Defence`s Feeds

The situation and number of Afghan migrants in Europe differed from country to country in 2016. The division lay, roughly, along the Alps. To the south, the number of incoming migrants, though still high, dropped but requests for asylum continued to rise in some countries. Living conditions, meanwhile, deteriorated sharply. To the north, much fewer new Afghan migrants arrived – particularly after the March 2016 EU-Turkey deal on migration – while the number of asylum requests also grew in certain countries while they fell sharply in others. The general treatment of and sentiment towards migrants became less generous. Among those Afghans stuck along borders in the south or threatened with deportation in the north, hopelessness has been growing. AAN’s Thomas Ruttig gives an overview. (See part 1 – on figures, trends and a changed environment here: Afghan Exodus: Afghan asylum seekers in Europe (1) – the changing situation). Part 3, a case study of Germany, will follow in two days.)

The following colleagues provided detail, mainly about their home countries: Kaisa Pylkkanen (Finland), Fabrizio Foschini (Italy) and the Guardian’s Sune Engel Rasmussen (Denmark); AAN colleagues Martine van Bijlert (Netherlands), Kate Clark (UK), Jelena Bjelica (Serbia, Romania, Croatia and Hungary) as well as Sari Kouvo and Ann Wilkens from the AAN advisory board (Sweden).

The research for this dispatch is funded by the Kabul office of the German foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and is a part of a dispatch series for a joint publication with FES. See also the paper ‘“We Knew They Had No Future in Kabul”: Why and How Afghan Families Decide to Leave’ that was part of an earlier project with FES.

The situation for Afghans in Mediterranean countries

As a result of tighter border controls and stricter migrations policies, many refugees are now stuck between the almost hermetically closed outer borders of the EU as well as between individual EU countries. A significant number of them are Afghans; most of them are now stranded in Turkey, Greece and Serbia. (The countries on the Iberian peninsula do not play a role here as they are too far from the main entry route across the Aegean Sea in the eastern Mediterranean region.)

Turkey

Turkey hosted between 111,000 and 160,000 Afghan migrants in the summer of 2016. (1) As AAN reported in September 2016, they came with different strategies and aims. Many thousands of them have stayed in Turkey and built an expatriate community that both aids and exploits those passing through. Some of them diversified their ‘business’ following the EU-Turkey deal, branching out into a broad array of activities, from renting out accommodation and arranging jobs for their compatriots, to drug-running. Others have opted for legal resettlement in Turkey. The country operates several ‘deportation centres’, including in Pehlivanköy in the European part and Erzurum on the north coast (see here) as well as in the extreme east, near the borders with Syria and Iran. Access for UNHCR, journalists and volunteers is limited.

Greece

Greece has become one of the main victims of the EU’s failure to develop a distribution system for arriving asylum seekers among its member states. While more asylum seekers arrived in 2016 (although in lower numbers than in 2015), only a small number of them were relocated to other EU countries (for more figures, see part 1 of this dispatch).

As a result of this failure – as well as the fences built along parts of its Turkish land border near the triangle with Bulgaria – there were 63,000 migrants stuck in Greece as of December 2016, 49,000 of them on its mainland in over forty camps. Around 3,000 of the total were children. Accommodation facilities are overcrowded, with people sleeping outdoors and many without access to drinking water. This is particularly the case on the Greek islands near the Turkish coast from where most of the Afghan migrants in 2015 crossed over into the EU, but also in the capital, Athens. (This website has some vivid visual impressions about the situation on the Greek mainland) It has been repeatedly reported how under-age refugees, among them Afghan boys, have been forced into the sex trade. The EU, according to this report, does not want Greece to ferry any migrants to its mainland, as this could be interpreted as a reopening of the Aegean route.

The overcrowded conditions have led to several riots in camps, growing tensions with parts of the local population and attacks by anti-immigrant groups. According to a media report in December 2016, 13,000 of those registered in Greek refugee camps are unaccounted for and could have slipped further north into Europe, according to European immigration officials. At the same time, there is still a wide array of volunteer support for the migrants (see here and here).

Again, there is no official data on how many Afghans are among the migrants in Greece (read here or here). The number of Afghan asylum seekers was relatively low, along the 2015 figure which was 1,545. (2) But given what is known, Afghans make up a more significant number of those staying there.

According to the UNHCR, one measure by the Greek asylum authority was important “for Afghans in particular”: a re-registration campaign that was started on 8 June 2016 open to those who entered Greece between 1 January 2015 and 20 March 2016. As a result, over 15,500 asylum-seekers on the Greek mainland received temporary cards, valid for one year, that allow them to reside legally in Greece while awaiting a final decision on their asylum applications. It also gives them the right to access services and should help identify those eligible for family reunification or relocation. The particular importance for Afghans point to their significant number, but also to their dire situation as, according to the UNHCR, the initial entry documents of most of them, known as “police notes,” had expired. As a result, their presence in Greece had technically become illegal, which could have resulted in arrest and possible deportation. A likely result of this was that Greece had the second largest number of Afghans voluntarily returning to their country in 2016 after Germany; this number rose from 152 in 2015 to 1,257 in 2016, according to IOM figures.

Many Afghans are thought to have applied for these cards mainly to avoid possible deportation to Turkey, as many still aim to travel onwards if the chance arises. Deportations from Greece to Turkey have, however, not happened – apart from a few exceptions – as Greece does not consider Turkey a safe third country.

Italy

In Italy, Afghans have not even been among the top 10 nationalities of asylum seekers since 2012 (here, p 89). Their numbers have grown steadily, however, over the last few years, peaking in 2015 with 3,975 applicants. The closure of the Balkan route in early 2016 stopped that trend again. Asylum requests by Afghans per month fell from 665 in January 2016 to 118 in August. Although their number started to grow again in later months, altogether fewer Afghans are likely to have applied for asylum at the end of 2016, compared to 2015.

Numbers of Afghan asylum seekers may be relatively low, however the recognition rate for them in Italy is high (over 97 per cent in 2015, with 3,280 Afghans granted protection). Most of the Afghans arrive and apply for asylum in north-eastern Italy. Trieste, and on a smaller scale Udine and Gorizia, on the eastern border with Slovenia, host a comparative majority of Afghan refugees. (3) Afghan asylum applicants usually wait around six to nine months before their asylum hearing. After the recognition, the duration of state support can vary from a few days to more than a year, depending on the area and the type of reception facility the refugees are hosted. (4) Some Italian prefectures allow them to remain in the reception system with the same benefits granted before the hearing for up to six months after the recognition, while others urge them to become fully independent the very day they are issued their asylum documents. Only a fraction of those who receive the protection can, once they exit this primary reception system, access specific projects known as SPRAR, that provide refugees with additional state support of up to one year and spread across the country.

In addition to the Afghans who travel directly to Italy, there is a sizeable back-flow of “Dublin cases” (5) from central and northern European countries. The BBC reported in September 2016 that in the northern province of Udine alone, there had been about 5,000 migrants entering from Austria since the start of that year alone, “about 90% of them… from Pakistan or Afghanistan and “the overwhelming majority” young men. Most of these Dublin cases eventually obtain protection in Italy, at the price of longer waiting times and considerable stress over the fear of being sent back if there is another country of first entry, from where they would often face a further deportation to Afghanistan.

For the most part, Afghans asylum seekers in Italy were until now transitory refugees many of whom, even after they had obtained their asylum documents, continued to try to reach Scandinavian countries, Germany or the UK. Apart from some early Hazara refugees who came in the 1990s, Italy does not have a large Afghan diaspora into which substantial numbers of newcomers could easily integrate and access the job market. Although this may slowly be changing, especially in big cities such as Rome or Milan, these communities’ capacity may not be sufficient to accommodate the growing number of Afghans with Italian asylum documents who have returned in the last two years after facing increasing difficulties in finding residence and work – even informally – in other European and who, in Italy, are now quickly being exited from the reception system.

Serbia

Serbia hosted between 6,200 and 10,000 migrants by the end of November 2016, as more continued to arrive despite the closure of the Balkan route in early 2016 (see AAN reporting here). By 31 October 2016, the Serbian Asylum Office had registered 10,201 individuals who expressed their intention to seek asylum, of whom 4,447 were Afghans. According to Serbian policy, a foreigner can express “the intention to seek asylum”; s/he is then “recorded” (rather than registered). The asylum seeker then needs to report to an asylum official or asylum centre within 72 hours to register the actual request (see also here).

A recent media report from Belgrade said that, according to the local branch of Save The Children, on average 100 additional refugees had entered the country per day throughout December 2016, many of them Afghans. In total 40 per cent were children and one quarter of these children were unaccompanied; an estimated 75 per cent of the unaccompanied children came from Afghanistan. The newspaper reported about a group of children who were respectively three, nine, ten and eleven years old. In August 2016, it was reported that “a hunter” in Serbia had shot a 20-year old Afghan refugee who had illegally crossed the Bulgarian border.

UNHCR Serbia, in its updated report of December 2016, said it and its partners had “encountered” around 6,900 refugees, asylum-seekers and migrants in the country. Over 5,500 (ie 80 per cent) were accommodated in thirteen governmental facilities, while the remainder were sleeping rough in Belgrade’s city centre or at the border with Hungary. UNHCR Serbia estimates that 25 per cent of the former (ca 1,500) are Afghans, while they constitute a majority of the latter (ie at least 700).

