Defence`s Feeds

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The Afghan government and its United States military backers are considering standing up a new militia force, an army version of the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and modelled on the Indian Territorial Army. Officials claim this is their only option if isolated communities are to be protected from insurgents. Human rights groups have reacted with shock. AAN’s Kate Clark looks at the multiple, unhappy precedents for this force, but also at where militias have, occasionally, worked to defend communities, rather than abuse them. She considers the serious questions that would need to be answered before the government went ahead with this plan and also asks what it means for the third of a million-strong ANSF that a new militia is felt to be needed.

AAN has been told that President Ghani is currently considering a pilot project for the ATA in the Achin and Kot districts of Nangrahar, heartland of the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) and the US/Afghan government fight against it. In a second dispatch, we will assess the viability of this pilot project using lessons learned from previous experiments with militias.

This dispatch is published as part of a joint three-year project by AAN, the Global Public Policy institute (GPPi), and the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. The project explores the role and impact of militias, local or regional defence forces and other quasi-state forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, including mechanisms for foreign assistance to such actors. Funding is provided by the Netherlands Research Organisation.

Many, including this author, could not believe their eyes when they read a New York Times piece on 15 September 2017 quoting un-named officials about a proposal to establish a new militia force for Afghanistan modelled after a combination of the ALP and the Indian Territorial Army. For many years now, there have been scathing critiques of both (1) and of other Afghan militias including allegations that they engage in widespread abuses, undermine accountability, or simply do not work to protect the population. It seemed astonishing then that the Afghan government and US military would be planning to create another of these forces. 

Yet, the proposal appears to be serious. It was followed up with other articles quoting named Afghan Ministry of Defence (MoD) officials; according to The New York Times, Tolo TV and AFP, the proposal is to establish ‘village defence forces’ in other words civilians who would be recruited locally and given arms to protect their areas. This new ‘Afghan Territorial Army’ (ATA) may include some 20,000 forces – that would be more than two-thirds the size of the ALP (now at 29,000 forces). One Afghan MoD official told AFF it will “operate under an army corps and will be used to fill the gaps.” Spokesman for the ministry, Dawlat Waziri told Tolo:

“People will be recruited from their areas, because they know their region and realize how to keep it … The forces will not go from one place to another. It is almost the same as the Local Police, but there is a big difference.” [This difference not explained in the report.] 

The New York Times reported that the move would regularise the use of “local militias” which it says the government has often turned to when “districts have come under Taliban attack and the regular forces [are] stretched.” Pro-government militias have been increasingly used by Kabul since the completion of handover of security from international to national forces in 2014, both in Nangrahar and in the north (they were also raised before that – see AAN reporting here, here and here). Some militias have been badged as ‘uprising forces’; others not. None have any status in Afghan law and their chains of command tend to be opaque, both factors which tend to foster abusive behaviour. (2)

One aim of the ATA, it seems, would be to bring such militias under formal state control.

The role of these re-badged militias, according to The New York Times, would be “holding areas cleared by the regular army, whose units would take on a primarily offensive role.” The new force would be cheaper than the national army, it said “and more sustainable and accountable than the existing militias.”

AAN understands the ATA proposal has the backing of the US military, Afghan ministry of defence and NATO Resolute Support and is now on President Ghani’s table waiting his final decision. However, reports say it was met with scepticism and disquiet by many of Afghanistan’s major donors, particularly the European countries. They have maintained their refusal to support the Afghan Local Police because of concerns over funding militias, so it seems unlikely they would back the ‘Afghan Territorial Army’. Human rights groups also immediately raised detailed concerns, founded on experience of uncovering abuses by previous militia forces. Human Rights Watch warned that “the expansion of irregular forces could have enormously dangerous consequences for civilians.”

The ATA within Afghanistan’s new military strategy

The reason for setting up the ATA – a force that is presented as replicating the ALP, but under MoD control (more on which, later) – has not been made clear. Officials have yet to reveal any difference in their role or make-up, except that they would be “better trained.” Like the ALP, the ATA would be recruited locally and, we are told, not deployed elsewhere.

It is also not clear why the Afghan government and its US military backers want to stand up a new force at all, when there are so very many Afghans under arms already. As of May 2017, (see here) there were a third of a million men and women (3) – 336,000 – in the ANSF, of whom 180,000 are ANA and 156,000 ANP.

The ATA proposal needs to be seen within the new military strategy of President Ghani and General John Nicholson, commander of US and international forces in Afghanistan; this was backed by President Trump in a speech on 21 August 2017 (read about it in detail here). Its aim is to ‘tilt’ the war in Kabul’s favour, with the aim of capturing back territory so that 80 per cent of the population is in Afghan government control. They want to eliminate Daesh and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but have expressed no hope in defeating the Taleban (few predict that either side can achieve victory on the battlefield).

The key failure since the transition from international to national responsibility for security, which was completed at the end of 2014, has been the inability of the conventional elements of the ANA and ANP to hold territory against the Taleban and the ANA’s inability to take offensive action to gain or re-gain territory. Because of that, Kabul has continued to lose territory to the Taleban and, to recapture it, Afghanistan’s special forces been relied on, flown round the country and heavily overused. Despite their efforts, the land may be lost again as other army and police forces fail, yet again, to hold it. (AAN will be publishing a special despatch on the Afghan Special Forces, soon.) The scale of this failure can also be seen in monetary terms. SIGAR’s latest running total of US aid (alone) to the ANSF since 2001 is more than 73.5 billion dollars (see here).

