treatment of Afghan refugees tells its own story as well.
While western armed forces can swiftly exit from Afghanistan, they have failed to give the Afghan people the same luxury.
