On 17 August then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab declared that Britain was ‘a big-hearted nation [which has always] provided a safe haven for those fleeing persecution’. This is of course a lie. Britain has no choice but to take in some of those fleeing the situation it has been instrumental in creating in Afghanistan, but in reality, its support for refugees continues to be paltry. NICKI JAMESON reports.
In the course of the occupying forces’ scrambled exit from Afghanistan at the end of August around 8,000 Afghan nationals, who had worked for the occupiers and therefore faced probable reprisals from the incoming Taliban government, were airlifted to Britain. The Afghanistan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme announced on 19 August will allow for another 5,000 to enter Britain in the next year, and 20,000 ‘in the long term’. The government has not clarified what ‘the long term’ means.
To put these figures in some kind of context, last year Britain refused asylum claims by 400 people from Afghanistan, and between 2008 and 2020 deported 15,755 people to the country, a fifth of all those deported to there from Europe. And as usual, while western countries complain of being inundated with migrants, the countries that really bear the brunt of having to cope with the needs of a refugee population alongside those of their own are the neighbouring ones. There are currently 1,450,000 refugees from Afghanistan in neighbouring Pakistan and another 780,000 in Iran. Closer to home, there are around 181,000 Afghan refugees in Germany and on 31 August the German government pledged to accept a further 40,000.
The emphasis of the Nationality and Borders Bill (see FRFI 283) is on an artificial division between ‘good refugees’ who arrive by officially sanctioned routes and ‘bad refugees’, who come to Britain ‘illegally’, most prominently by small boat across the Channel from northern France. Yet, many of those stuck in the makeshift camps on the outskirts of Calais, desperately trying to jump into trucks or get a passage on one of the overcrowded boats, are from Afghanistan. They include a significant number of unaccompanied children, as well as young adults who previously came to Britain as minors, where they were accommodated, educated and cared for by local authorities, learned English and built up friendship groups, only to be deported when they reached the age of 18. On 8 September a coroner’s court in Birmingham heard the inquest into the death of a young asylum seeker who came to Britain aged 13 and took his own life six years later when faced with the prospect of forcible return to Afghanistan.
Even those refugees who have been brought to Britain following the retreat of the occupation forces from Afghanistan, under what the government had dubbed ‘Operation Warm Welcome’, face an uncertain future. Whilst they are reasonably secure in terms of immigration status, the arrangements for housing and otherwise accommodating them are chaotic and badly resourced. Many have arrived with only the clothes they stand up in, and there have been reports of the ‘warm welcome’ failing to provide even such basics as nappies and toothpaste.
At the beginning of September some 10,000 Afghan refugees were in quarantine in hotels, from where they are supposed to be moved to temporary and then permanent accommodation. However, as other asylum seekers who arrived way before the ‘Afghan crisis’ and are still in hotels or in atrocious facilities such as Napier Barracks can attest, even ‘temporary accommodation’ is hard to come by, while the move from ‘temporary’ to ‘permanent’ is the stuff of dreams. And as working class people up and down the country can confirm, it is not just asylum seekers who face a desperate housing situation. The stock of social housing has been systematically decimated over the past 20 years and 95,000 people are currently housed by local authorities in ‘temporary accommodation’, the majority of which is overcrowded, over-priced and entirely unsuitable, especially for families with children, while they wait for the elusive chance to move to somewhere permanent and decent.
Raab’s claims of a ‘big-hearted’ Britain are, as always, fictitious. Britain’s involvement since 2001 in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is a key part of creating the situation which refugees are now fleeing. The government is therefore doing the very least it possibly can in the circumstances.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 284, October/November 2021
