by Giulio Meotti
German aid worker Sybille Schnehage predicts that up to 3 million Afghan refugees could arrive in Europe. Schnehage, who has worked with the NGO Katachel in the Kunduz region of Afghanistan for over twenty years, told German broadcaster WDR: “Up to three million Afghans will reach Europe in the near future”, surpassing even the crisis of 2015, when 1.2 million people arrived in Europe in a few weeks, fleeing Syria.
Thousands of Afghans are already fleeing from northern cities captured by the Taliban, such as Kunduz, says France Presse, from which reports of brutal treatment by Islamist insurgents arrive: bodies left in the streets, girls kidnapped to become “Taliban brides”, young forced to fight with the Taliban.
“We saw bodies lying near the prison … there were dogs next to them,” said Friba, a widow who fled Kunduz with her six children as the Taliban took the city. “Three days ago the Taliban killed a barber,” said Mirwais Khan Amiri, also fleeing from Kunduz. “They killed people who worked in the government even though they resigned four or five years ago.” Marwa fled Taloqan as fighting raged across the city, terrified that she would be ordered to marry a Taliban fighter. “My 16-year-old cousin was forcibly taken by the Taliban to marry one of them.”
An anonymous Afghan journalist wrote in the Guardian about what is happening: “Two days ago I had to leave my home and my life in northern Afghanistan after the Taliban took my city. My whole life was erased in a few days. I am not safe because I am a 22 year old woman and I know that the Taliban are forcing families to give their daughters as wives for their fighters. My manager called me and asked me not to answer any unknown numbers. He said we women should hide and escape the city. Most of the girls I know have fled”.
The government of Kabul, which according to US intelligence could now fall into the hands of the Taliban in one to three months, has just notified Brussels of the suspension of readmissions for repatriation from the European Union.
In a month, the Taliban conquered a quarter of the provinces of all of Afghanistan and with the capture of Faizabad, the ninth city fell into their hands in a few days. Now the worst is feared. Also for Europe, where six countries are calling for the repatriation of Afghans to continue. And while Turkey has begun construction of a new 64-kilometer-long concrete wall on the border with Iran (the gateway for the Afghans), Pakistan (the main supporter of the Taliban) has closed its borders to fleeing Afghans.
“On April 14, the Taliban controlled 73 out of 400 districts. Less than two months later, they had taken 223 out of 400 districts,” recalls Afghanistan expert George Lefeuvre in L’Express.
September 2015. Thousands of Syrian migrants crossing the Balkan route are on their way to Germany. “We are on a plane with no fuel and we don’t know what to do,” a senior security officer told Angela Merkel. The Chancellor is on the phone with the Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, to evaluate a series of measures to protect the borders, where thousands of policemen were already secretly based together with buses and helicopters. De Maizière turns to Dieter Romann, then chief of police, for advice.
“Can we live with the images that will come out?” Asked de Mazière. “What will happen if 500 refugees with children in their arms run towards the border guards?”. When de Maizière passed on Romann’s response to Merkel, she capitulated and canceled his original commitment. “For historical reasons, the Chancellor feared the images of the German police confronting civilians on our borders,” writes Robin Alexander, the lead journalist of Die Welt, who revealed these details in a book, Die Getriebenen.
According to Die Zeit, “Merkel was convinced that migrants could only be stopped with the help of violence, with fire hydrants, batons and sprays. Merkel feared such images and their political impact, convinced that Germany would not tolerate them ”.
Thus was born the famous motto of Merkel “Wir schaffen das”. We can do it. For Europe, the political, social and cultural consequences will be disastrous. “Rather than leading to fusion, the European migration crisis is leading to fission,” wrote renowned historian and economist Niall Ferguson. “The migration crisis will be seen by future historians as the fatal ingredient that dissolved the EU”.
The security of Europe is “defended also on the Hindu Kush,” the German defense minister Peter Struck said in 2002. Twenty years later we lost the war against the Taliban and now we risk being overwhelmed by the consequences and having to defend ourselves not on the Hindu Kush, but on the European borders. Whether it is the Mediterranean or the Balkan route, we are always on that plane without fuel and we don’t know what to do.