Bulgaria

Bulgaria, where a small part of the border with Turkey has not yet been fenced, has become one of the last entry points into the EU from Turkey. But it is not an easy access route. The Politico blog called the country “Europe’s most hostile port of entry.”

By November 2016, Bulgaria reportedly had 13,000 migrants within its territory, “most of them Afghans.” There is a growing number of reports about sub-standard government facilities for them as well as about maltreatment by security forces. Human Rights Watch, Oxfam and other organisations have reported how Bulgarian law enforcement officials subject asylum seekers to violence at the Turkish, Romanian and Serbian borders; refugees regularly report beatings and dog bites, having their money and personal belongings stolen and a “lack of adequate food and unsanitary conditions” in detention facilities. A number of migrants AAN encountered in Belgrade in June and November 2016 reported similar incidents (see reports here and here)

The Bulgarian government, like the Hungarian government, further condones paramilitary vigilante groups, some of them self-employed, others funded by the government, which hunt illegal migrants. These groups even attract activists from other EU countries’ right-wing nationalist groups and are regularly accused of violence against migrants.

In November, riots broke out at Bulgaria’s largest camp, Harmanli, near the Turkish and Greek border. It was inhabited, at that point, by 3,000 people, most of them reportedly Afghan. The place had been beset by anti-immigrant groups, and the authorities had reacted by curbing the migrants’ right of movement. Following the riots, the Bulgarian government took a number of measures to lower the number of migrants. Similarly to Greece, Bulgaria started urging incoming migrants to apply for asylum upon arrival. As a result, applications increased by 82 per cent from the second to the third quarters of 2016, to an absolute figure of 6,365 – almost half of the new applicants (3,145) coming from Afghanistan. It also started pushing for a bilateral readmission agreement with Afghanistan that would allow it to send back rejected asylum seekers. According to media reports, Bulgaria cooperates closely with Turkey: Turkey takes back refugees who pass the bilateral border illegally, are picked up on the Bulgarian side and immediately returned. It is unclear which refugees are allowed in to request asylum and which are immediately returned.

Romania

EU member-country Romania did not play much of a role as a transit country, as long as the Balkan route was open. Reaching Romania via Bulgaria would require crossing the River Danube. Throughout 2015, 96 Afghans filed an asylum application there, out of a total of 1267 applicants (see here and here). Figures dropped even further in 2016, with only ten Afghans applying in each of the first and the second quarters, and 30 in the third quarter of 2016.

Romania could potentially become part of a secondary route, due to the daily changes in the movement strategies in the Balkan countries, as it has not yet closed its borders. Romania – in line with Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic – voted against compulsory EU reception quotas for asylum seekers in September 2015 (see here for political background). On a national level, however, measures were taken to raise the capacity on the border and to offer basic supplies as well as medical and humanitarian aid, in case more migrants started coming.

Croatia

Croatia was a major transit country along the Balkan corridor, but has become relative quiet again following its closure. There is some permeability at the border between Serbia and Croatia (see AAN reporting here), but only a small number of Afghans applied for asylum in Croatia in 2015. Of the six who did so in 2015, four were rejected, one was give refugee status, and one case seems to be pending. In 2016, the number of applications rose to 370 (first to third quarter).

The central divide: Austria and Hungary

Austria and Hungary constitute a divide between the south and the north, but at the same time the Balkan route extends into both countries. Both countries were among the top receivers in 2015 and were still processing large numbers of that year’s asylum seekers in 2016. Hungary adopted a very harsh attitude to prevent new arrivals from coming in, while Austria took a comparatively more moderate stance (more detail on legal changes in part 1: here). Germany also belongs in this group (more detail in the case study in part 3).

Austria

In 2015, Austria received the fourth-highest number of asylum applicants (88,900) from all countries of origin (see here), following Germany, Sweden and Hungary. In 2016, although numbers of all asylum seekers – including Afghans – dropped, it remained the fifth largest recipient country, and the second largest for Afghans in terms of new asylum requests. It was unclear how many of these large numbers of individuals ended up staying in the country; in 2015, half of all migrants entering Austria subsequently left the country again, according to official government figures.

Numbers of Afghan asylum applicants went down by more than half, from 24,480 in 2015 (among them 4,000 unaccompanied minors in the first half of the year alone) to 11,289 by the end of November 2016. The number of unaccompanied minors dropped particularly sharply, to 287. Afghans – of whom there is a 35,000-strong community in Austria – are relatively well integrated. 3,800 of them (11 per cent) had a taxable job, ie one not in the low-wage sector, in mid-2016.

Hungary

Hungary, in 2015, received a total of 174,400 asylum applications – the second-most of any European country – of which 45,600 came from Afghanistan. Most of those who had entered Hungary in 2015 never intended to stay, transiting Hungary on their way to Western Europe, without ever registering.

In 2016, Hungary dropped out of Europe’s top ten, receiving 28,803 asylum applications, 38 per cent of them from Afghans (almost 11,000) (source: here). This decrease was largely a result of Hungary’s decision to fence its entire southern borders (with Serbia and Croatia) to implement toughened laws that, in essence, violate EU legislation. In July 2016, a new law came into force that allows the Hungarian police to automatically ‘push back’ anyone who is caught within eight kilometres of the border – without registering their data or allowing them to submit an asylum claim. In early 2017, the government introduced mandatory detention for all migrants that begin the asylum procedure.

Of the 2015 applicants, only 146 were granted asylum, according to government statistics quoted in this report. Another 362 were permitted to stay, but unlike recognised asylum seekers, they do not receive state subsidies. The comparatively low number of asylum applicants given by Hungary is very likely limited to those who managed to enter illegally, were caught and then asked for asylum.

With the border closed on the Serbian side, Hungary has still allowed a small ‘opening’ through which migrants can enter to apply for asylum – but in very limited numbers and under extremely harsh conditions. Since October 2016, a decreasing number of migrants – currently 20 migrants per working day (a maximum of 100 per week, down from originally around 700 per week) – are allowed to register an asylum request at the Horgoš and Kelebija border crossings. The process prioritises families with children and unaccompanied women, as they have the greatest chance of success, while largely overlooking single men (who constitute the majority of Afghans in Serbia). The number of overall asylum cases registered in Hungary amounted to 1,610 cases in the third quarter of 2016, dropping significantly from the first (6,830) and second quarters (14,915).

These asylum claims at the border can, according to Human Rights Watch, be dismissed under Hungarian law without any consideration of the merits of the case, and often are, within the space of a single day, since Hungary has declared Serbia a safe third country – so far, the only EU country to do so. In early 2017, reports emerged that migrants were being kept in the ‘no-man’s land’ right next to its fence in freezing temperatures.

Afghans in selected ‘northern’ EU countries

After the closure of the Balkan route and the implementation of the EU-Turkey deal in early 2016, the number of asylum seekers – and Afghan among them – dropped significantly in the EU countries north of the Alps. This includes the three Nordic EU member-countries, the three Benelux countries and Austria, all of which had registered particularly high numbers in 2015, as large numbers of migrants were ferried through the Balkans and into the EU.

In the northern and some north-western EU countries, the numbers of Afghan asylum seekers dropped significantly between the fourth quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016. This seems to have been a result of both border controls reinstated in late 2015 (while further south, mainly in Germany and Austria, migrants continued to arrive in large numbers) and, possibly, a more speedy registration process than in 2015. Between 2015 and 2016, numbers in Finland decreased by 89 per cent, from 4,300 to 490; in the Netherlands by 69 per cent, from 1,950 to 600; in Denmark by 58 per cent, from 1,680 to 620; and in non-EU Norway by 97 per cent, from 4,905 to 150. Over the second and third quarters, these figures dropped even further: in Finland to 60 and 80; in Norway to 80 and 85; in Denmark to 280 and 130; in the Netherlands to 170 (third quarter figures were not available, as Afghanistan was not in the top-five countries of origin anymore). The same was true in Sweden, although on a higher level, where numbers dropped by over 90 per cent, from over 41,500 in total in 2015 to 2,969 in 2016.

Sweden

Sweden closed its borders and tightened its asylum laws in general leading to a general drop in asylum applications, including from Afghans. The 2016 figure of Afghan asylum seekers was closer again to the 2014 level when 3,104 Afghans lodged such an application. The January 2017 this figure was at 193 applications, suggesting that the 2016 level has stabilised. In the peak year of 2015, Sweden had a particularly high number of Afghan minors who applied for asylum. These 23,480 cases represented more than half of all Afghan cases (see earlier AAN analysis here). This figure dropped to 665 in 2016.

Asylum seekers in Sweden from 2010 to 2017

Between January and October 2016, in 44 per cent of Afghan asylum cases, residency permits were granted. For January 2017 (with 669 cases decided) this rate was almost unchanged at 45 per cent. In the same months, the acceptation rate for minors was at 82 per cent (with 191 cases, Afghanistan representing almost half of all 439 asylum cases of minors). By 1 February 2017, the country had altogether 36,895 Afghans living in the reception centres of the migration authorities, among them 17,195 unaccompanied minors. (Find a table showing the number of Afghan asylum applicants in the country between 2000 and 2015: here)

A reassessment by the Swedish government of the security situation in Afghanistan (in the form of a directive from the migration authority, see here), however, concluded that security had deteriorated overall, but that the conflict affected different parts of the country and different population groups in different ways. At the same time, the Swedish publish perception about and compassion with Afghans in Sweden has deteriorated due to the involvement of Afghan asylum seekers in some highly publicised crimes, including battering and sexual offences (media reports here, here, and here).

