BY SARAH STEPHEN
If the 1100 Afghan asylum seekers being detained in Australia, Nauru and Manus Island had been allowed to apply for refugee status when they first arrived, most would already have been resettled in Australia. Now, after the ousting of the Taliban regime, these asylum seekers face the prospect of forced repatriation as governments around the world deem the "new" Afghanistan to be safe.
Governments which supported the war on Afghanistan have a political interest in presenting Afghanistan as being on the road to democracy, peace and prosperity. Their claim has been bolstered by the UN High Commission for Refugees' (UNHCR) recent decision to redefine who can be considered an Afghan refugee, such that the majority of those stranded in detention centres and camps around the world are excluded.
The current agreement between the Australian and Afghan governments allows the return of only those Afghan asylum seekers who volunteer to do so. But on June 17, immigration minister Philip Ruddock began to argue for forced repatriation. He predicted that, in time, the Afghan government would agree to "non-voluntary" returns.
The ALP has called for the establishment of a temporary "safe haven" arrangement, similar to that used for Kosovar and East Timorese refugees in 1999, until Afghanistan is safe to return to. Ruddock has ruled this out, arguing that it would give false hope to asylum seekers that they may be allowed to stay in Australia.
Labor has not yet clearly opposed forced repatriation. Federal leader Simon Crean has declared only that Ruddock's plan is "hollow rhetoric" because the government does not have the power to implement it.
Green Left Weekly spoke to Afghan refugee Riz Wakil, who was granted a temporary protection visa in 2000 after spending nine months in Curtin detention centre. He pointed out: "Even the head of the UN delegation that visited Port Hedland last month told the detainees there that they should not return.
"There is starvation and disease there. I have pictures of people in central Afghanistan boiling grass and leaves to feed their children. If people who are still in Afghanistan have nothing, how can they say that people who are here should be sent back?"
The government's unease about so few asylum seekers taking up the cash offer to return was reflected in the ultimatum delivered to detainees by a government delegation that visited Woomera detention centre in June. The June 16 Age reported that Hassan Varasi, a spokesperson for the detainees, said, "They were told, you can choose. Go back home or you can spend the rest of your life in detention".
On June 20, World Refugee Day, Amnesty International's international secretariat issued a statement urging countries such as Australia and Britain not to return asylum seekers to Afghanistan. It stated: "Fighting continues, crime and banditry are rife, women and ethnic groups have been targeted for abuse, and there are thousands of unexploded landmines.
"Ethnically targeted attacks against civilians have led to new internal displacement and flows of refugees. Thousands have been seeking safety and assistance in Pakistan and camps for internally displaced persons inside Afghanistan ..."
"Although hundreds of thousands of refugees have returned from Pakistan and Iran, many of them appear to be returning because they are not protected in their countries of asylum and transit. While the UNHCR is facilitating these returns, it is not encouraging them ...
"Encouraging returns or forcibly returning refugees at this tender stage in Afghanistan's transition is premature, irresponsible and unsustainable."
Wakil rejects the idea that Afghanistan is on the path to peace and democracy. "It is true that the United States and its allies overthrew the Taliban, but they didn't destroy them. There were hundreds of thousands of Taliban militants, not just a few hundred. Where did they all go?
"Many were forced underground, but they are still there ... I'm quite sure that when the new government fails to give the people everything that it has promised them, the Taliban will rise again.
"This will be helped by a part of the military in Pakistan which will not want to waste all the resources they put into the Taliban in the 1990s, and is continuing to support Taliban leaders."
Wakil pointed out that "ministers in the current government in Afghanistan were responsible for terrible injustices in the past, such as the massacre of thousands of Hazara men, women and children in western Kabul in 1995. How can someone guarantee to us that they have changed? If they are really prepared to share power now, why are there so few Pashtuns and Hazaras in the new government, when Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group and Hazaras are next largest?"
Wakil explained why the government's decision that most of the Afghans in Australia's detention centres are not refugees is wrong. "Most of the Afghans who came here to ask for asylum could not live under a fanatical Islamic government ... Afghanistan is still an Islamic country and all the laws are shariah laws (based on the Koran).
"If someone disagrees with any word from the holy book, or even if he turns his back on his religion, anyone else has the right to kill him, without a trial. When you say that women should be equal to men, for example, you are speaking against Islam and you can be killed. The new government has not said it will reform Islam."
Wakil added: "Political persecution will continue too. For Afghans who struggle for a better society, not only for one ethnic group, but for the whole society, this government is not acceptable, so we will have to raise our voices again.
"If I was sent back, I would not be able to sit quietly. I want all my people to have our basic human right to education, I would demand equality for women. But for doing this I would be persecuted again. And anyone who tries to make those in the new government responsible for the massacres they committed in the past will definitely be in trouble."
From Green Left Weekly, June 26, 2002.
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