"
The world is ruined, and the world will be damaged
".
This Pashtun proverb, the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan, has never sounded so true in this Central Asian country, at war since 1978. Every day, its outbreak of violence.
The Taliban are stepping up attacks on exhausted government forces.
And civilians are the first victims, starting on the human level.
The historic agreement to withdraw foreign troops, signed between the Taliban and the United States in February - which have been there for more than 7,000 days - has allowed these radical Islamists to glimpse a return to power.
Frightening the population, who fear what they had put in place between 1996 and 2001: public executions by stoning, ultra-strict religious practice, banned dance and music, non-existent women's rights.
And the country to become a real backbone for the terrorists of al-Qaida, led by Osama bin Laden.
Nineteen years later, the Taliban have succeeded in reclaiming nearly 30% of the territory.
Read also: In Afghanistan, the hour of resistance
On site, the needs have never been so numerous.
The United Nations echoed this last week, estimating that 5 million more people - 16 million in total - will need humanitarian aid in 2021. "
Funding is urgently needed,
" he said. we alerted.
Moreover, "if
there were a failure of the peace talks
", started in Doha last September, between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the risk would be that of a "
backtracking with catastrophic consequences, including new population displacements
, ”
Céline Schmitt, spokesperson for the High Commissioner for Refugees (HCR)
, told
Figaro
.
And who says displacements, also says migrations.
Faced with neighboring countries that no longer want them (Iran, Pakistan) or have never really wanted (Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), more and more Afghans are turning to Europe.
The number of first-time Afghan asylum seekers has almost multiplied by five in five years in France
The European El Dorado to escape the war
In the past, these migrants favored three destinations.
Sweden, which welcomed 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015. The United Kingdom, where the English language, the deregulation of work, and the strong Afghan diaspora allowed better integration.
And finally Germany, an industrialized and prosperous European power, having received a million refugees in 2015. Today, these three countries have considerably restricted their migration policies.
Consequence: Afghans often find themselves stranded in Greece, Italy or France.
The figures from the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) are categorical.
The number of first-time asylum seekers has almost multiplied by five in five years in France.
Propelling the country to the first place of this sad ranking in 2019, ahead of Albania, Georgia and Guinea.
First asylum requests accepted in France, between 2015 and 2019. LE FIGARO
Afghan migrants are so numerous in France that they made up more than 90% of the Saint-Denis camp, north of Paris, dismantled a few weeks ago with 3,500 people in it.
And yet, the Hexagon is not the El Dorado they glimpsed.
First, because relations between Paris and Kabul have never been very strong.
“
France has above all provided a cultural anchor for an Afghan elite.
For example, the last king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zaher Shah, had studied at the French Istiqlal high school, and the entire royal family was Francophile.
But the economic anchoring was never really present
”, analyzes Karim Pakzad, researcher associated with the Institute of international and strategic relations (IRIS).
But also (and above all) because the integration of these migrants is not as easy as in the countries mentioned above.
“
They don't have the same advantages.
It is almost impossible to work legally
”, he points out.
To read also: Migrants: in Saint-Denis, tensions and exacerbated violence in the "camp of shame"
The areas where these migrant camps are located, whether in Paris or Ile-de-France, are often undermined by these groups of young people, who wander aimlessly.
"
While awaiting the examination of their asylum application, or after a refusal, many pour into the trafficking of cigarettes or drugs to try to meet their needs
", dissects a French police source.
The many brawls, recently identified, do not help matters.
Probably because among these refugees, we find people of different ethnicities.
"The Pashtuns do not mix with the Hazaras or the Tajiks,"
says a knowledgeable source.
“Three years ago, along the Canal Saint-Martin, there were the Hazaras tents on one bank, and the Pashtuns on the other,”
recalls researcher Karim Pakzad.
Previously, Afghan migrants were mostly young people from large cities.
Today, "
they are also young people, but they come from small towns bordering Pakistan, in the south-east of Afghanistan
", reports Karim Pakzad.
Here too, the difference is ethnic.
These young people are most often Pashtuns, from the same ethnic group as the Taliban.
“
They are not political refugees, unlike those who preceded them a few years ago.
They are looking for a better life, so their asylum requests are often refused,
”relates our interlocutor, a former professor at the University of Kabul.
Fleeing these rural areas of Afghanistan where clashes are sowing chaos, these nationals find themselves without a solution.
"
They often remain in the territory despite the refusal of an asylum application
", attests a police source.
