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EU asylum policy goes for a toss, Germany rethinks refugee rehabilitation after Afghan developments

The Taliban onslaught has left tens of thousands families homeless (Photo: Kawa Basharat/Xinhua/IANS)

The Afghan turmoil has hit European nations right in the middle of repatriations of Afghan migrants. Just a couple of weeks back, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Greece were deporting refugees back to Afghanistan.

Many European Union (EU) nations had even written a letter to the EU saying that it should "intensify talks" with Afghanistan to insist that the deportation of refugees would continue. They said: “Stopping returns sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU”.

With the Taliban-led conflict taking on a heavy toll of people inside the country, the Afghan government requested European nations to stop sending Afghans back to the conflict-ridden country.

Europe acquiesced and stopped deportations of Afghans at a sensitive time when the Taliban militants were bulldozing their way through city after city.

Germany alone was planning to send back nearly 30,000 Afghans who did not fit in with its asylum policy. It had barely sent back 1,000 Afghans when it decided to stop the deportations due to the poor situation in Afghanistan.

Germany had become home to over a million migrants in 2015, when the first big exodus took place from war-torn Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. That exodus had taken a heavy toll on the country's domestic politics with anti-immigration right-wing politicians opposing Chancellor Angela Merkel's famous "we can do this" slogan that welcomed the refugees.

With elections slated in Germany in a few weeks’ time, the country is looking at the Afghan turmoil in dismay. The country's leaders have already said that the mistakes of an open-door policy of 2015 shall not be repeated.

Germany's far-right party, Alternative for Germany (AfG) has already said that the refugees should be rehabilitated and supported in their regions. Another thought increasingly finding resonance is that countries close to Afghanistan should be supported so that they can absorb the influx of refugees.

With the Taliban unleashing its rule over hapless citizens, Europe looks on with resignation as it awaits a flood of displaced Afghans trudging to its borders to escape the wrath of fundamentalists.

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