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Landed in Entebbe: The first evacuees from Afghanistan have arrived in Uganda
Photo: Martin Kharumwa / DER SPIEGEL
When the Taliban moved in, they made a fire.
Shortly afterwards, dozens of files were on fire, the tabs of their students.
Under no circumstances should they fall into the hands of Islamists who target girls.
Shabana Basij-Rasikh, the woman who started the fire, runs the only boarding school for girls in Afghanistan.
The boarding school no longer exists, at least not in this form.
Since Thursday the students and their teachers as well as the entire staff of the school have been in a country some of them had probably never heard of before.
The 250 Afghans are now in Rwanda.
After all, she tries to spread something like optimism in all the horror.
One sees the time in Rwanda as a »semester abroad«, writes founder Shabana Basij-Rasikh on Twitter.
"As soon as circumstances allow, we hope to be able to return home." Whether circumstances will ever allow it again, no one can say at the moment.
She does not reveal why the headmistress chose East African Rwanda.
She asks for privacy on Twitter, and the Rwandan government is also referring to this request.
The Rwandan Ministry of Education only briefly announced that the students were warmly welcomed.
Government-loyal newspapers report that the boarding school team traveled to Rwanda on their own initiative.
Or maybe it was her only option.
One thing is certain: Rwanda has agreed to temporarily take in evacuated Afghans at the urgent request of the US government. "Unfortunately, we cannot provide further details," writes the communications office of the Rwandan government. The constellation sounds adventurous at first: A rich country like the USA asks one of the poorest countries in the world to accept people on its behalf. And not just Rwanda. The US government has asked numerous third countries, including Colombia, Albania, Mexico and Uganda. Among other things, security checks are to take place there before those affected are allowed to travel on.
A plane of the Afghan airline Kam Air landed in the former Ugandan capital Entebbe on Wednesday at 7.56 a.m. with 51 people on board, started the day before from Kabul. Actually there should have been a lot more, pictures of the largely empty plane are circulating on Twitter. But the US military did not let the other people on the passenger list through, reports the Wall Street Journal. The flight was organized by the private development organization Sayara International, which is also active in Afghanistan. The US embassy in Kampala pulled the strings in the background and ensured that Ugandans would be ready to accept them.
Journalists and employees from civil society organizations were on board. According to DER SPIEGEL, the destination Uganda was more of an emergency solution; in contrast to the USA, the country quickly issued exit papers for those rescued so that they could leave Afghanistan. The chairman of Sayara International puts it a little more diplomatically: "We chose Uganda because they were one of the first countries to let us in generously." He feels abandoned by the major US institutions.
After arriving in Uganda, the evacuees were kept like a state secret, and a journalist commissioned by SPIEGEL was even arrested after trying to speak to the refugees.
The luxury hotel, in which the Afghans are staying in Uganda, is now cordoned off by heavily armed Ugandan military.
The Ugandan government has only made one thing clear: The cost of the expensive hotel will be borne by the USA.
The country, in turn, sees the temporary accommodation of the refugees as an opportunity to help the pandemic-ridden tourism sector on its feet.
At Washington's request, Uganda plans to accept up to 2,000 Afghans.
Migration expert Stefanie Barratt from the research think tank Samuel Hall suspects a targeted tactic behind diverting the evacuees to third countries: “It would of course be possible to bring the people directly to the USA. Instead, the borders are once again being externalized, ”she says. Barratt anticipates that it could take several months to years for the procedures in third countries to be completed and for it to be clear what happens to those affected.
What if, for example, your visa or asylum application is rejected in the USA? Will you then stay in Uganda, Colombia, Albania or Rwanda, financed by America? So far there are no answers. "The priority should be to help them reach their ultimate destination in the US or Canada without delay," Barrett said. For the third countries that have agreed to take in refugees, it is primarily about two things: political capital and hard cash. According to some experts, if they support the USA now, the government in Washington will no longer look so closely at human rights violations, for example. An idea that has worked well in the past.
Four Latin American countries are also on the list of countries that are supposed to temporarily accept refugees from Afghanistan for the USA. In addition to Chile and Costa Rica, the people are also to be accommodated in Mexico and Colombia, two countries that are already struggling with severe migration crises.
