The European Commission is preparing to invite representatives of the Taliban to Brussels for technical talks on the return of Afghan asylum seekers. According to European officials, the discussions will focus on practical cooperation, including the identification of individuals and the issuance of travel documents for return.
A follow-up meeting in Brussels is expected before summer, after an initial technical visit to Kabul in January. About twenty EU countries, including Belgium, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands, have called on the European Commission to come up with proposals before the end of this year to facilitate both voluntary and forced returns.
Netherlands
The Dutch far-right PVV ministers Faber and Klever worked for two years on plans to transfer rejected asylum seekers from the Netherlands to reception camps in Uganda. Currently, that anti-immigration party led by Geert Wilders is no longer part of the Dutch coalition government.
Promotion
The prospect of engaging with Afghan Taliban leaders is controversial given the regime's human rights policies, including restrictions on women and girls and the suppression of dissidents. Critics warn that even technical contacts carry the risk that the regime gains legitimacy.
Afghans
Moreover, Congo has been embroiled in a civil war for years, and the country suffers from significant violence and crime. It is therefore highly uncertain whether rejected Afghan asylum seekers will cooperate with this. A new European asylum and visa policy, effective later this year, provides for 'temporary residence' of applicants in 'reception locations' outside the EU.
Despite the controversy, several EU countries are pressing for a coordinated return mechanism. Afghans were one of the largest groups of asylum seekers in multiple EU countries last year, and some countries have recently resumed deportations of convicted persons.
United States
The Trump administration is also in talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo about resettling 1,100 Afghans who were stranded in Qatar several years ago awaiting a US visa. As a result, they remain in legal limbo more than four years after the US withdrawal from Kabul.
Some of them are family members of US citizens or worked for the Americans during the twenty-year war. President Trump halted the issuance of visas to Afghans last year.
Iranians in Albania
The United States resettled several thousand Iranian resistance fighters over ten years ago in a heavily guarded āIranian villageā in Albania. They had fought alongside the US military during the Gulf War in hopes of overthrowing the Iranian ayatollah regime. When that failed, the Mujahedin fighters applied for asylum in the US, but their requests were denied.