One possible response to these failings would be to improve the effectiveness and morale of the conventional parts of the ANA and ANP, but doing so would take time – time that Nicholson and Ghani do not think they have. The fundamental problems of weak leadership, low morale, nepotism (and in the Ministry of Interior, at least, the buying of positions) and other forms of corruption would need time and determination and, in the case of the highly powerful and highly corrupt MoI, courage and political capital, to sort out. (The difference, one senior international officer told AAN, between the two ministries was that the problem with corruption in the MoD was dodgy contracts; in the Ministry of Interior, he said, “It is everything.” Read in detail about the MoI here). Reforms have started, particularly in the less problematic Ministry of Defence, but they will not result in a well functioning (at least to the degree necessary) ANA and ANP any time soon. However, the US wants to defeat Daesh this year, a time-table which may make short-term ‘solutions’ look more attractive.

The ALP, a trouble history and a somewhat better present

Because the declared model for the ANA is the ALP, it is worth looking in some detail at how that has worked and what lessons can be learned from it. The ALP was certainly not the first militia that central government or its backers set up to try to compensate for weaknesses in state forces; the practice goes back to PDPA president Babrak Karmal and his Soviet advisors, although they were more associated with his successor, Dr Najibullah. Since 2001, the US military (and to a very limited extent, the UK and German armies, see here), as well as different Afghan stakeholders have repeatedly toyed with different models of standing up local militia forces, sometimes with a level of connection to Afghan national forces, sometimes not. On occasion, the Kabul government was not informed of these efforts, while at other times, it was centrally involved. For details of the post-2001 forces, see the appendix: A Brief History of Afghan Militias.

The immediate precursors to the ALP were established from 2009 onwards, as (mostly) US Special Operations Forces (SOF) experimented with creating local militias which they termed ‘village defence forces’. There was usually, but not always, some element of Afghan government buy-in. The US military hoped to stand up dependable, local forces in the face of a strong insurgency and a weak ANSF. In July 2010, Karzai who was against the militia forces reluctantly passed a law creating the ALP, which would ultimately absorb the majority of these local forces, both those stood up by international forces and a number of local militias answering to Afghan powerbrokers. The ALP was regularised to fall under MoI command in 2012, with local units answering to district and provincial police chiefs. The ALP is now present in almost all Afghanistan’s provinces.

AAN and others have, over the years, uncovered multiple instances of ALP units abusing the local population and being co-opted by strongmen and factions. Units portrayed as shining examples of locals taking security into their own hands and fighting the Taleban were revealed, with a little digging, to be violent towards civilians or cooperating with the Taleban or fighting their neighbours. (See examples here, here, here and here).

As a result of such investigations, the ALP gained a lasting reputation as an abusive militia force, at least among many researchers and human rights groups. However, the ALP has actually improved in recent years (see AAN reporting here) and always had a more mixed record than its reputation suggested. The unit within the MoI overseeing the ALP has undertaken reforms to improve its accountability – ensuring local policemen are paid, armed, exist and trained and holding individuals to account when they have committed crimes. There has also been a tightening up on their misuse, as private guards or being deployed away from their villages (abuses are more likely to occur away from home, particularly in ethnically mixed areas, against ‘other’ group). UNAMA’s tracking of abuses and violations suggest that the ALP is no worse than other Afghan forces, and in fact, in many cases appears to be causing fewer civilian casualties and engaging in less abuse. In its mid-year 2016 report, UNAMA only noted three incidents in which the 29,000-strong ALP had engaged in threats or harassment of the civilian population. There are grisly exceptions, however, with continuing accusations against some units of abuse, including murder, rape and extortion. Where the ALP is bad, it is very bad.

There is some evidence, as well, that the ALP may be more effective than many have assumed. UNAMA said, for example, in its 2014 annual report on the protection of civilians in the conflict that, “Most communities reported improved security following ALP deployment.” Also, as a forthcoming AAN dispatch will show, the Taleban have, from very early on, recognised the ALP as a major threat, especially in the south and east of Afghanistan, which have long served as the Taleban’s bedrock. This is precisely because where the ALP works, it draws on the same community support as the Taleban. (4) (See also this rather more mixed picture of the force from the International Crisis Group from 2015 here), this assessment of Helmand’s security where ALP have played a mixed role and this example of an abusive ALP unit eventually being turned around by community pressure (see here).

Successful ALP units, ones which usefully protect the local population against the insurgency and do not abuse them, tend to be where the community has wanted the force and has control over it. (5) They are often in places where the community is homogenous. Often it is in Pashtun areas where it fits best, within the known framework of arbaki or other traditions of setting up temporary, local, tribal defence forces (a study of ALP working in non-Pashtun areas can be read here).

Where the ALP fails, sometimes catastrophically, is where it exacerbates existing factional, ethnic or tribal rivalries. This most often happens in the north with its long and complex history of militias and militia abuses, but has been seen in the south and east as well, including in Pashtun areas. A key sign of danger is when the ALP has been drawn from one of several competing local groups or where it has been co-opted by a powerful politician, commander or faction with clout locally and in Kabul (so giving ALP units effective impunity).