For some in the particular group of unaccompanied minors, the government brought improvements on the way in 2016. It suggested that the minors whose asylum applications had been rejected and who would be deported when they reached 18 years of age, could stay to finish their secondary schooling (see here). They would also be granted residency if they had been able to find employment. By the end of November 2016, around 1,600 asylum applications by minors were approved, while around 500 were rejected. The government’s suggestion would only apply to those who were already in secondary school. The suggestion needs parliamentary approval. By the end of November 2016, around 1,600 asylum applications by Afghan minors were approved, while around 500 were rejected. This indicates a substantive backlog of such cases that still need to be processed.

The tighter asylum laws in general, together with increasing tendency by the asylum authorities to carry out age reviews resulting in ‘minors’ being re-defined as ‘adults’ and thereby eligible for deportation, has put increasing pressure on young, Afghan asylum seekers. The fact that some of the Afghans resided in Iran before attempting to seek asylum in Sweden, but will be deported to Afghanistan if their asylum claims are rejected adds to the pressure. Groups working with asylum seekers, including the non-profit organisation Ensamkommandes förbund and the network of Vi står inte ut have warned against depression, suicide attempts and suicides among especially young, Afghan male asylum seekers. Reuters reported about one case of a young Afghan already last year. In April 2016, Mustafa Ansari committed suicide in the centre for young asylum-seekers in the southern Swedish village of Svangsta. The report said: “Ansari, who had no papers […] was described in the autopsy as 17” and that “he was suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. Friends say he desperately missed his family. He waited months for a meeting to process his claim, but the agency cancelled one meeting and messed up the venue for the other” (see here). Later in 2016, one of the main Swedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter reported that close to 40 per cent of the unaccompanied minors (many of whom are Afghans) seeking psychiatric support with health services in Stockholm had suicidal thoughts. Reuters quoted Swedish migration agency records that showed asylum-seekers threatened or attempted suicide at least 500 times between January 2014 and end-August 2016.

The trend has continued in 2017. Ahmad Zaki Khalil, an Afghan working with asylum seekers in Sweden told the BBC’s Farsi service on 8 February 2017 that the three last suicides happened in January, and on 4 and 7 February. He was quoted as saying that he believed the lack of papers that proof they were minors might have been the reason for the three youth’s suicides. On 9 February 2017 the website Norway Today quoted Mahboba Madadi from Ensamkommandes forbund as saying that “in recent weeks, seven people attempted to commit suicide and three of them succeeded. They were all from Afghanistan, all boys […]. The migrants were all under 18 and were at different housing centres across Sweden. Khalil was quoted as saying he believed that the lack of papers proving their status as minors may have be the reason for the recent suicide attempts. In early February, the Swedish mainstream daily Göteborgs-Posten (one report here) raised an alarm that the suicides were not only planned individually, but that “group suicides” among “refugee children” were planned over social media.

Netherlands

The Netherlands had a relatively low number of Afghan asylum seekers. During 2015, a total of 2,680 Afghans requested asylum (6.0% of all 45,035 cases) according to government figures. This number includes first-time asylum requests (2,550), repeated requests (310) and requests for family reunification (85). In 2016, until 30 November, the total number of asylum requests had dropped by more than half, to 18,695, while Afghan cases decreased slightly less by percentage – to 1,345 (7.2%). Of these, 1,010 were first requests, 335 were repeated requests and 50 were family reunifications. Afghan asylum seekers were, for a brief while, in the Dutch top three countries of origin in the first quarter 2016 (with 600 applicants), whereas they were not even among the top five throughout 2015.

With around 44,000 people, the Netherlands hosts one of the largest Afghan communities in Europe. There are 33,058 (76%) first generation arrivals, while 10,674 (24%) are second generation, meaning they were born in the Netherlands (this figure is from 1 January 2015). The Netherlands (together with Germany) hosts a relatively high proportion of the PDPA elite, many of whom left Afghanistan in the 1990s. Due to a strict implementation of article 1F of the Refugee Charter, all Afghans who worked for KhAD, the intelligence service under the communist government, or who are otherwise suspected of having been part of a chain of command responsible for torture, have been blocked from receiving asylum. The Dutch government has, over the years, tried to deport several of these Afghans. There have been several cases of trials for alleged war crimes (see AAN analysis here).

The Netherlands has a specific policy in place for ‘westernised girls’ who come from countries like Afghanistan: girls over ten years of age, who have not been given a protection status but who have spent at least the last eight years in the country and who are now so westernised they would face problems if returned, can be allowed to stay, together with their families (this is, however, not a given rule; decisions are taken on a case-by-case basis). This policy came into being in 2011, after an upheaval over the intended deportation of a teenage Afghan girl. The Dutch minister responsible for asylum policies estimated in April 2011 that, at the time, there were around 400 girls who might match this criteria.

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom remained relatively untouched by the massive 2015/16 influx of migrants, due to its geographical position and to earlier efforts to deter migrants (made after peak numbers of asylum applications, circa 84,000, in 2002, see here). However, for many refugees, the UK was their destination of choice. Thousands of them gathered at the mainland entrance to the Eurotunnel, near the French city of Calais, seeking to illegally board lorries and trains (here a media report where this resulted in an Afghan fatality). This included many Afghans, among whom a proportionally large number were minors. In October 2016, the UK took in 750 children, including many Afghans, from an unofficial camp near Calais known as the ‘Jungle’ when it was closed by French police amidst violent protests. This was highly unusual. The UK normally only accepts claims for asylum from people who have reached Britain.

Between January and September 2016, the UK had registered the highest number of asylum applications of all nationalities in the first three-quarters of a year since 2004, with a total of 33,960. This is a reflection of the Europe-wide developments since 2015. Although relatively few migrants reached Britain compared with other countries, there was still a noticeable boost in UK numbers. In the fourth quarter of 2016, this trend ceased, though, with numbers lower by more 25 per cent compared to the second quarter of the year (from 10,231 to 7,146).

Those seeking asylum in the UK are encouraged to make a claim as soon as they arrive. Decisions usually should take a matter of weeks. While waiting for an asylum decision, there is no automatic state support. Those whose bids are successful are given ‘refugee status’ or, if the application is on human rights grounds, ‘humanitarian protection’: they have the right to work and claim state benefits as well as to seek family reunion (not available for under 18 year-olds). After five years, if it is still considered unsafe for applicants to return to their country of origin, they can apply for ‘Indefinite Leave to Remain’ in the UK.

Those whose claims are rejected can appeal in a hearing before an immigration judge. If that is rejected, they can usually only make a second appeal if they can present fresh evidence. If a claim is rejected, people are expected to make arrangements to leave the country, or they may be forcibly deported.

The number of Afghans among asylum seekers in 2016 was low compared to other countries, with 2,567 applications, around 7.5 per cent of all applications, but this still made them the fourth largest group (they had ranked only sixth a year earlier, in September 2015). Among unaccompanied, asylum-seeking children, however, as in Sweden, Afghans represented the largest national group, with 783 cases registered by September 2016 (circa 25 per cent), out of a total of 3,144. Many, perhaps most of those had come from the ‘Jungle’ in Calais.

France

France is also an outlier in the trend in 2016, as the number of asylum applicants did not drop as in most other European countries. Throughout the year, it had constantly had the third-highest number of overall asylum applications per month between 6,120 and 7,655. As a result of Europe-wide events, Afghanistan was back in the top ten of France’s main countries of origin in 2015 (ranked at number ten) with 2,122 registered Afghan “requests for international protection” in total; the protection rate was high, with 80.3 per cent. In 2014, Afghanistan was still on rank 31, with only 472 Afghans claiming protection (see here, pp 6, 37, 42, 54). In 2015, Afghanistan also was the most important country of origin for asylum seeking minors (14.6%) for France.

In its 2015 annual report, the French asylum authority OFPRA accredited the increase in asylum applications from Afghans also to the influx into the Calais ‘Jungle’ and Paris. When these camps were shut down in 2016, those inmates not allowed in by the UK were forced to apply for asylum in France. Also, as AAN heard in Italy, many Afghans prefer France over Italy as a destination, also due to relatively high recognition rates for Afghans. This contributed to the increase of Afghans applying for asylum. Their figure by the end of the third quarter in 2016, 4,455, already surpassed the 2015 total. According to IOM figures, 118 Afghan asylum seekers returned voluntarily to their country from France in 2016 (2015: 9), and there were no forced returns from France since 2009.

A brief outlook

With numbers of incoming migrants having dropped significantly, many European countries have speeded up the processing of the large backlog of asylum requests (1.2 million in total), while requiring those still not registered to do so. It can be expected, therefore, that the overall number of rejected asylum seekers will continue to grow. Although all applicants have the right to appeal, which, if exercised, would extend the duration of their stay considerably, also the number of Afghans with a last instance rejection will grow; as a result, the numbers of returns – voluntary or not – is likely to grow throughout 2017.

