The ambassador of Afghanistan’s former Western-backed regime to Greece had admitted that “over 95 per cent” of supposed Afghan migrants in the EU member-state “arrive without documents”.
Mirwais Samadi, who remains in Athens in something of a “limbo situation” while the Taliban remain officially unrecognised as rulers of Afghanistan — “but how long that will go on for, no one knows” — made the admission in an interview with the leftist Guardian, in which he decried the right-leaning Greek government’s efforts to discourage “illegal migrant flows” from the Islamic emirate.
“This is a time for solidarity, not the time for the West to turn its back on the people of Afghanistan and abandon them or have a campaign that urges [them] to stay [away],” he complained to the newspaper at the impressive offices he still occupies, adding: In normal circumstances I would not be in favour of illegal movement but when people are forced to leave due to the security situation and for fear of their lives, what should we do?”
Several safe countries stand between Afghanistan and Greece, however, and wealthy Muslim-majority Gulf states are also nearer to hand — leaving the Greek government reluctant to countenance an influx on the scale it suffered in 2015-16 when Germany’s Angela Merkel triggered the European migrant crisis.
Tellingly, Samadi also said that “only about 10,000 of the 40,000 [Afghans in Greece] have had their requests processed,” and that “Over 95 per cent arrive without documents” — raising the question of whether they are all really Afghans at all, not to mention major security concerns.
Such tactics are not unknown among migrants hoping to reach the West, with people known to have destroyed their passports and lied about their identities to win crucial space on American evacuation flights from Afghanistan recently.
Britain’s Border Force also admitted that some Afghan evacuees arrived in London with forged documents or no documents, but said they were unwilling to “have an argument” with such people about their status.
Indeed, issues of this nature have a long pedigree, with some of the radical Islamic terrorists who killed dozens in Paris, France in 2015 having used bogus Syrian papers, while Berlin Christmas market killer Anis Amri used a string of fake identities to evade deportation before he struck.
Ambassador Samadi said that “In interviews with all the major TV channels in Afghanistan I encouraged people… not to attempt to come illegally” previously.
“I said please don’t send your children on these dangerous journeys. But now circumstances are completely different,” he added.
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