The Danish Asylum Commission has ruled that the country can resume deportations of illegal immigrants and failed asylum seekers from Afghanistan, despite the country being under the control of the Taliban.
According to the Commission, the situation in Afghanistan has changed since the country fell to Taliban forces last summer and the conditions are such that Denmark may resume deportations of Afghan nationals.
“The overall security situation in Afghanistan has improved since the Taliban regime came to power, there is no longer any internal armed conflict in general and […] the conditions are not of such a nature that any person will run a real risk of being a victim of abuse or persecution (…) because of his mere presence in Afghanistan,” the commission stated, European Union-funded website InfoMigrants reports.
The move comes after the Danish government decided to allow for Syrians to be deported back to their home country in 2020, with the country suspending temporary residence permits for several hundred Syrian nationals originally from the Damascus province.
Danish authorities claimed that the situation in Damascus, which is under the control of President Bashar al-Assad, has become stable enough to repatriate nationals, making Denmark the first country in the European Union to send Syrian refugees back to their home country.
Last year, Danish Integration Minister Mattias Tesfaye, a member of the centre-left Social Democrats, outlined his vision for Danish asylum policy going forward, stating that his goal was to see zero asylum seekers in Denmark
“I believe that the existing European asylum system cannot be defended either morally or politically,” he said and added, “The asylum system is being used for migration on a scale that our welfare society cannot absorb, and it challenges cohesion in Denmark. That is why we have to bring asylum immigration under control.”
While a massive influx of migrants from Afghanistan to Europe did not materialise in the weeks and months after the fall of the country to the Taliban, a report from last week has claimed that some in the UK intelligence community are predicting that’s many as 500,000 Afghans are heading for Europe.