For those stuck between closed borders in southern and south-eastern Europe it has become almost impossible to reach their favoured destinations north of the Alps, mainly Germany, northern countries or the UK. If the EU remains unable to agree on a distribution quota for all countries, and with the Dublin regulation increasingly being applied again, the danger of so-called ‘chain deportation’ arises once again. If some countries chose to deport asylum seekers across outer EU borders (as Hungary does in the case of Serbia), they might once again end up in the country they had tried to flee from. The German Institute for Human Rights had already warned this might happen in a position paper published after the EU-Turkey deal was concluded – not only for Syrians (pushed back by Turkey to Syria), but also explicitly for Afghans (working translation by AAN):

For non-Syrian asylum seekers, who, for example, had fled from Afghanistan or Iraq, there also is the danger that they might be deported from Turkey back to their countries of origin, in breach of the Geneva Refugee Convention and the European Human Rights Convention.

Italy and Greece, both in economic crisis, will continue to have to carry the biggest share of the burden of accommodating asylum seekers. This might further strain their social systems and possibly result in a negative change of attitude among larger parts of the population vis-à-vis the migrants, with comparatively small but vocal xenophobic movements already active.

 

(1) An AAN dispatch by guest author Noah Arjomand in September 2016 pointed to UNHCR statistics according to which there were 3,109 Afghan refugees and 107,655 Afghan asylum seekers in Turkey at the end of July 2016. A July 2016 report by Amnesty International (AI) report said that “Turkey hosts more than 400,000 non-Syrian refugees“ while a European Parliament document from December 2016 estimated that 40 per cent of non-Syrian refugees in Turkey were Afghans. Putting these two figure together, that would bring the number of Afghans in Turkey to over 160,000.

(2) Eurostat only publishes the top three countries of origin for each EU member-state per quarter. There, Afghanistan was in the top three for Greece only in the third quarter (with 670 applications); in the first and second quarter, Afghanistan had less than 480 resp. 620 applications.

(3) One unlucky Afghan asylum seeker was killed in the summer 2016 earthquake in Amatrice, in central Italy.

(4) In Italy, there is no uniform reception system. Governmental first reception centres can be managed by public local entities, consortia of municipalities and other public or private bodies specialised in the assistance of asylum applicants (more detail here).

(5) This term refers to asylum seekers in the EU who, according to a EU regulation, can be sent back to their first EU country of entry (if registered there) in case they apply for asylum elsewhere. This regulation was adopted in Dublin in 2003 (see more here).

 

 

 

 

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Russian company United Engine Corporation (UEC) has designed a comprehensive after-sales technical support programme for the Indian Navy's RD-33MK fighter engines.

Americas

• Northrop Grumman has announced the first successful flight of the UH-60V Black Hawk helicopter. An upgrade from the UH-60L model, the latest configuration includes a digital cockpit provided by Northrop, and fitted with the Future Airborne Capability Environment standard, allowing integration of new avionics equipment in the future. The modernization program will be carried out on the US Army’s UH-60L helicopter fleet, and based on the AH-1Z and E-2D Advanced Hawkeye upgrades performed for the USMC and Navy.

Middle East & North Africa

• An Israeli Defense Ministry report has revealed that Israeli manufacturers have earned about $1.03 billion since 2010 from projects related to Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program. Last year saw a total of $258 million in contracts, mostly for fighter helmets, representing a 33% increase in procurement over previous years. Big winners in 2016 were Elbit Systems and its US partner Rockwell Collins, which are jointly manufacturing the state-of-the-art helmet for the F-35.

Europe

• German initiatives to deepen defensive ties with its neighbors continues as it moves forward with a plan set up a joint fleet of Lockheed Martin Corp C-130J transport planes with France and join a Netherlands-led fleet of Airbus A330 tanker planes. The plans join other collaborative agreements with Norway, Romania and the Czech Republic, and come at a time when NATO members face increasing pressure from the United States to spend more for their own military and reach NATO’s target of devoting 2 percent of gross domestic product to defense spending.

• Airbus will breath a sigh of relief after an investigation into an oil leak that grounded a A400M transporter which was carrying a German government minister on board does not point to a fundamental new problem with the plane. Initial reports suggested that the leak appeared to be linked to the hydraulic system used to adjust the turbine blades in one of the four powerful A400M engines. However, it is now suggested that the leak had been found between the propellers and the nacelle, or engine housing, which are part of the power system but not components of the engine itself. Last week’s breakdown was on a trip that was meant to showcase the aircraft’s capabilities as Airbus seeks to win back confidence in the troubled A400M project.

• A subsidiary of the state-run Ukrainian defense manufacturer Ukroboronprom -Artem- has recently test-fired new missiles from MI-8MSB helicopters. Built for the Ukrainian Air Force, the 80mm weapons are designed to integrate with attack helicopters to engage ground targets as well as air platforms, including enemy rotorcraft. Testers fired new missiles individually using starter kits to hit pre-determined targets. The kits have a ripple-fire capability, which can discharge all units in half a second.

• Engine-maker Rolls Royce has posted a record headline loss of $5.8 billion on Tuesday, as a drop in Sterling after Brexit and a fine to settle corruption charges ended a rather difficult year. The company had already undergone restructuring following a series of profit warnings. Rolls said that the company will now need to make further cuts after stating that its underlying profit halved to $1.01 billion last year, which actually beat analysts expectations.

Asia Pacific

• The South Korean military is considering its own test of a precision-guided cruise missile in response to Pyongyang’s latest ballistic missile test, a military official confirmed on Monday. It has been suggested that Seoul may offer the public a behind-the-scenes look at the Hyeonmu missile, in order to demonstrate how North Korea would be punished for any further provocation. Seoul is also considering moving up the scheduled live-fire drill involving a long-range air-to-surface high precision guided missile in another show of force against the North.

• India’s Ministry of Defense has announced their successful interception of an incoming ballistic missile in the exo-atmosphere as they develop a two-layered ballistic missile defense system. The target mimicked a hostile incoming ballistic missile and was launched from a ship in the Bay of Bengal, with the interceptor launched from Kalam Island. Additional details of the test remained undisclosed.

Today’s Video

• Ukraine’s new 80mm air missiles:

Polish PM-84 Glauberyt Submachine Gun

Aircraft carrier "São Paulo" (ex R99 Foch, built in France between 1957 and 1960) was incorporated into the Brazilian Navy in 2000, based on an opportunity purchase from the French National Navy, for US$30 million — no aircraft were included in the price — with the primary purpose of replacing the former "Minas Gerais" Light-Aircraft, at the end of its useful life, and providing the evolution of airborne operations using fixed wing aircraft and A-4 Skyhawk jet propulsion.

Although it already has 37 years of active service at the moment of acquisition, the Ship fulfilled its mission in the first years in activity by the Brazilian fleet, enabling the Navy to acquire the qualification to operate high performance aircraft embarked.

After several attempts to recover operational capacity of the brazil aircraft carrier "NAe Sao Paulo" (A 12), the Brazil Admiralty concluded that the modernization would require high financial investment contain technical uncertainties and would require a long completion period and decided to demobilize the environment, over the next three years.

A program to obtain a new ship-aerodrome x aircraft set will occupy the Navy's third acquisition priority, following the PROSUB / Nuclear Program and the Tamandaré Corvette Construction Program. The cost of acquiring this new binomial will be substantially lower than the cost of the modernization of the "Sao Paulo" and of the obtaining new aircraft compatible with this aircraft carrier. The AF-1 aircraft are expected to be at the end of their life when São Paulo ends its modernization.

NAe : Navio Aerodromo
Source

Tag: aircraft carrierSao PaoloR99 FochFrench Navy

An internal Defence Ministry report reveals more details about an unfolding scandal at a Baden-Württemberg barracks involving "sadistic rituals". The internal report seen by Spiegel and DPA describes a female soldier being forced by her trainers to pole dance and also separately being touched in intimate areas.

The report comes from the woman’s account of an incident last year at the Pfullendorf barracks, which has been the centre of scandal in recent weeks. The woman said that she was forced to undergo some kind of recruitment test where she had to dance against a pole in a common room. She also said that throughout the training sessions, trainees were made to strip naked, and women were touched by trainers, not wearing any gloves, in intimate areas. The trainers then did a ‘smell test’ in front of the whole group. The trainers also had trainees sign a consent form, and took pictures which they said were for training purposes.

Internal research also found that the dancing pole had been installed and used regularly while soldiers were drinking. The report also noted that investigators had largely confirmed the woman’s account. Seven soldiers have been suspended amid an ongoing investigation into grievous bodily harm against trainees, as well as false imprisonment, and sexual assault. The investigation reportedly dates back to last October when a female lieutenant reported incidents directly to the Defence Ministry. The lieutenant described how she saw unbelievable scenes of recruits being forced to strip naked in front of their comrades, with trainers filming.

She also reported that trainers had forced the recruits to do exercises that served no purpose other than sexual ones, such as reviewing how to insert medical devices into the anuses of male and female recruits, which was also recorded.
In the US Army Female army members allegedly pressured into prostitution.

Source

Tag: German ArmyPfullendorf

IDEX / NAVDEX 2017 will take place in the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre 19 - 23 February.

The US Navy's George H.W. Bush Carrier Strike Group (GHWBCSG) has commenced strike missions in Iraq and Syria in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR).