The ALP is now seven years old. Training, command and control and pay have all become fairly standardised over the years as institutional control has grown. Despite continuing abuses by some units, the ALP may be the best that can be hoped for from an Afghan militia. Certainly, all the many other militia forces raised in the post-2001 period, often re-badged and rarely stood down have behaved more badly. One of the issues which is unclear in the ATA proposal is whether this will be an ALP-style set up, as it now exists, with a careful selection of locations and members of ATA units, and reasonable command and control, or actually just a re-badging of militias already in existence which claim to be protecting villagers, but have very different agendas. For a recent example of just such a ‘village defence force’ which engages in crime and oppression locally, see this piece containing serious allegations against Commander Piran Qul’s NDS-funded ‘uprising force’ in Takhar (see here).

Will the ATA work: questions that need to be asked about setting up a new ‘village defence force’?

As Ghani weighs the decision to stand up the ATA, critical questions should be whether the initiative is likely to work to help protect and stabilise contested areas, and what the potential other consequences of creating such a force might be.

First, it is important to establish the criteria and set out some benchmarks, based on lessons learned. AAN, in partnership with German foreign affairs think tank GPPi, is currently in the middle of a research project scrutinising foreign-backed ‘militia forces’, looking at where they work, where they do not and why. Certain key issues keep recurring to do with effectiveness and accountability, assessed in terms of protecting the community from insurgent attacks and not abusing the local population. Based on past experience with the ALP, before the government or its American backers stand up another village defence force in Afghanistan, the following questions, at least, should be asked.­

Who actually chooses the members of the force?

Claims that defence forces have been chosen by ‘the community’ have often turned out to be duplicitous. Where locals actually want a defence force and are involved in choosing members, there is a higher likelihood of success.

Are they chosen from one tribe, sub-tribe, ethnic group or faction in a mixed area?

If so, expect disaster. ALP has worked best where the local community is homogenous or has a history of cooperation on local defence.

Is there a history of militia abuse in the area and/or powerful commanders with strong links to the state/US military and/or a history of war crimes?

If so, expect fresh abuses of civilians, in-fighting with other armed groups, involvement in the drug trade and other criminal enterprise and commanders wanting to re-badge illegal militias as men officially under arms.

Will anyone make money or gain politically out of the force?

Look for benefits going to local commanders or politicians who often agitate for local forces, regardless of whether they will be of any actual use in protecting people drawn to the money. If the militia is being set up in an area with the potential for it to be used for drugs or other smuggling, expect them to get involved, if only in ‘taxing’ shipments.

Are there elections coming up?

Be wary of forces being set up purportedly to guard local populations which are actually aimed at getting someone’s vote out, whether actual or ballot-stuffed votes. Village defence forces may also actually be aimed at stabilising an area, so that people can vote, but history has taught scepticism on this front.

What command and control and accountability mechanisms are in place?

One tricky issue here is that ‘village defence forces’ are supposed to belong to the community and, if set up by the state, to the state, through formal mechanisms, as well. This raises questions about command and control. In general, though, it can be said that we have seen problems arising with both the ALP and uprising forces where communities did not want them in the first place or were not involved in setting them up and where they are not loyal to the local community.

In terms of the state’s command and control, ie through the ANP hierarchy, we have seen impunity for units which have stronger, informal links to the factional leaders or politicians who mobilised them and who may be more influential than those supposedly in charge, the ANP district and provincial police chiefs. Control by either community of the MoI can be near impossible in such cases. Accountability for the ALP has improved as a result of eventual determined pressure from the US military and those in charge within the MoI, but it was many years before the political will was there to ensure this.

Why is it felt the militia force is needed?

Is the militia force being set up because this looks easier than fixing other, more fundamental, problems? That might be weaknesses in the ANSF or unpopularity, ineffectiveness, unresponsiveness or corruption in government – local, provincial or national. Creating militias as a short-cut solution to deeper problems has become a familiar pattern since 2001.

What happens if things go wrong?

This question seems rarely to be asked. The government and/or its US military ally have generally established militias apparently with the hope that all will go well, while ignoring the possibility for failure or disaster. It is worth taking a cool look at the outset at local politics and demography, land and water disputes and the possibility that arming some people may send the local factional, tribal or ethnic balance out of kilter. The potential long-term costs need to be considered, not just the possible short-term benefits.

Is there a date for standing down the force?

Militias are easier to stand up than they are to stand down.

The bar for raising a new militia force should be very high indeed in Afghanistan, given their troubled history. In a second dispatch, AAN will use these ‘lessons learned’ to help analyse the proposed pilot project for the Afghan Territorial Army which, we understand from several sources, would be in the southern Nangrahar districts of Achin and Kot. Might it be viable or lead to further complication and trouble? Achin and Kot are Daesh heartland and centre of the US/Afghan battle against the group. It is also where the US military created an earlier militia which went so badly wrong, it helped pave the way for Daesh to secure a base in Afghanistan.

A post-script

Also mentioned in press reporting on the ATA was a plan to set up a new 15,000-strong tribal militia, under the Ministry of Tribal and Border Affairs, modelled, a source in the ministry told AAN, on the tribal border protection force of the Najibullah era. It also existed earlier under the monarchy. The same source said the government was also planning to create a new deputy ministerial post and department within the ministry with the name of Conflict Resolution, Peace and Reconciliation. The process for creating both department and tribal force would start after parliament approves the acting minister, the former governor of Kandahar (and Nangrahar), Gul Agha Sherzai.

