The Afghanistan Crisis: Europe Braces for Evacuees

"PARIS -- Europe's largest nations have airlifted more than 9,000 Afghans out of their country in recent weeks and are bracing for the possibility that hundreds of thousands more will arrive, in what would be a major test of the region's ability to absorb another wave of immigrants from the Muslim world.

Officials are determined to avoid a repeat of the chaos of the last major migrant wave in 2015, when more than 1.3 million people from Syria, Afghanistan and other nations poured into Europe, fueling social and political upheaval across the continent.

A central challenge for authorities is to quickly and effectively screen new arrivals, who are coming from a conflict zone controlled by Taliban forces hostile to the West and where Islamist terror groups such as al Qaeda and Islamic State operate. Many lack passports or other reliable identification documents.

Already there have been issues. French and German authorities said this week they had flagged several evacuees as security risks, with France putting five of them under surveillance.

A bigger challenge looms as Afghans traveling by land routes are expected to reach the continent in what officials expect to be much larger numbers.

But the U.S. doesn't face the possibility that many more Afghans will attempt to reach its shores over land, as Europe did in 2015 when the Syrian civil war spurred migration from across the Middle East and beyond. That crisis divided the continent, fueling a populist backlash.

In the months that followed, Islamic State militants posing as refugees entered Europe and launched attacks in Paris and Brussels that killed 162 people.

French authorities said this week they placed five Afghan evacuees under surveillance after determining that one had links to the Taliban and four others were his associates. Germany said a few Afghans who had previously been deported after committing serious crimes slipped onto evacuation flights in Kabul organized by the German air force. U.K. officials blocked several people on the country's no-fly list from being evacuated on U.K. flights from Kabul.

European interior ministers are set to meet in Brussels next week to formalize a plan, involving more aid, increased security steps and some resettlements of Afghans deemed most at risk. Officials are attempting to agree on a common standard for who would count as a legal refugee if they reached the bloc and are working with the EU border force and Europol to provide heightened security screening for people looking to enter the EU.

The EU and its member states also are scaling up humanitarian aid as they aim to help Afghanistan's neighbors to host fleeing Afghans and prevent them coming to Europe.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Tuesday that Brussels would consider providing funds for EU member states who volunteer to take in Afghans, from journalists to human-rights activists, who are threatened by the Taliban.

That system, she said, would be voluntary, a departure from the divisive mandatory relocation program that was enacted in 2015 to distribute Syrian migrants across the bloc.

In Germany, the exodus of Afghans escaping the Taliban has prompted senior politicians, including some from Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, to warn about a repeat of the 2015-16 migration crisis.

"This time we must provide timely humanitarian help in the region, in the countries of origin," said Armin Laschet, the head of Ms. Merkel's conservative party and its candidate to replace her as chancellor, adding that "2015 must not repeat itself."" [1]

1. The Afghanistan Crisis: Europe Braces for Evacuees
Dalton, Matthew; Pancevski, Bojan; Norman, Laurence.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 26 Aug 2021: A.8.