BAE Systems has officially named its new floating dry dock at its San Diego shipyard in the US, as part of a wider effort to enhance its naval ship repair capabilities.

The US Navy's Independence-class littoral combat vessel USS Coronado (LCS 4) has successfully completed a seven-day voyage repair availability period in Singapore.

South Korean K11 Assault Rifle with Integrated Grenade Launcher

The workshop was organized on October 13, 2016 at the initiative of the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE) with the aim of assessing relations between Saudi Arabia and the Member States in the field of armaments cooperation, touching on the absence of a common European position in this area.
Agnès Levallois, lecturer at Sciences Po Paris and ENA, is affiliated to the Académie Diplomatique and works as a consultant, specialising in political, strategic and economic issues in the Middle East. Jane Kinninmont is a senior research fellow and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House.
Further information
Workshop - In Depth Analysis
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

EDA has launched a new Medium Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE), Remotely Piloted Air System (RPAS) Training Technology Demonstrator (TTD) project to provide up to nine networked procedural  trainers to the European MALE RPAS Community.1

The MALE RPAS Community came into being on 19 November 2014 under a Letter of Intent and looks to facilitate  information sharing and cooperation in this important domain.   The Community looks to share operational experience and, where possible, to pool and share maintenance of similar assets, logistics, training, doctrine, concepts and procedures.  Early work looked to harmonize training syllabi between the European RPAS Schools and to complete joint studies on vulnerability and countering UAS swarms.

In early 2016, it was decided to further enhance training cooperation and EDA was tasked to develop a proposal to improve communication and to facilitate joint exercises.  In close cooperation with the European Air Group (EAG) and the European Union Military Staff (EUMS) who were also active in this area. Consequently, a joint programmer was formed to deliver hardware simulators (EDA), improved harmonization and interoperability (EAG) and realistic operational scenarios (EUMS) for MALE RPAS to underpin the Community’s work.

The Agency signed a contract with DCI and DIGINEXT of France to design and build the systems over 2017/18, which will enable collaborative tactical development and harmonization of training across the Community.  The project represents a step change in improved interoperability in this increasingly important air domain and the work will be carried out in close cooperation with the EAG and EUMS with view to launching the first RPAS specific exercise in late 2018.

_____________

1 (DE, EL, ES, FR, IT, NL and PO) and to BE and UK who had expressed an interest to join. 
 

In 2016, Afghans remained the second-largest group both of migrants seeking protection in Europe and of those formally applying for asylum. Meanwhile, numbers of arrivals – both in general and in terms of Afghans – have dropped significantly, compared with the peak in late 2015, as European countries have since made getting, staying and integrating there more complicated. Numbers of asylum applications widely differed between European countries. Furthermore, the EU and individual member states put agreements in place with the Afghan government that allow “voluntary” and “enforced” returns of larger numbers of rejected asylum seekers. In this first part of a three-part dispatch, AAN’s co-director Thomas Ruttig looks at the latest figures and trends as well as changes in policy and social climate that impacted the situation for Afghan asylum seekers in Europe. This will be followed by an overview of the situation in a number of individual European countries (part 2) and a case study on Germany, the largest recipient country in Europe for refugees (part 3). The last part will also draw some conclusions.

Unless stated otherwise, all statistical data on the EU in this dispatch is from Eurostat (see here and here), in order to maintain compatibility. The term “asylum applicant” refers to first-time applicant. Applicants have the right to file a follow-up application if personal circumstances relevant to their claim have changed which leads to a higher number of overall applications. 

No full set of data on Afghan migrants for all European countries is available in the Eurostat statistics. For individual member states, only the top 3 or 5 countries of origin are published, leaving out Afghans, for example, in the Netherlands, the UK or Italy in some or all quarters of 2016.  

The following colleagues provided detail, mainly about their home countries: Kaisa Pylkkanen (Finland), Fabrizio Foschini (Italy) and the Guardian’s Sune Engel Rasmussen (Denmark); AAN colleagues Martine van Bijlert (Netherlands), Kate Clark (UK), Jelena Bjelica (Serbia, Romania, Croatia and Hungary) as well as Ann Wilkens from the AAN advisory board (Sweden).

The research for this dispatch is funded by the Kabul office of the German foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and is a part of a dispatch series for a joint publication with FES. See also the paper ‘We Knew They Had No Future in Kabul”: Why and How Afghan Families Decide to Leave’ that was part of an earlier project with FES.

Overall figures

The overall number of arriving migrants in Europe has dropped sharply in 2016. Arrivals from non-European countries of origin to Europe – ie the 28 EU member-countries (including brexiting UK) plus the four non-members (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein) – decreased from the 1,015,000 in the peak year of 2015 to close to over 362,000 in 2016, ie by two thirds. (These UNHCR figures – see a daily update here – only count those arriving across the Mediterranean, which is by far the most important entry route. There are no statistics about other routes where much smaller numbers of migrants can be assumed, for example through Russia.)

Of these first time applicants from all countries of origin, Germany registered just under 63 per cent, almost the same percentage as in 2015 (more detail in part 3). It was followed by Sweden (11.8 per cent), Italy (8.8 per cent) and France (5.2 per cent). Austria, Greece and the UK each had above 3 per cent; Hungary over 2 per cent; Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain each over 1 per cent. Everyone else was under 1 per cent, with Estonia and Slovakia (both 0.01 per cent) at the absolute bottom.

In the first three quarters of 2016, Germany also always had the highest rate of asylum seekers per capita of the population (2,155; 2,273; 2,945). With one exception (Austria in the first quarter) this was more than double than all runner-up countries with the next highest rates (Austria, Malta and Luxemburg; Hungary, Austria and Greece; Malta, Greece and Austria). This had still been different in 2015 when, amidst the highest absolute number of incoming migrants, it registered only a comparatively low percentage of them as asylum applicants. Then, Germany ranked fifth only in Europe – although per capita rates were far higher. Germany had 5,441, trailing Hungary (17,699), Sweden (16,016), Austria (9,970) and Finland (5,876).

The overall number of people applying for asylum or other forms of protection in Europe, after dropping by one third between the last quarter of the peak year of 2015 (with 426,000 applicants) and the first quarter of 2016 (less than 290,000), again started to rise in 2016. A total of over 951,000 was reached by the end of the third quarter according to the most recent published EU data (full 2016 figures are expected in March 2017). If the trend continues, the 2015 level of 1.26 million applicants (more than double 2014) might be reached again.

Incoming but still incomplete national data for the full 2016 year reviewed by the Asylum Information Database (AIDA) (see here) indicated contradictory trends among European countries: While an increase in asylum applications compared to 2015 was reported from Germany, Italy, France and Greece, “most other countries remain far behind Germany and reported a decrease in the number of asylum applications registered last year.”

The seeming contradiction between the drop in arrival figures and continued high levels of asylum applications reflects a situation where, in 2016, many of those who had arrived in 2015 but had not been able to formally register an asylum claim, due to their large numbers, or had avoided doing so finally registered. Also migrants who had arrived before 2015 and lived illegally in Europe may have used the opportunity to register.

Afghan figures  

1. a) Arrivals in Europe

Looking at Afghan in-migration, 43,400 individuals had arrived across the Mediterranean in 2016. In the peak year of 2015, it had been almost five times that many, some 200,000 (find an analysis of 2015 trends in this AAN dispatch). The percentage of Afghans among all arrivals across the Mediterranean Sea dropped from 20 per cent in 2015 to 12 per cent in 2016. This drop by almost 80 per cent in their absolute figures is even steeper than the average from all countries.

In 2016, almost all Afghan migrants to Europe continued to arrive in Greece. Only 349 Afghans came to Italy (0.2 per cent of all arrivals) and none to Spain. The large majority of Afghans that arrived in Greece, over 39,000, came before mid-March 2016 when the updated EU-Turkey migration deal kicked in (here the press release; officially it is called Joint Action Plan the first version of which had come into force in November 2015). After that, Afghan arrival figures in Greece dropped drastically to 1,590 between April and September 2016, ie 265 per month on average.

Relatively smaller numbers of Afghans entered Finland and northern Norway through Arctic Russia, mainly in 2015 and early 2016. The figures for Finland were 720 for 2015, compared to 28 in 2014 and 14 in 2013, according to this government website.  In January and February 2016, according to media reports, the numbers increased again to 1,000 , before Russia and Finland agreed to close their border for third-nation citizens. Norway and Afghanistan agreed in December 2016 that Kabul would take back 90 per cent of its 4,000 citizens who had crossed the temporarily permeable Russian-Norwegian border close to the polar circle in the same period. (On this, more in part 2 of this dispatch; also see this AAN dispatch). (1)

1. b) Asylum applications in Europe

The trend found above for all countries of origin – that the drop in the number of incoming new migrants in 2016 did not result in a drop of asylum applications over the same period – does also apply for Afghans. After the quarterly figure fell by more than half between the last quarter of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 (from 79,255 to 34,800), figures began rising again from quarter to quarter in 2016. They reached 50,300 in the second and 62,100 in the third quarter. By then, the total amount was 147,200 or 15.5 per cent of the over 951,000 first time applicants from all countries.

The number reached by the end of the third quarter 2016 indicates that, if the trend continues, the overall figure for 2015 (178,200, ie 14.2 per cent of all applicants and four times more than 2014) might have been reached again in 2016.