Alarm bells over this proposal should be ringing loudly: in the immediate post-2001 period Sherzai’s militia and state forces under his control, in close cooperation with US forces, abused and predated on former Taleban commanders and tribal and factional rivals of Shirzai’s in Kandahar. Influential men who were trying to live in peace, found themselves targeted for arrest, torture and extortion. Some found themselves handed over to US forces as ‘terrorists’ and sent to Bagram and Guantanamo Bay. Such actions earned Sherzai considerable money in US bounties, as Anand Gopal’s masterly work “The Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar” (see here) has detailed. Shirzai’s rule in Kandahar turned out to be one of the most important factors sparking rebellion and eventually insurgency in the province.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig, Borhan Osman and Erica Gaston

 

(1) As Human Rights Watch commented in its press release on the Afghan proposal:

The Indian Territorial Army, the model for this proposed defense force, has been deployed to support Indian counter-insurgency forces in Jammu and Kashmir. Territorial army personnel have been implicated in serious abuses, and its irregular status has contributed to a lack of accountability.

(2) UNAMA pointed out in its 2016 report into the Protection of Civilians in the conflict:

The increased practice of using untrained and unregulated pro-Government armed groups in such operations [against ‘anti-government elements’], sometimes to compensate for a lack of Afghan security force personnel, raised serious protection concerns for civilians both during such operations and during the post-operation phase. Pro-Government armed groups lack the training provided to Afghan national security forces and the discipline and accountability imposed through a formal command structure…

UNAMA continued to receive reports of Government authorities‘ unwillingness or inability to control the illegal activities of pro-Government armed groups due to their reliance on such groups to fight against Anti-Government Elements and the protection provided to some groups by powerful political figures. The use of irregular government militias operating outside a well-defined chain of command increases the risk that such groups exploit a fragile security environment, further compounding the protection risks faces by civilians and the possibility of human rights abuses. UNAMA urges the Government once again to disband pro-Government armed groups and dismantle the political patronage of such groups.

(3) [added 1 October 2017: Women accounted for 1.3 per cent of the ANSF,  according to the most recent SIGAR quarterly report.]

(4) One US expert group with top-level access to the ALP and the US military in 2013 said that ALP units ranged from “highly effective” – enhancing local security, undermining insurgent influence, and facilitating governance and development – to those “causing more harm than good to the counterinsurgency” – ineffective, predatory, or engaged in collusion with the enemy. It reported the US SOF’s own assessment, as one third of ALP units being effective, one third counter-productive and one third somewhere in between. (Mark Moyar, Ronald E Neumann, Vanda Felbab-Brown, William Knarr, Jack Guy, Terry Corner and Carter Malkasian, “The Afghan Local Police Community Self-Defense in Transition,” Center for Special Operations Studies and Research, Joint Special Operations University, August 2013, unpublished, but seen by AAN).

(5) Often, better ALP were marked out also by good training by US Special Operations Forces (SOF) who, in the early days, ‘embedded in the community’. This was not always the case, however.

 

Annex: A brief history of militia forces in Afghanistan

This is an edited version taken from a literature review by AAN and GPPi which looked at local, community or sub-state forces in Afghanistan. Full details and sourcing is available here.

It is not the first time that central government or its backers have sought to fill in gaps in state forces by setting up militias. Soviet-backed Presidents Karmal and Najibullah took this route in the 1980s: this was, for example, the origin of (now Vice-President) General Abdul Rashid Dostum’s Jombesh movement; also forces under current Kandahar police chief Abdul Razeq were formerly a 1980s militia in that province, under the lead of Ismatullah Muslim. (Muslim’s militia was a mujahedin group that ‘joined the government’.) The militias then were set up to keep the mujahedin at bay, but the litany of their abuses was long (read more about it in the Afghanistan Justice Project’s project). Many would also argue that many of the mujahedin forces, by the 1990s, had turned into little more than militia forces, with some having better command and control than others, but all accused of gross human rights abuses, war crimes and infighting (again, see the Afghanistan Justice Project report for detail on this).

Since 2001, irregular forces have regularly been established or backed by international military forces or set up by the Afghan government. They have included:

2001-2005

In 2001, the US military and CIA armed and funded the factions of the Northern Alliance and various Pashtun commanders to fight the Taleban. Some had been fighting the Taleban previously and were involved in fierce battles in the autumn of 2001; others were re-mobilised immediately after the start of the US-led intervention and simply drove into areas vacated by the fleeing Taleban and seized power locally. Under the new administration led by Hamed Karzai, those forces were re-named as the Afghan Military Forces (AMF) and put under Ministry of Defence (then under the control of the Shura-ye Nazar network within Jamiat-e Islami which presented their forces, at least, as a continuation of the old pre-Taleban Islamic State of Afghanistan army); it imposed a notional, formal structure of eight corps with divisions, garrisons, and other divisions: the tashkil was for about 200,000 men, although in practice many were ghost soldiers (with salaries paid into other pockets).

