Tag Archives: refugees

Support Iraqi democrats – get them out of Iraq

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Sorry for crossposting, but this needs wider visibility. This time, Blair seems to mean it about British troops beginning to draw-down their presence in southern Iraq. All the usual provisos still apply – so far, it’s just part of the extra force that is going, and the last squaddie is scheduled to leave in three Friedman units’ time, like he has been since 2003. But this time we have a timetable within one Friedman and a number.

So it’s time to talk seriously about the people who have worked for us in Iraq. The Americans are only accepting risible numbers of refugees. 50 per cent of Iraqi refugees in Europe are in Sweden. It won’t do to claim that the situation is peachy in Iraq. The interpreters, for example, are marked men.

Back in August, 2005 I said that

Unfortunately, the best form of support the British Left can offer secular Iraqis would be to countersign their applications for political asylum. I think someone suggested this recently – perhaps we could get a Pledgebank going?

The government is still trying to force existing refugees onto aeroplanes to Irbil in Kurdistan, this being the only place not so dangerous that the law would forbid it – apparently, if you get killed between Irbil and home that’s OK. It’s high time that we went operational on this.

I’m aware that the Danish government, for example, is also trying to leave its people behind.

Germany Not An Immigrant Country?

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This is the opinion of Hamburg State Interior Minister Udo Nagel, as interview for an article which appears in the English version of Der Spiegel today. The context for the quote is the implementation of a decision taken at a conference of German state interior ministers last November which determined that Afghanistan was now sufficiently stable for the 58,000 Afghan refugees currently living in Germany to start returning home. 10 months later, that decision is finally being acted upon and as Der Spiegel reports Hamburg is taking the lead. Hamburg is home to some 15,000 Afghan refugees — the largest such population in Germany — and the city state plans to deport 5,000 of them over the next two years.

Nagel, for his part, makes no apologies for the deportations. He insists that Germany has fulfilled its duty to Afghan refugees and is proud of his nation’s asylum policy. The bottom line, he insists, is that Afghanistan is now safe. He even paid a short visit to the country before the ban on repatriation was lifted in May this year. “When a crisis has passed, and emergency assistance is no longer required, then refugees should return, because their country needs them to help the reconstruction,” he says.

Nagel also notes that the twice weekly flight to Kabul from Frankfurt was booked solid with holidaymakers throughout August. His point is clear: Afghans who have been granted permanent residency in Germany are happy to return to their homeland. The others are just trying to exchange their refugee status for immigrant status. Then, puffing on his trademark pipe, he repeats a line cited often by German conservatives: “Germany is not a country of immigration

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Looking at this in the context of the recent debate in Germany about Turkey and the EU, and in the context of Germany’s inability to avail itself of the recent wave of migration from the new EU accession countries, I cannot but feel – looking at the age pyramid of the German population – that a mistake of historic proportions is being made right before our eyes.

Controversy Over Kosovo Refugees In Germany

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This is an updated version of an earlier post. I first retain the post as it was, then I have added some reflections in the light of comments received.

The Independent is running the following story:

“Germany is deporting tens of thousands of Roma refugees to Kosovo despite clear threats to their safety and dire warnings from human rights groups that they will face “massive discrimination” on arrival.
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