By the end of the third quarter of 2016, the largest number of Afghan asylum applications was registered in Germany (102,900) (2) – more than two thirds of their total), followed by Austria (10,100), Hungary (9,800), Bulgaria (6,500), France (4,500), Italy (under 3,900), Switzerland (3,000), Sweden and the UK (2,600 each) and Belgium (2,000). In the third quarter of 2016, Afghanistan featured among the top five countries of origin in 16 EU countries plus in Norway and Switzerland. In four countries, Afghanistan was the most important country of origin, although with comparatively low numbers (Austria 2,185, Hungary 1,610, Bulgaria 100 and Slovenia 70) – see here.

Given all figures above, Afghans remained the second largest ‘national’ group in both categories in 2016, arriving migrants and asylum applicants.

1. c) Decisions in Europe

The number of Afghan asylum cases that have been decided upon by member countries’ authorities even in the first instance (there is the right to appeal) remained much lower than the application figure. In the first and second quarters of 2016, decisions were reached on less than 20,000 Afghan cases; figures were picking up in the third quarter with 27,300 decided cases.

These cases still represent only around 20 per cent of the 240,000 Afghan asylum cases that were reportedly pending with the EU by mid-November 2016 – not counting the (unknown) number of Afghans who even had not had a chance or decided not to file an application.

The Europe-wide protection rate for Afghan asylum applicants was above 50 per cent throughout the three first quarters of 2016. In the first quarter, 4,215 of the 7,415 decided cases (56.8 per cent) ended positively, receiving protection status: There were 3,200 negative decisions. In the second quarter, the rate sank slightly to 53.1 per cent, based on a growing number of cases decided (12,840); 6,820 Afghans received protection while this was rejected in 6,020 cases. That gives an overall protection quota of 54.5 per cent for the first half of 2016. In the third quarter, the rate dropped to 50.7 per cent, with more than twice as many cases decided (27,300) than in the previous quarter. Large numbers of rejected asylum applications do not mean that similar numbers of people have been forcibly deported to their country of origin. In fact, countries such as Germany (until 2015) and Sweden (for some of 2016) generally categorised Afghans as ‘protected from deportation’ for humanitarian reasons, due to the on-going war. But this is now changing (see more below).

The German daily Frankfuter Allgemeine reported in December 2016, that “for no other country of origin, the recognition quota in the individual EU member-countries differed so widely” in that year as for the Afghans – “from 14 to 96 per cent.” On the other hand, as a UK government figure shows, Afghans were the nationality with the third highest number of positive decisions (6,820 or 53 per cent) in the EU as a whole in the second quarter of 2016.

The AIDA database, with incomplete all-2016 statistics, also reported general “protection disparities” and also specifically for Afghans. The range went from a 30 percent protection rate in Norway to 59 per cent in Belgium. Finland had 42.4, Sweden 45, Greece 48.8, Germany 55.8 and Austria 56 per cent. (3)

Policy changes: sealing borders

The drop in overall arrivals, and Afghan arrivals, reflects the changes in European policies. ‘Temporary’ border controls, even between EU member states, were re-introduced and are still in force. It started in September 2015 with Germany increasing checks at its Austrian border. At the same time, Hungary sealed and started fencing its borders with non-EU Serbia and also with Croatia; also Slovenia fenced its border with Croatia. Croatia did not seal its Serbian border, as in large part it is formed by Sava River and therefore difficult to cross. This was followed by similar measures taken by the Czech Republic, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, France and non-EU states Norway and Switzerland.

At the end of November 2015, authorities in the most affected countries on the Balkan route decided to allow only Syrian, Afghan and Iraqi nationals to cross their borders. This changed on 18 February 2016, when heads of the national police in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia decided that Afghans could not pass their borders anymore. An AP journalist wrote at the time: “Suddenly, Afghans appear to be the new pariahs of Europe.” Although Germany, as the greatest recipient of Afghan arrivals, profited most from the decision, chancellor Merkel condemned the move at the time, as she realised that this would put a large burden on Greece and might undermine attempts to set up distribution quotas in the EU – which it did (see here).

A few weeks later, on 9 March 2016, Serbia, Macedonia, Slovenia and Croatia fully closed their borders to any new migrants with the implicit backing of the European Union, which announced the Turkey deal at the same time. Slovenia’s and Croatia’s announcements to return to full implementation of the Schengen Border Code had a domino effect among other countries in the region who adopted daily quotas and sought to re-establish greater border control.

As AAN reported at the time, thousands of people got stuck in Greece as well as at various other junctions along the route, with many more on the way from Syria, Afghanistan and other places. In Serbia, which as a result of these measures became an EU antechamber, approximately 800 migrants were stuck in in Preševo (near the Serbian-Macedonian border) and 600 people in Šid (near the Serbian-Croatian border).

On 20 March 2016, the EU-Turkey Action Plan came into force. It stipulated that the legitimacy of asylum claims of all new irregular migrants crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey to the Greek islands would be checked there and those found illegitimate returned to Turkey. (Read more detail in this AAN analysis and in this German media report.) But this plan did not work out, as a number of EU countries refused to agree to accept a quota of those legitimate asylum seekers. The EU also did not fully live up to its commitments to send additional migration experts to Greece and even refused to send some to the Greek islands, as the situation was “too dangerous” there. Furthermore, the Turkish government decided in August 2016 to withdraw its liaison officers from the Greek islands, making the practical implementation of the deal even more complicated. It has repeatedly threatened to cancel the deal with the EU as a result of deteriorating EU-Turkey relations after the crackdown following the July 2016 coup attempts.

Although some EU member countries stuck to their commitment under the deal, only 5,875 asylum seekers entering Greece had been relocated to other EU countries by 28 November 2016, according to the European Stability Initiative, a Berlin-based think tank that reportedly designed the EU-Turkey deal. The same applies for Italy (see more below), from where only 1,802 asylum seekers have been relocated. (Specific numbers about how many Afghans were among them are not available.) The combined figures for Greece and Italy only reach around 5 per cent of the original relocation target. The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants criticised in mid-2016 that “the EU and the overwhelming majority of EU member States have abandoned Greece – a country that is fighting to implement austerity measures – leaving it to deal with an issue that requires efforts from all.” (see here) Since then, there has been no major change in this situation.

Bulgaria had already started building a fence along most of its border with Turkey in 2014. Greece fenced parts of its Turkish land border, near Bulgaria. In early December 2015, Austria began building a fence along its border with Slovenia, the first to be set up between two Schengen countries. Another fence was erected at the border crossing between Norway and Russia. (The Economist has an interactive map on this.)

For Afghans and others seeking protection, this blocked the way into Europe at the outer EU border, or at least made access to Europe more risky, costly and dangerous (see here). A number of them are trying to wait out the situation in Turkey; others changed their minds and are staying in Turkey for good (as this AAN dispatch showed). Those who had made it into Greece, but were unable to travel on via the closed Balkan route, experienced the Greek government’s increasing pressure to file an asylum application there (also a prerequisite for redistribution in the EU, demanded by Greece, which so far has not happened in any significant numbers) (4). The number of applicants in Greece rose from around 1,000 a month (up to February 2016) to over 7,500 in November 2016, reaching almost 47,000 by that month. Among the total were 3,295 Afghans, but their percentage in this group (7 per cent) is very likely way below their actual proportion of the total number of migrants currently in the country. (Here is an amazing NPR radio show about refugees in Greece broadcast in July 2016.)

A few months after the closure of the Balkan route, in summer 2016, a number of migrants – including Afghans – used what a local newspaper described as “Europe’s last needle’s eye to the North”: the mountainous and unsealed Italian-Swiss border into Switzerland or further into Germany. According to the Swiss authorities, 4,833 incoming migrants left the country via this route again in 2016, 3,385 of them to Germany. This looked like Switzerland making sure that most incoming migrants would leave the country again. Over the same period, between January and October 2016, Switzerland itself had 3,035 Afghans applying for asylum. (5)

Later, according to Swiss media reports, the country’s border police started to reject migrants at the southern border with Italy, even if they tried to request asylum. NGOs also collected cases, on the Italian side of the Swiss border, of asylum seekers who were rejected even though they had family members in Switzerland which, according to regulations, should have given them entry. Dublin cases – migrants whose entry had been registered in another EU county before and, according to EU law, can be returned there to process their asylum application – and even under-age migrants are often not processed according to the official procedures, says Schweizer Flüchtlingshilfe (Swiss Refugee Help), a leading local support organisation for migrants.

After the temporary opening and closure of the route through Arctic Russia into northern Norway and Finland in late 2015, other ‘exotic’ routes came up during 2016. The Washington Post reported that Afghan asylum applications in India had “doubled” by early 2016, compared with the year before. In January 2016, the UNHCR New Delhi Factsheet said that India hosts 13,381 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers, mostly settled in and around the capital, Delhi. Other Afghans reportedly tried to cross into the US or Canada by obtaining visas for Cuba, Mexico or other Latin American countries (see here). A German official statistic included asylum request figures as of October 2016 from other leading western countries, the US (almost 100,500), Canada (almost 37,000), Australia (over 12,200) and New Zealand (319) but did not specify countries of origin.

