Weary of war, young Afghans seek escape
KABUL, Afghanistan - Through two decades of war, Abdul Ahad never contemplated leaving Afghanistan. But as his country started to deteriorate rapidly in 2007, so did his life. He was laid off from his full-time driving job and forced to take the only work he could find: a once-a-week driving gig through Taliban territory.
In the past eight months, a suicide bomb and a firefight nearly took his life. Now, Ahad, 26, said he has had enough. He has begun scouting potential smugglers to take him to Europe, he said, looking to join the surge of young Afghans who are abandoning their country, frustrated by endless war, a lack of prospects, and the slow pace of change.
While foreign diplomats hold out hope that the August presidential elections and President Obama’s new troop deployments could change things here, Afghans are voting with their feet.
Last year about 18,000 Afghans applied for asylum in Europe, nearly double the 2007 total. The spike was the highest increase for any major country in 2008, according to the United Nations. By comparison, applications from Iraqis fell 10 percent.
“I’m desperate,’’ Ahad said. “It’s not a big dream. I just want to finish my studies, and live normally.’’
Willing to gamble, young men like him are turning over their savings and their lives to smugglers, who arrange routes over seas to Australia or over land to Europe, where the Afghans then try to seek asylum.
In interviews in Kabul, several smugglers, all of whom requested anonymity because their work is illegal, estimated that business was up 60 percent over last year. One said he was turning away customers for the first time in his 11-year career.
The country’s dire situation has even prompted some privileged Afghans to leave. They include the host of “Afghan Star,’’ an “American Idol’’-style TV series, who disappeared after a documentary based on the show won two awards at the Sundance Film Festival; as well as a media officer who worked for President Hamid Karzai and deserted his delegation during a visit to the United States in September.
Just a few years ago optimism abounded here, as the US-led invasion seemed to have ousted the Taliban, and wooed more than 3.5 million refugees back home while triggering a series of promising reconstruction projects.
But since 2006, waves of Afghans have fled the Taliban resurgence, endemic corruption, and the government’s inability to provide basic services like electricity. They are turning up in perilous waters near Australia, in Turkish prisons, at Rome’s main railway station, and in Paris’s Le Petit Kabul, or Little Kabul.
In Calais, France, an immigration detention complex is keeping about 600 Afghans in conditions that are “very, very bad compared to two years ago,’’ said Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental agency in Geneva. French officials have vowed to close the center by the end of 2009.
Officials and recent deportees said many other Afghans abroad just disappear, are sexually exploited by truck drivers, or are forced into labor. Applications for asylum often fail, too.
In an attempt to curb the migration, the International Organization for Migration ran a media campaign here warning against the hazards of smuggling.
Pakistan and other neighboring countries historically offered Afghans refuge during crises like the Soviet occupation. But today Pakistan faces an internal refugee crisis of its own. Iran, too, is cracking down, now deeming the Afghans economic migrants rather than victims of war and deporting about 700,000 last year.