For the government of the Colombian Ivan Duque in particular, the deal means a rapprochement with the Biden administration. The Colombian president had bet on Donald Trump in the US election campaign and thus catapulted himself into the sidelines. The Afghans are said to receive a Covid vaccination after their arrival and to be accommodated in hotels in the capital Bogotá as well as in Barranquilla and Cali - a city in which the protests against the government recently escalated and suppressed with extreme brutality by security forces and paramilitary groups became. In general, Colombia is characterized by violence and instability. In plain language: The 4,000 Afghans are being moved from one crisis area to the next.
"Colombia wants to present itself as a cosmopolitan, humanitarian state," says political scientist Ariel Ávila from the think tank Fundación Paz y Reconciliación, "but the state has absolutely no experience with migration management." Around two million Venezuelan refugees are in the country. The US pays hundreds of millions for them too. Most of them live in tents, live on the streets, are malnourished and their children do not go to school.
The PR campaign surrounding the admission of Afghan refugees to Mexico is currently particularly impressive. Like state guests, the first four young women, a team of robot engineers from Kabul, were received in Mexico City last Tuesday. The cameras clicked as I got off the plane. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard personally came to greet the Afghan women.
"You are now under the protection of the Mexican government," he said when he handed them the passports, including a permit to initially stay in the country for 180 days.
Afterwards there was a press conference at which one of the women thanked her for the asylum in the country with a trembling voice and close to tears: “We are very happy to be here.
It is an honor that the Mexican government brought us here and saved our lives. "
Shortly afterwards, the next group of more than 120 people arrived from Doha: They were, among others, Afghan journalists who had worked for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (NYT) and theirs Familys.
Too high bureaucratic hurdles in Washington
Here, too, the choice of destination was probably not entirely voluntary: As the »NYT« reports, traveling to the USA was difficult because of many bureaucratic hurdles.
Therefore, the Mexican Foreign Minister Ebrard was finally asked for help to evacuate the employees.
Documents were issued unbureaucratically and thus a quick escape from Kabul via Doha to Mexico City was made possible.
"We are now committed to a foreign policy that supports freedom of expression as well as liberal and feminist values," Ebrard told the NYT.
He now wants to save more Afghan journalists.
He did not mention that his own country is one of the most dangerous in the world for journalists. The plan to temporarily take in Afghans who are actually supposed to travel further to the USA also arouses unpleasant associations. As part of the "Remain in Mexico" program launched under Trump, asylum seekers, mainly from Cuba and Central America, were sent back from the USA to the dangerous Mexican border towns, where they had to wait for their procedures and notifications and some of them are still stuck. Around 70,000 people are affected. According to Human Rights Watch, many of those seeking protection in Mexico have been victims of acts of violence such as torture, rape and child abuse.
The first 121 evacuees have also arrived in Albania, after landing on Friday morning they were accommodated in a hotel complex in Durres.
The Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that the country could temporarily take on up to 3,000 local Afghan workers.
Just like the neighbors North Macedonia and Kosovo, the offer should be understood as a humanitarian gesture and support for NATO.
What tends to take a back seat: Washington pays for all costs incurred.
In Spain one is already further.
By Wednesday, 1,242 Afghans had arrived.
In the coming days, thousands more people could arrive from the US bases in Qatar and Ramstein.
The Iberian Peninsula has thus developed into a hub for the rescue of Afghan local workers and their families.
People who worked for the EU are also to be distributed from here to other European countries. The Spaniards themselves reckon with around 600 Afghans who worked for them as translators, cooks or other employees and are therefore entitled to protection. However, a large number of the newcomers are only likely to stay in the country for a short time. Because Spain has concluded an agreement with the USA to be on the safe side, according to which the USA will bring its local staff to its own country after 15 days at the latest. In the meantime, corona tests should be carried out and visa applications processed.
The expected arrival of refugees from Kabul has triggered a wave of helpfulness in the small Andalusian town of Rota near Cadiz.
The community collects clothing donations and hygiene items.
"We are ready to provide help, even if people do not come directly to our city," said Mayor Javier Ruiz.
So far, alone, the announced local staff are still missing.
The broad willingness to help is in contrast to Spain's handling of migrants who come across the Mediterranean.
Even the right-wing extremist Vox party recently declared that it wanted to protect local Spanish workers.
The willingness to help, it seems, is easier the less people are actually in the country - and stay.
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