Policy changes: turning the trend from influx to return . . .

Following border enforcement measures, the European countries sought to reverse migration patterns from influx to return. Afghans were one of the groups that received special attention as it is the second largest group in Europe – while a number of governments claimed that the Afghan war was far less destructive than the one in Syria or Iraq and therefore Afghans were mainly ‘economic migrants’. EU and individual member states concluded a number of multi- and bilateral cooperation agreements on migration with the Afghan government. A framework was set with the finalisation of a re-admission agreement, titled the EU-Afghan “Joint Way Forward on Migration,” that was hurried to signature against some last-minute hurdles in Kabul before the October 2016 international Afghanistan conference in Brussels (see detail here; text here). The conference agenda included donor countries’ reconfirmation of financial pledges for the next phase in Afghanistan’s 2014–24 ‘transformation’ period, providing an opportunity for donor countries to pressure Kabul to agree to take back rejected asylum seekers. As AAN reported at that time, “the organisers of the Brussels conference (…) feared that failure to negotiate a readmission agreement with Afghanistan (…) would leave member countries reluctant to publicly commit to future funding.” (see also this AAN dossier) While European governments have denied using aid conditionality to achieve this aim, Afghan officials have understood it that way and told various media so (read one report from Germany’s main TV network here).

Germany, Finland, Sweden and other countries signed bilateral agreements (some of them renewed) at the same time. These agreements are designed to create conditions to allow the repatriation of larger numbers of Afghans. Although the EU and German agreements, for example, state that signatories see “voluntary returns” as the priority, they also strongly emphasise the option of “non-voluntary returns.” (More detail about the agreements in this AAN analysis. The German agreement has not been published; brief official information about the Swedish agreement can be found here and about the Finnish one here) The EU-Afghan “Joint Way Forward” even includes an option to create the logistical infrastructure to process larger numbers on arrival in Afghanistan: “Both sides will explore the possibility to build a dedicated terminal for return in Kabul airport.”

The figures for rejected Afghan asylum seekers who are legally required to leave Europe are in the tens of thousands. A draft EU paper prepared for the October 2016 Brussels conference on Afghanistan, leaked in March 2016, mentioned that 80,000 Afghans “could potentially need to be returned in the near future” from all member countries. Germany, the largest recipient country, including for Afghans, officially had 12,539 Afghans who were “ausreisepflichtig” (required to leave) (see here) in mid-November 2016. Given the over 240,000 Afghan asylum cases pending all over Europe and the average protection rate of slightly over 50 per cent, 120,000 more potential ‘returnees’ could emerge, however. That would bring the EU-wide number up to around 200,000.

Based on memoranda of understanding on returns and readmissions with several EU/Schengen member states, a number of EU and non-EU countries have been sending back rejected Afghan asylum seekers for some years already. (6)  Including the 2016 ‘return’ flights from Germany (34 deportees), Finland (three) and jointly Sweden and Norway (13 or 14, according to IOM all Afghans from Iran), between 2003 and 2016, in total 8,608 Afghans were deported to their country from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. 6,365 of them were from the UK and 1,382 from Norway. (There were also three non-European countries that have deported Afghans back to their country over the same period: Australia 10, Indonesia 1 and Oman 466.)

Number of Afghan Deportees – IOM data Returning From 2003-2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 Grand Total Australia – – – 2 – 3 4 1 10 Belgium 1 – – 9 11 2 2 3 28 Denmark 62 7 – – – – – – 69 Finland – – – – – – – 3 3 France 39 – – – – – – – 39 Germany 224 – – – – – 1 34 259 Indonesia 1 – – – – – – – 1 Netherlands 71 – 6 78 61 14 2 – 232 Norway 284 41 74 196 250 437 88 12 1,382 Oman 466 – – – – – – – 466 Portugal 1 – – – – – – – 1 Sweden 4 – – 5 74 94 26 26 229 Switzerland 1 – – – – – – – 1 UK 2,989 733 1,023 527 513 404 89 87 6,365 Grand Total 4,143 781 1,103 817 909 954 212 166 9,085

There is also an increasing number of voluntary returns of Afghan asylum seekers. Through IOM-run Afghanistan programmes, 6,864 persons returned voluntarily to Afghanistan in 2016, an IOM official told AAN. (From 2003 to 2016, there were 22,436 voluntary returns of Afghans from all countries according to IOM, so that the 2016 figure – which is almost one third of all – represents a serious increase.) Almost half those in 2016 – 3,159 persons – came from Germany. Most returns occurred in the first three quarters of the year, when on average 200 persons returned a week; between September and December this rate drop to less than 100 returns a week.

In mid-December 2016, Sweden and Germany started to put their new agreements with Afghanistan into practice. On 13 December 2016, some twenty Afghans were returned in a joint Swedish-Norwegian operation. (7) This happened despite the Afghan-Swedish agreement having run into trouble two weeks earlier, when the lower house of the Afghan parliament (the Wolesi Jirga) voted against it on 30 November 2016 (a short report here). According to Abdul Qayum Sajjadi, a member of the house’s international relations commission, a majority of MPs considered the agreement to be against the Afghan constitution and international human rights conventions as, in their view, its content emphasised deportation rather than voluntary return; the vote was 117 against 6 (no abstentions). The Swedish government rejected this view, and the Afghan government, in the person of deputy foreign minister Hekmat Karzai who travelled to Stockholm in early December 2016, ensured Sweden that Kabul would uphold the agreement, de facto overruling the parliament. Despite the parliament’s objection, the Afghan authorities authorised the December ‘return’ flight.

A few days later, on 15 December 2016, Germany repatriated 34 rejected asylum seekers by charter flight to Kabul (see here) – all men, about one third of them convicted for crimes. On the same day, according to an official letter from the German interior minister (see here) dated 9 January 2017, the Netherlands also has carried out what is called “return action.” (IOM data, seen by AAN, however, do not confirm any deportation from the Netherlands to Afghanistan in 2016 – but there were 110 voluntary returns. The minister’s letter also did not give any number.)

In Germany, the forcible return was met by public protests and intra-party controversies, even in the ruling German coalition. A number of MPs from the smaller coalition partner, the Social Democrats, the German parliament’s commissioner for the armed forces (see here) and the government’s commissioner for migration (see here) – not to mention the opposition and human rights groups – all challenged the government’s claim that Afghanistan was “sufficiently safe” to forcibly return rejected Afghan asylum seekers. These doubts are particularly strong in some governments of Germany’s federated states, that consequently refused to put rejected Afghans under their jurisdictions (deportations are in states’ jurisdiction) on the 15 December flight. The Conference of the States’ Interior Ministers, held in early December 2016, had tasked the government to update its assessment of the Afghan situation, with the support of UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration. The UNHCR’s official reply, sent to the German states on 9 January 2017, diplomatically but firmly contradicted the government’s assessment, stating that it was not in a position to distinguish between safe(r) and unsafe areas. (see here) IOM’s director general, in an interview with a German daily in December 2016, supported the government by saying that some Afghan areas were “sufficiently safe” for returnees.

The changing climate in recipient countries

Throughout 2015, the growing numbers of arriving asylum seekers put a strain on local social services, particularly in countries with a high per capita rate of arrivals; local institutions were at times unprepared or unable to cope with the influx. The mood, initially generally welcoming to refugees, seemed to have changed, to a large degree, to one of rejection. A recent poll by Friedrich Ebert Foundation, published in November 2016, showed, however, that 55.5 per cent of Germans continued to welcome the fact that Germany had received many refugees, while 86.1 per cent still agreed with the statement “People who flee from war should be received in Germany.” At the same time, 52.9 per cent supported a capping of refugees allowed into the country (in September, with a different methodology, weekly magazine Focus had 60 per cent).

The changes in the general mood and the problems local authorities faced were picked up by anti-immigrant parties throughout Europe, which were already strong or growing in a number of parliaments. Extra-parliamentarian nationalist groups, often with a violent fringe, became more vocal. These two camps partly overlap in various countries, although in different degrees. In Germany, for example, 120 arson attacks were made on asylum seeker accommodations in 2015, increasing to 141 in 2016, according to research by Berlin daily taz. In contrast, the German police (occasionally accused of turning a blind eye to right-wing terrorism) counted 66 arson and four explosives attacks for 2016. Only in 20 cases, the daily writes, did information show that the case was still being investigated.

In order to counteract voter losses, some governing mainstream parties changed their rhetoric and tightened their policies and laws on migration. German legislation on asylum, residence and integration has been amended twice since October 2015 (more detail in the case study in part 3 of this dispatch). A third legislation package that included plans to further reduce in-cash support for individual asylum seekers was rejected by the upper house of parliament on 16 December 2016 (see here).

Sweden tightened its asylum process to reach what Prime Minister Stefan Löfven, a social democrat, has termed the “EU minimum level” in asylum and migration policy (quoted here). This means, for instance, that fewer applicants get full asylum rights and only those who do have an unconditional right to family reunification. The measures are meant to be provisional, and the intention is to revert to a more generous approach as soon as the reception situation is deemed to be stabilised (see more detail in this AAN analysis). According to Swedish migration lawyers, quoted here, the Swedish Migration Board (SMB) is also using an own version of ‘safe(r) zones’ in Afghanistan, here termed regions “less influenced by war.”

