EPAFghans gather at the airport in Kabul after the Taliban take power in August 2021.
today, 21:48•Modified today, 21:52
Two years after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, many Afghan employees are still waiting to be evacuated to the Netherlands. These include security guards who worked for the Netherlands in Afghanistan. The cabinet would apply too strict requirements to evacuation requests.
Yesterday, exactly two years after the fall of Kabul, PvdA MP Kati Piri sent a letter to the cabinet with questions about the rejection of evacuation requests from Afghan personnel. Ten parties, including the government parties with the exception of the VVD, have signed the letter. “The Chamber is keen that the cabinet pays off the debt of honor to our local Afghan employees,” said Piri.
More than a hundred Afghans who have worked for the Dutch troops have reported to the Refugee Work Foundation. These are mainly guards hired by the Ministry of Defense for the security of Kamp Holland near the city of Tarin Kowt. Despite their contribution to the Dutch mission in Afghanistan, their evacuation requests were rejected.
Lawyer Paul Stieger represents a number of guards and says they are in great danger in Afghanistan. “The Taliban are actively looking for them. As far as we know, 15 guards have already been killed by the Taliban. Almost all of my clients are in hiding.”
Criteria for evacuation
In response to questions from news hour, have informed the ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs of the eligibility criteria for evacuation. “The local employee must be able to demonstrate that he or she has worked for the Netherlands for a substantial period of time. [..] The request must also demonstrate that he or she is threatened because of those activities.”
Stieger: “Objectively, everyone meets those criteria. Only then is it said: you are too late. You should have reported before October 11, 2021. Afghanistan is a very low-developed country. There is almost no internet. The only way this people could report was by e-mail to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or Defense. For many of these people it was almost impossible to report immediately. They were not even aware that there was a special arrangement.”
Former commander Nesar Naeemi managed to escape Afghanistan in time, but fears for the guards who remained behind:
“Letting someone who worked for you for four years die is not good”
Stieger tries to challenge his clients’ rejections through the courts, but has little hope of a positive outcome. In previous cases, the judge also ruled against the guards. They would not belong to a “defined group” of eligible Afghans.
Stieger does not consider this a valid argument. “The group of guards is a demarcated group. In fact, in the guidelines of how we assess asylum applications in the Netherlands, the group of guards is listed separately as a risk group. That means that you can say: this person can be regarded as a refugee.”
He also calls the argument that the applications came too late strange. “First of all, I do not read in the letter from the House of Representatives that that would be a condition. And if it is a condition at all, why is it applied so harshly? These people have stuck their necks out for the Dutch mission. We are what they owed.”
Unwillingness and inability
There is now also a call for a more generous policy within politics. GroenLinks member of parliament Tom van der Lee calls it a combination of unwillingness and inability that so many Afghans get no response. “Certainly in the beginning it was inability. It was chaotic. Afterwards you try to fix that. But sometimes there also seems to be unwillingness because the cabinet wants to implement an agreement that has been made with the House much less far-reaching.”
Like Stieger, Van der Lee thinks that the cabinet is applying too strict requirements: “I cannot ignore the impression that, due to the sensitivity of the subject of migration, the cabinet has set too strict criteria for people who have worked for the Netherlands and are at risk. “
2023-08-16 19:48:22
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