In practice, the AMF were often little more than re-hatted militias still loyal to their pre-2001 commanders and with little central command and control (see Human Rights Watch reporting of their many abuses here. From 2003, a nationwide programme of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) thinned out some of the AMF ranks while a new military force, the Afghan National Army (ANA), was created from scratch with a deliberate mixing of ethnic groups. However, DDR largely failed to demobilise the militias of the AMF, and many of its elements were incorporated into the Afghan National Police (ANP). Others, never integrated into the AMF or other state forces, continued fighting alongside the US Special Operations Forces and CIA and were often referred to collectively as ‘campaign forces’, for example, the Kandahar Strike Force, the Afghan Security Guards in Paktika and the Khost Protection Force, which still operates, (at least according to the latest reports) under CIA control. The campaign forces were notoriously abusive, with their relationship to US forces making them ‘beyond the law’ (see details here and here).

Both ISAF and the US military’s counter-terrorism mission used local militias to guard bases or as partners in operations, despite local people’s dismay; they had hoped ISAF would protect them from local militias, not partner them; the various local ad hoc arrangements were formalised in 2003 and they became know as the Afghan Security Force (ASF). The ASF was largely demobilised in 2006 when reporting suggests it numbered about 2,500 fighters, 90 per cent of whom joined the ANA or the Afghan National Police (ANP).

2005-2009

From about 2005 onwards, with the outbreak of the insurgency, ISAF expansion and later ‘the surge’ (the increase in US troops to almost one hundred thousand in 2009-2012) and the absence of a strong ANSF, the international military needed Afghan forces to guard bases and convoys and gave out contracts worth millions of dollars for this purpose. Many of the old militias were ‘re-hatted’ as guards in Private Security Companies (PSCs) which were licensed from 2006 onwards by the notoriously corrupt Ministry of Interior, and owned by relatives or close allies of the most powerful figures in government. These militias were extremely powerful and well-connected and were described as running a “protection racket” in a US House of Representatives report; money was syphoned off into private pockets, including the Taleban’s.

Increasingly unhappy with the power and money being channelled into non-state militias, President Karzai demanded the guard forces be regularised and brought under state control. From 2009, onwards, PSCs began to be replaced by guards from a state-owned enterprise within the Ministry of Interior, the Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF); there was pressure from commanders and strongmen to get ‘their men’ into this force.

From 2005, onwards, there was also increasing experimentation with irregular fighting forces. In response to Karzai’s request to create ‘tribal militias’, the NATO funded and the US trained the Afghanistan National Auxiliary Police (ANAP) in 2006, as a temporary counter-Taleban force in southern Afghanistan; it was highly corrupt. Like the PSCs, it also ended up legalising illegal militias, bringing groups loyal to local governors into the official sphere. Following extensive international criticism and reports of Taleban infiltration, it was quietly shut down in 2008.

2009 to date

From 2009, onwards, the US military, especially the SOF, began to pioneer ‘village defence forces’. The first was the Afghan Public Protection Program (AP3) in 2009, initially funded and implemented by US SOF in coordination with the Ministry of Interior (MoI) under Hanif Atmar (now National Security Advisor) in four districts of Wardak province. Overlapping with AP3, US Special Operations Forces set up various different community defence forces in southern Afghanistan, which were originally called the Local Defense Initiative (LDI), aka Community Defense Initiative (LDI/CDI). These Village Stability Operations (VSOs) would eventually morph into the Afghan Local Police (ALP), which was officially authorized in August 2010 under the MoI. Still US-funded, it is a 28,000 strong force and present in most provinces.

Other international forces also supported local defense organizations or militias in their areas of operation. The Critical Infrastructure Protection Program (CIPP) which operated in four, possibly five northern provinces, was set up in August 2011 as a joint German-US military initiative, using money from an American discretionary fund. There was also the Intermediate Security for Critical Infrastructure (ISCI) in Marja, Helmand (set up by US marines), and Community-Based Security Solutions (CBSS) set up in three eastern provinces. All were disbanded or absorbed into the ALP in 2012 after Karzai heard about their existence and banned them.

There have also been initiatives to establish militias by the government which did not get international funding, such as the Community Defense Force (CDF) established by President Karzai and funded by the Ministry of Interior ahead of the 2009 presidential elections, on paper to provide security to polling stations, but actually to help get the Karzai vote out.

The government has been establishing what it calls National Uprising Groups (patsunian or Khezesh-e Mardomi), to fill the (supposedly temporarily) security gap in places too remote for the ANSF or even the ALP to operate. They fall under no Afghan legal framework, but various parts of the government are reported to hire and arm them, particularly the NDS.

In addition to the ALP program and the national uprising forces, there remain a large number of ‘pro-government militias’, as they are termed by UNAMA. These are militias which are mobilised and on occasion fight for the government, and often refer to themselves as ‘ALP’ but have no formal position.

 

 

 

Please find below a link to the plenary debate on the draft report by Bodil Valero (Greens-EFA, Sweden) on "Arms export: the implementation of Common Position 2008/944/CFSP" held on 12 September 2017 and a link to a video message by the Rapporteur calling for stricter controls.
Further information
Arms export: extracts from the plenary debate
Arms export: video message by the Rapporteur calling for stricter controls
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

On 25 September, the SEDE committee will hold an exchange of views on the implementation of the Preparatory Action on Defence Research with Jorge Domecq, Chief Executive of the European Defence Agency and Alain Alexis, Head of Unit for Defence, Aeronautic and Maritime Industries, DG GROW, European Commission.
Further information
Draft agenda and meeting documents
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Chinese Dongfeng CSK131 Light Protected Vehicle

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

For the first time ever, COSME (the EU Programme for the COmpetitiveness of enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) offers grants for European defence clusters cooperating in international partnerships.