Finland is the first EU country where the government practically declared all of Afghanistan – as well as Somalia and Iraq – safe for returns. It did so in May 2016, stopping short of literally calling it a ‘safe country.’ The statement of the Finnish immigration service on these three countries says:

In the past few months, the security situation has gradually improved in all three countries, although it may have got [sic] worse at times for certain specific areas locally. Due to the improved security situation, it will be more difficult for applicants from these countries to be granted a residence permit on the basis of subsidiary protection. (…) According to the Finnish Immigration Service, it is currently possible for asylum seekers to return to all areas in Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia without the ongoing armed conflicts as such presenting a danger to them only because they are staying in the country.

By late 2015, Finland had already stopped giving subsidiary protection to Afghan asylum seekers from the provinces of Helmand, Khost, Paktika, Uruzgan and (additional) parts of Ghazni. It also seriously tightened asylum policies, abolishing the law that allowed for providing refugees status on the grounds of “humanitarian protection” and made family reunification more difficult. (For family reunification to be possible, the whole family now needs to be legally in Finland at the time the application is filed.) In September 2016, Afghan refugees in Finland demonstrated against what they perceived as an unfair asylum process and demanded that their cases be heard and processed according to international norms.

Denmark’s much tightened asylum laws have even been criticised by the UN, as they now include provisions for detaining asylum seekers without a court order. It also makes family reunion more difficult and involuntary return easier and allows the confiscation of asylum seekers’ money and jewellery worth more than 1,350 Euros. The country is reportedly planning even more radical regulations, in a so-called “general plan for a stronger Denmark.” According to this plan, in a “crisis situation” the government could close the border for all asylum seekers; the granting of permanent residence would be delayed (taking place after eight instead of six years) and only granted after the refugee had not claimed social welfare benefits for four years; family reunification would only be granted after 11 years and child benefits after five years; and the threshold for withholding permanent residence because of a conviction was lowered (from 12 to 6 months detention).

A case from Denmark that technically was a voluntary return and was recounted in a 2015 Guardian article also demonstrated how such a practice can go wrong. In this case, two Hazara brothers from Maidan-Wardak province (one adult, one minor) had their asylum applications rejected in 2012 and agreed, under some prompting, to voluntarily return to their country in June 2015. The Danish authorities argued that the elder could act as the younger’s guardian. Both ended up sleeping in the streets of Kabul. The younger one disappeared when they tried to obtain ID cards in their native province and was later reported killed. After that, the older brother moved to Iran and from there, as it is assumed in the article, possibly back to Europe.

In Austria, the parliament decided in June 2016 that the government could request that no new asylum applications be accepted when an annual ceiling of 37,500 was reached. A UNHCR spokesman called this “breaking a taboo,” as migrants would summarily be equated with a “threat” by this legislation. When the threshold is reached, only asylum requests by refugees with close relatives already living in the country, or who are threatened by torture or other inhuman treatment upon return, will be accepted. With 42,073 asylum requests in 2016, figures went down by more than half, compared to the 88,900 cases in 2015. But since less than two thirds of these applicants were admitted only for the asylum procedure, numbers remained under the ceiling (even with 8,800 pending cases from 2015 added) and did not trigger the new measures.

In mid-2016, the Austrian foreign minister proposed an “Australian solution” for migrants entering the EU: Keep them on the Greek islands until their cases had been decided. But this might have been part of the hard fought presidential run-off election campaign, with a right-wing populist as one of the candidates (he narrowly lost in the end).

Hungary – in 2015 the European country with the second highest number of overall (174,435) and Afghan (45,650) asylum applicants as well as the country with the highest per capita number of all asylum seekers (17,699) – took the most draconian measures to bring down the figures. Already in September 2015, it had rigorously closed its border with the main influx country, Serbia, leaving only two official border crossings open, through which small but even further decreasing numbers of migrants were allowed in (mainly families). In October 2015, the border with Croatia followed. It also was the first EU country to start entirely fencing the vulnerable parts of its border (see more detail in here and this AAN dispatch).

Overall numbers of asylum seekers in Hungary dropped to 28,803 in 2016, 38 per cent of them Afghans (almost 11,000) (source: here). On 13 January 2017, the government additionally introduced mandatory detention for all asylum-seekers with pending cases in the country in so-called transit zones. Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on the radio, “We have reinstated alien police detention in the cases of those whose application to enter Europe has not yet been legally judged.” This is against EU law, which allows such a measure only in “exceptional cases.” In early October, however, the government failed to secure a referendum vote for its proposal to close the country for all refugees; although 98 per cent of participants were in favour, participation fell short of the legally required 50 per cent threshold. In November, parliament voted narrowly against the move.

The earlier parts of the FES-funded AAN dispatch series are:

• Fazal Muzhary and Jelena Bjelica, “Afghan Exodus: Can the Afghan government deal with more returnees from Europe?” 31 October 2016 (click here)
• Noah Arjomand, “An Afghan Exodus: Smuggling networks, migration and settlement patterns in Turkey,” 10 September 2016 (click here)

 

(1) Finnish journalists and analysts told AAN they saw Russian steering behind this part of the migration movement; it ended as abruptly as it had started.

(2) As in this case, the quarterly Europe-wider figures published by Eurostat can deviate from national figures. The report of the German asylum authority for the period from January to September 2016 gives 115,342 asylum applications from Afghans. As Eurostat publishes its quarterly figures later (in the third months of the following quarter), they might be more accurate here as they seem to incorporate adjustments. In other cases, as EU sources working on asylum issues told AAN, adjusted national figures are not communicated to Brussels creating other gaps.

Another example for inconsistent figures is Germany’s overall figure for the incoming migrants in 2015: On 30 September 2016, the German government had to correct down this figure from 1.1 million to 890,000, by circa 20 per cent (see media report and video of original statement by the interior minister here). Surprisingly, however, it continues to use the unadjusted figures even in key documents published after the correction, such as its December 2016 asylum statistics report that also doubles as the annual 2016 report and its 2015 Migration Report published in December 2016 (that covers all aspects of migration).

(3) The AIDA figures need to be taken with a pinch of salt, though. 2015 protection rates for Afghans, for example for Germany, seem too high – officially the Afghan protection rate was below 50 per cent there. AIDA has probably used adjusted (excluding Dublin cases) figures for 2015 and unadjusted figures for 2016.

(4) By mid-December 2016, only 6,461 refugees – instead of the 66,400 envisaged – had been redistributed from Greece to other EU member states, according to MSF Germany (quoted here).

(5) In 2015, Switzerland had 7,831 Afghans applying for asylum (5,902 in December alone), making Afghanistan the second largest country of origin for that year (up more than tenfold from 747 applications in 2014; see here) and representing 19.8 per cent of all applicants for 2015. Switzerland also has a significant Afghan community. Currently 1,194 accepted Afghan asylum seekers are living in Switzerland, 4,074 have been granted temporary protection and 12,194 others are still in the process (see here, all figures third quarter 2016).

(6) These countries were: France (2002), UK (2002), Netherlands (2002), Denmark (2004), Switzerland (2005), Norway (2005), and Sweden (2006, valid until 2009) (see AAN analysis here).

In the UK, the Court of Appeal had ruled in March 2016 that ‘removals’ to Afghanistan could be resumed after a temporary halt. Between 2007 and 2015, the UK had already “removed” 2,018 formerly unaccompanied Afghan minors, after their asylum applications were rejected and after they had turned 18, as this 2016 media report had revealed. Sweden had also temporarily halted deportation for some months in 2016.

According to a 2015 masters paper at a Norwegian university (“Unintended Consequences of Deportations to Afghanistan”; not available online, hard copy with the author), Norway started increasing involuntary returns to Afghanistan from 2006 onwards, also including families with children since 2013. Between 2006 and 2014, Norway carried out 762 (37%) “assisted” and 1,299 (63%) involuntary returns.

In July 2016, the Swiss Federal Administrative Court decided that Afghan refugees could not be returned to their country involuntarily. According to December 2016 Swiss media reports, however, an Afghan family with three small children that had been returned to Norway by Switzerland, based on the Dublin regulation, ending up being notified that they would be involuntarily returned to Afghanistan if they did not leave voluntarily.

According to the head of Frontex, the European border management agency (Frontex personnel were also on board the flight with which rejected Afghan asylum seekers were returned from Germany in January 2017), altogether 42 per cent of rejected asylum seekers from all countries of origin are deported from the EU.

(7) Different figures were published. The Guardian reported that “13 Afghans were forcibly returned from Sweden (…). That flight also carried nine Afghan citizens from Norway.” The German interior minister, in a letter dated 9 January 2017, mentioned altogether 27 Afghans on board (not online, quotes here).

 

Hingol-Class maritime patrol vessels (MPVs) are a class of four ships being built by a partnership between China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and Karachi Shipyard & Engineering Works (KS&EW) for the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA).

The Australian, New Zealand and Canadian navies have collaborated on a number of anti-submarine warfare exercises conducted off the east coast of New Zealand.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) has successfully completed its corrosion control for navy ships (CCNS) programme to test and identify solutions to help mitigate surface deterioration.

The US Navy's Navy Experimental Diving Unit (NEDU) has successfully completed the testing of its new HeliCom Matrix communications system, which was developed to compensate for helium-influenced speech during saturation dives.