“Drive out the Taliban, develop democracy there, women's rights.
These are fine UN intentions.
But let's not forget that Afghanistan is the last country of the medieval East »
Georges Lefeuvre, associate researcher at IRIS
"Unthinkable to caricature Muhammad"
When they arrive in France, a country with multiple fractures but at peace, the Afghans sometimes suffer a real "
civilizational, cultural shock
".
“
They are radicalized.
They are imbued with a very conservative, very retrograde Islam, where violence against women is considered normal,
”underlines Karim Pakzad.
“
They are often favorable to the Taliban.
For them, it is unthinkable, for example, to caricature the Prophet Muhammad
”.
The recent republication of cartoons by Charlie Hebdo, preceding the terrorist assassination of Samuel Paty, has also provoked intense demonstrations, both in Pakistan - a country of millions of Pashtuns - and in Afghanistan.
“
These rural young people (75 to 78% of the Afghan population is of rural origin, editor's note) are already out of step with big cities like Kabul.
So imagine in France, a secular country, with a freedom of belief
”, sensitizes the expert.
Read also: The United States "concerned" by information on Afghan migrants drowned at the Iranian border
Our specialist also notes that these Afghans were all "
born in a country at war
".
“
Sometimes their parents were also born in this situation.
They were born into violence.
It's something normal for them,
”he insists.
Georges Lefeuvre, researcher associated with IRIS, underlines this precisely.
“
Drive out the Taliban, develop democracy there, women's rights.
These are fine UN intentions.
But let's not forget that Afghanistan is the last country of the medieval East,
”recalls the anthropologist.
And the latter to add.
“
For them, the Taliban are almost the 'least worst'.
In the countryside, women are already veiled.
When they were in power, their judicial system was simple but worked.
Not that of the State
”.
The government's inability to provide for the needs of the people, starting with food, made them pessimistic.
The arrival of the Americans, who have injected several billion each year without improving the economy, has thrown the system off balance, both economically and socially.
Bridging any hope of a golden future there.
"Time bomb"
Should we, however, be worried about this chronic incompatibility between Afghan migrants and French culture?
Fortunately, these nationals rarely have terrorist networks behind them.
“
There are few connections with terrorism among Afghans.
They are leaving the country because the ground is unstable, because they are desperate,
”argues Georges Lefeuvre.
Little influence from Daesh, therefore, hated by the majority of the population there because of the terrible attacks directly targeting civilians.
Like that of a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing 13 people, including two babies, in May 2020. However, "
the security risk is not to be put aside
", according to Karim Pakzad.
These nationals are illegal immigrants, which does not help their integration.
"It even promotes conspiracy and hate ideas
,
"
said a police source.
Read also: Islamism: how investigators track down those who advocate terrorism on the web
Used to this violent context, the reactions of some can be unpredictable.
As when a 14-year-old Afghan schoolboy welcomed the attack on Samuel Paty, saying he "
did the same
".
Or when another Afghan, living in Poitiers, praised the beheading of the professor in a video by Emmanuel Macron with a verse from the Koran in Arabic calling for "to
make suffer those who hurt the messengers of Allah
".
For these facts, qualified as "apology for terrorism", the young man, aged 26, was sentenced to 18 months in prison at the beginning of last November.
The court accompanied his sentence with a definitive ban from the national territory, which had already been pronounced against him, but had not been respected.
"The imbeciles and the ignorant who spread terror in the name of a religion which wants to make us go back centuries"
, thundered the representative of the public ministry, during the requisitions.
“Thousands of Afghan refugees move from one country to another, living in hiding, with no hope of improvement.
This way of life constitutes a time bomb for France and Europe ”
Karim Pakzad
At the end of October, a man armed with a knife 30 centimeters long was arrested in Lyon.
Dressed in a djellaba and a military jacket, the man, born in 1994, known to the intelligence services for radical Islamism, "
seemed ready to take action
."
He was finally indicted for "
carrying a prohibited weapon and violence with a weapon
".
In 2016, a 17-year-old refugee carried out a hatchet attack in Germany, injuring five people.
This time, the teenager had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
“
Thousands of Afghan refugees move from one country to another, living in hiding, with no hope of improvement.
This way of life is a time bomb for France and Europe,
”says Karim Pakzad.
Pessimistic but not totally resigned, our specialists hope however that the peace talks will "
find the conditions for appeasement
".
And to avoid disaster.
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