The European Defence Agency (EDA) has been exploring and highlighting COSME opportunities for  defence-related SMEs and clusters since 2016. An EDA exploratory study addressed defence-related clusters and informed about their potential eligibility for COSME grants, including through a dynamic EDA’s COSME web-platform.  Last March,  EDA hosted a workshop dedicated to EU opportunities for defence-related clusters. Among other topics, the meeting envisaged a future defence-oriented call from the European Commission (EC) allocating COSME grants to EU clusters and, in this respect, EDA started facilitating transnational cluster partnerships during a dedicated cluster-to-cluster (C2C) session.

For the first time ever, and building on the continuous and productive coordination EDA-EC, defence-related clusters now have the opportunity to apply for earmarked grants under the call for proposals - just issued by the Commission’s EASME – “Clusters Go International in the Defence & Security sector”.

The deadline for applications is 13 December 2017 (17:00 Brussels time).

Eligible consortia will have to be composed of at least three different clusters/business network organisations established in three different EU Member States.

At least one of them must be a defence-related entity, meaning :

• either a member of a National Defence Industry Association (see, as non-exhaustive examples, the dedicated EDA’s directory)
• or devoting part of its sales to defence markets
• or taking part in national or European defence-related projects (for example as part of a project managed by the EDA).

EDA stands ready to facilitate the building of cross-border cluster partnerships applying to the just published EASME’s call for proposals.
 

More information 

• E-mail EDA
• EDA’s summary table on EU funding opportunities for defence-related stakeholders
• EDA’s “COSME web-platform”
• EDA’s work supporting access to EU funding
• EDA’s work in support of industry
• EDA’s work in support of Small-and-Medium-Sized Enterprises 

Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

The industry workshop on Standard Architecture for Soldier Systems focusing on data management and infrastructure (STASS II) was successfully completed on 6 September 2017. Twenty participants from seven countries and 14 organisations (industry and research) attended the workshop and discussed a suitable approach towards the realisation of an open architecture for soldier systems. 

Industry and research representatives acknowledged and welcomed the progress made in the development of standard architecture to date. Some of the most relevant topics discussed were:

• The lack of standard connectors suitable for dismounted soldier systems (DSS) impedes the standardisation process as standardisation is only possible in cases where at least two sources are available. 
• Lack of data interfaces between weapon devices and soldier systems in the “NATO Powered Accessory Rail” document. Instead it focuses only on the mechanical and electrical interfaces. It was stressed that recommendations be included for such data interfaces in the STASS II architecture. The lack of data interface standardisation means that each manufacturer has to define a data interface which significantly reduces the opportunities for future interoperability.
• Cognitive burden to soldiers imposed by large amounts of available information. The participants recommended the study team to focus not only on technical aspects of soldier systems architecture but also the possible effects on soldiers of such large amounts of data. This aspect is critical of the way tactical information is presented. If a soldier is overwhelmed with information his/her attention can be easily diverted from the battlefield situation and as a result put him/her in danger. 
• The storage of collected information. Nowadays, the sensors that provide Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capabilities generate large volumes of data. A soldier is considered an important asset to collect and thus to support ISTAR capabilities. However this creates the need for equipping him/her with additional equipment. Taking into account the current trend to reduce the cognitive, thermal or weight burden for soldier systems this aspect requires further assessment. 
• As stressed during the workshop, a business model and cost-benefit assessment are important prerequisites prior to investments in  soldier systems. While the majority of benefits are for the user, a STASS II compliant system facilitates a flexible and powerful arrangement that otherwise would be extremely costly.

The STASS II study will be completed by the end of 2017 and together with the STASS I results will propose a comprehensive open reference architecture for soldier systems. The approach initiated under the STASS studies will be further developed under the EU Preparatory Action for Defence Research 2017 (PADR 2017) call for Force Protection and Soldier Systems by defining and technically validating a generic open soldier systems architecture which should be ready for standardisation.

All presentations given during the workshop are available here: 2017-09-06 - STASS II Industrial Workshop - Presentations
 

More information

• CapTech Ground Systems page

The Taleban have put in place administrative and military institutions in northern Jawzjan province that function relatively well. The shadow administrative posts are held by local non-Pashtuns. The recruitment of Uzbeks, in particular, has proved effective for the Taleban. However, Daesh’s appearance in this Uzbek-dominated province has created concerns, not only for the local government, but also for the Taleban. The Taleban, so far, have failed to fully block Daesh’s infiltration among the Turkic community in Jawzjan, but have contained it. AAN’s Obaid Ali explores the presence and capacity of Daesh to stand against the Taleban, the reasons for their infiltration, and the challenges the Taleban face in opposing it.

This dispatch is part of a series on the non-Pashtun Taleban in the north (for Tajik Taleban in Badakhshan, read our previous reporting here, for Uzbeks in Takhar, Faryab and Sar-e Pul here, here and here).

On 21 August 2017,the Taleban assaulted the Khamab district centre and quickly overran the government compounds in the town (see media report here). The militants seized governmental buildings, such as the district governor’s office, and the main bazaar of the district, for almost half a day. When reinforcements from the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) arrived and airstrikes were carried out, the Taleban withdrew from the districtcentreand the Afghan security forces returned to their positions.

