Reception of Afghan refugees | “Please help us”

Only 4,000 of the 40,000 pledged refugees have arrived in Canada since mid-August

Melanie Marquis
Press

(Ottawa) Some 4,000 out of 40,000. Three months after the fall of Kabul, Canada only accepted 10% of the Afghan refugees it had promised to receive. If things are taking that long, and Immigration Minister Sean Fraser refuses to set an “artificial” deadline, it is in part because of the “gigantic challenges” on the ground. But he promises that the mission will be accomplished.

The network is too weak near Amangarh, a town in Pakistan about two hours east of the Afghan border where Nasratullah Habibi * went into exile with his wife and their two young children. The man, who claims to have been an interpreter for the Canadian Armed Forces in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in 2010 and 2011, therefore sends an audio message via WhatsApp.

“Please help us,” he pleads.

“I helped the Canadian Forces, and now my family and I have been abandoned. My family is scared. We are not safe, ”blows the Afghan who fled his country.

Installed in his office at 21^e floor overlooking downtown Ottawa, Thursday evening, Canada’s new Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, Sean Fraser, listens to the recording presented to him Press.

“These stories are difficult to hear,” he reacts.

Then he hastens to add this: “We will honor our commitment to welcome 40,000 Afghan refugees to Canada. ”

And the Trudeau government will also “fulfill the moral obligation [qu’il a] to help those who have helped Canada, such as the interpreters who have supported members of the Canadian Armed Forces, ”said the 37-year-old minister.

However, he does not want to put forward a deadline for reaching the objective of welcoming 40,000 Afghan refugees formulated in the liberal electoral platform, on the pretext that it would be an “artificial date”, because of the “uncertainty on field “.

Slow operation

Since the Taliban took over the Afghan government in mid-August, nearly 4,000 refugees have arrived in Canada. Some 1,700 have been approved and are waiting in a third country, and nearly 9,300 people, still in Afghanistan, have also been given the green light to come to Canada.

The slowness of the operation was sharply criticized by the opposition in Ottawa.

The bureaucratic machine turned out to be poorly oiled. Some requests remain a dead letter. Refugees who have fled to third countries, especially Pakistan, feel betrayed by the Canadian government.

At Toronto Star, the Coalition for Women in Journalism recounted a few weeks ago that of the 146 journalists, activists, academics and lawyers the organization helped evacuate to third countries, only 3 people had heard from their request.

Former Immigration Minister Chris Alexander – who himself came under heavy criticism for his handling of the crisis in Syria in 2015 – is hardly impressed with the way things are progressing.

Mr. Alexander does not, however, place the responsibility on Minister Fraser.

But to the Liberals, yes.

“The resources that were deployed for Syria after the Liberal victory were not this time around. Why ? Because we were on an election campaign. Then there was a cabinet reshuffle. And so, there was no clear order, decision for the addition of resources, estimates the one who was ambassador in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is not Syria

Without denying that there were failures in the Ministry, Sean Fraser argues, however, that the two situations are not comparable.

“In Syria, there was a centralized effort, a major presence of the United Nations Refugee Agency, which handled the treatment of refugees for a multitude of countries around the world. As for Afghanistan, it’s a completely different universe, ”argues the Minister.

Added to this is the fact that the Taliban government is not particularly cooperative or very competent, points out the minister: “We deal with people who are not particularly good at running a country and who, honestly, do not have especially wanting to help the Government of Canada for obvious reasons, given our past involvement in the country. ”

The Afghan crisis is getting worse. In an interview with the BBC earlier this month, the Director-General of the United Nations World Food Program, David Beasly, sounded the alarm, as a predicted very harsh winter looms large. gates of Afghanistan.

“We are powerless”

In Sherbrooke, where we find the second largest Afghan community in Quebec, the director general of the Transcultural Educational Association, Shah Ismatullah Habibi, does not know where to turn. He is inundated with appeals for help from Afghanistan.

“We are powerless,” he drops.

“There are hundreds, thousands of people crossing the border risking their lives to go to Pakistan or Iran,” said Habibi. Because according to him, the desperation of the Afghans is probably even stronger than it was when Kabul, the capital, fell.

“We do not have the full picture of what is going on, because there is no longer free journalism in Afghanistan, but according to all the testimonies I receive, the Taliban are killing people every day” , deplores Chris Alexander, recalling that Pakistan “is the great godfather, the great financier of the Taliban”.

And that, therefore, Nasratullah Habibi and his family are “in danger”.

* Mr. Habibi forwarded to Press some documents to prove his identity, including a photo card where he is identified as an interpreter, but it was not possible to authenticate them to the Ministry of National Defense, where confidentiality reasons were cited.