Speaking to AAN, a local elder said that the government forces retreated with little resistance. However, local officials claimed that, after a few hours, the ANSF mounted a counter-attack and pushed the Taleban back from the district centre. According to the provincial police chief, now the district is undersecurity forces control again (read short report here). Engineer Ahmad, the district governor, when speaking to AAN, said the Taleban were still located in villages near the district centre and it was feared they might target itagain.

The repeated fall and recapture of Khamab district centre raised serious questions for locals as it was not the first time that the centre had fallen into Taleban hands. In December 2014, for instance, Khamab district fell entirely into Taleban hands. The Taleban seized the district centre again for ten days in October 2015, until the first vice president Abdulrashid Dostum led counteroffensives against them.

Khamab is just one example of how security in Jawzjan has deteriorated to such an extent that other district centres have also regularly changed hands between government forces and militants. In June 2017, the militants overran the Darzab district centre, seizing governmental offices for a few days. According to provincial security officials, the ANSF conducted a large-scale clearance operation, pushing the militants back (read short report here). However, as Muhammad Dawar, the district governor, said that 98 per cent of Darzab district continues to be controlled by militants. He told AAN that the security forces only control the Afghan National Police headquarters and the district governor’s compound; the remaining areas are all under the militants’ control. As a result, he said, “the governmental offices are removed to the provincial centre, Sheberghan.”

When considering the current security dynamic, the militants have made significant inroads in Jawzjan, which borders Turkmenistan in the north. As in Darzab, the government presence in Qushtepa is also limited to the government offices in the district centre,while militants rule the remaining parts. Rahmatullah Turkestani, the provincial police chief of Jawzjan, admitted to AAN that militants largely controlled bothdistricts in the southwest of the province, He said that, as in Khamab, the government and Taleban both hold half the territory in Qarqin district. According to the police chief, five other districts are also heavily contested by the Taleban: Aqcha, Faizabad, Mangijik, Muradian and Khaniqa. Aqcha, the second largest city in the province, has been “under siege” by the Taleban since mid-August, according to an Afghan media report. On 18 September, the security forces started a large scale counteroffensive to push the Taleban back from villages around Aqcha district centre. They claim that so far 15 villages have been cleared from Taleban presence. The operations continue (media report here). Furthermore, the provincial police chief said, security forces have been engaged simultaneously on several battlegrounds in the northeast and southwest of Jawzjan province. Meanwhile, Khwaja Duko and the district around Sheberghan city, he said, are relatively calm and under government control.

Militancy in Jawzjan

The Talebaninroads into this Uzbek dominated province are, in fact, part of the movement’s strategy to localise the warfare by offering positions to local non-Pashtuns, as AAN has already described for other provinces in the Afghan north (read our previous analysis here, here and here). It has been a priority for the insurgents to recruit from the Turkic communities and to appoint local commanders from them to help run their war-machine.

The Taleban promoted Mawlawi Abdulrahmanin 2016, to a position as a member of their leadership council. This increased the number of Turkic speakers with the council to two; the first one being Sheikh Qasem – a Turkmen from Jawzjan. Mawlawi Sunnatullah, an Uzbek, who served as group commander during the Taleban regime in the 1990s, was announced as shadow provincial governor for Jawzjan in 2017. When theTaleban re-established their presence in the province in 2009, Mawlawi Sunnatullah had returned to Darzab, where hegathered a group of 20 to 25 fighters who were mainly operating here and in neighbouring Qushtepa.

Currently, Mawlawi Sunatullah leads more than 800 fighters in the province. Local, young, Uzbek, educated religious figures, lead the Taleban shadow administrative and military committees. Qari Ghani, an Uzbek from Qushtepa district, for example, leads the shadow financial committee, while the military committee is led by Mawlawi Ahmad Shah, an Uzbek from Faizabad district, and the judicial committee by Qari Hafiz, an Uzbek from Aqcha district.

These two districts, as well as Aqcha district, to the south and northeast of Sheberghan respectively, were the first areas of activity for the post-2001 insurgency in the province. More active pockets of insurgency were seen in 2010, just a few kilometres from the provincial capital; both near the highways connecting Mazar-e Sharif and Sheberghan (to the east), and Sheberghan and Faryab (to the west). This made the routes unsafe for travel (for more background read this AAN’s 2011 report on the insurgency in the north, p53). (1)

The Taleban leadership council’s recruitment efforts among the Turkic communities have produced effective results. This has ensured, not just the Taleban’s presence, but it has also generated fighters loyal to the movement. This is part of the long-term strategy by the leadership council to ensure adequate manpower and financial resources at a local level. The Taleban tasked influential Uzbek and Turkmen figures, who had rejoined the movement in 2004, to implement this strategy and to help revive the militancy among the Turkic community in the northwest.

The recruitment was pursued through two main avenues. First, it started with young Uzbek madrasa students in Pakistan. This was carried out through Uzbek religious scholars, who taught at madrasas in Pakistan. One of them was Sheikh Abdulbari, an Uzbek from Darzab district. During the Taleban’s Emirate, in the 1990s, Abdulbari served as a mid-level military commander in the north and later led a religious school, Madrasa-ye Faruqia, in Kabul where it was not only Uzbeks that used to study there. After the fall of the Taleban regime, he fled to Pakistan where he continued serving as a madrasa teacher. According to sources in Pakistani madrasas, Sheikh Abdulbari mainly targeted Uzbek students, providing them with accommodation and food.

The first group of young, Pakistani, madrasa-educated Uzbeks were deployed to the north in 2009. They all became mosque preachers in Aqcha, Muradian, Khanaqa and Khamab districts. From there, they started a campaign against the government.

First, they criticised the activities of the government; later calling it a ‘puppet of foreigners’. The government watched this for four months and then put most members of the group in jail.

Second, secret Taleban delegations often visited former mid-level Taleban commanders from the northwest to muster them to take up arms again and fight against the government. According to sources close to the Taleban, Mawlawi Abdulrahman (an Uzbek from Faryab), Hafiz Nurullah (a Turkmen from Jawzjan), Mawlawi Abdulsalam Hanafi (another Jawzjani Uzbek), who was the Taleban deputy minister for education and, therefore, one of the highest-ranking Uzbeks in the regime, all frequently visited the northwest to mobilise fighters, as well as to instruct local commanders on the ground.

They were able to utilise the already existing small pockets of opportunistic Uzbek commanders, who were loyal to no particular group, until and as long as sustainable financial resources were channelled to their pockets. Some of those commanders served as Taleban group commanders and fighters in the 1990s, while others were locals with criminal backgrounds. The restarting of the Taleban movement in the area prepared the ground for these actors to label themselves as fighters of the insurgency in order to access to financial resources. These resources were obtained, either at the local level (through taxation and other revenue), or the payments came from the leadership council budget.

However, this did not happen without problems. For example, there were small-scale internal struggles over taxation and revenue collection among the Taleban commanders in the province from 2009 and until 2013 when the Taleban leadership council insisted their field commanders document revenues collected from locals and report this to the financial committee of the movement. The Taleban assigned influential and loyal commanders to oversee the income flows. Mawlawi Abdulrahman, for instance, was authorised to lead the insurgency in the northwest, as well as making the field commanders accountable. This was a Taleban attempt to reach two objectives: to oversee the income of resources and to prevent opportunistic groups from taking advantage to prevent local commanders from establishing private fiefdoms outside of their control.

Mawlawi Abdulrahman managed to implement successfully the Taleban leadership council’s strategy of recruiting large numbers of fighters and commanders from the Turkic communities. He also prevented irregularities among the insurgents and made sure there was more accountability in their operations. However, when it came to financial resources, he struggled. Some local commanders refused to document their revenue collection in order to keep a larger share of it for themselves. In 2014, for instance, a number of field commanders did not transfer the collected revenue to the provincial shadow financial committee. This elicited a tough response from the Taleban who, according to sources in the movement, for example, disarmed or even expelled disobedient commanders.

Daesh branding as an opportunity

The Taleban’s efforts to prevent irregularities, as well as getting a better hold on income resources, has created an environment of mistrust among field commanders. The Taleban provincial leadership’s obvious failure to fully control those income flows opened up a competition, which, sometimes, has turned into open disputes and quarrels among local Taleban commanders as to who should keep control over certain territories to raise income through taxation and revenue. The appearance of Daesh in this situation – both in the international, as well as in the Afghan arena – provided the commanders with an outlet they could turn to when they did not want to adhere to Taleban discipline.

Their Taleban superiors repeatedly accused Qari Hekmat and Mufti Nemat, field commanders in Jawzjan and in Darzab and Qushtepa, respectively, of irregularities, harassment of locals over taxation and misuse of their authority. Qari Hekmat had served as the shadow district governor in Darzad, and Mufti Nemat as the head of the Taleban military committee for Darzab and Qushtepa districts.

In 2014, according to locals, Qari Hekmat developed a conflict over collecting revenue with another local field commander, Qari Aman, known as Shamsullah, an ex-deputy Taleban shadow governor for Jawzjan. Both are Uzbeks from the Darzab-Qushtepa area. Locals told AAN that, eventually, both commanders disappeared for a short while as they went to Pakistan to discuss the issue with the leadership council. Both returned after a few months, but Qari Hekmat was removed from the Taleban’s ranks in the province. According to local journalists, the Taleban spokesman told them that Qari Hekmat was no longer a Taleb commander in the province. They say he told them “the Taleban are not responsible for his activities in Jawzjan.”

At the same time, the appearance of Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) fighters in Qushtepa district opened a new chapter for Qari Hekmat. IMU is an organisation that was a former Taleban ally, but one that had shifted allegiance to Daesh in 2015 (read our previous analysis here). This provided the opportunity to shift allegiance and the Qariimmediately pledged allegiance to Daesh. In 2015, he started to target, not only the Afghan security forces, but also those commanders within the Taleban movement in Darzab district who had now become his enemies. Over the past two years, he has successfully managed to shape his unit as a Daesh-associated group and has received several delegations from the core Daesh base in Jalalabad province.

In 2014, the Taleban leadership council also expelled Mufti Nemat from the Taleban ranks. When he visited Pakistan in 2013, he was accused of corruption and misusing his authority and kept in custody there.

After his release that same year, he initially went a different way to cope with his ejection from the Taleban. To present himself as a convert to Daesh provided Qari Hekmat with an easy cover to settle his score with hisex-comrades in the Taleban movement and to remain in power in the area under his control. In contrast, Mufti Nemat joined the peace-process hoping to gain access to government resources (see short video here). When he returned to Jawzjan, he decided to surrender to Dostum with some 200 fighters (read media report here). Mufti Nemat stayed in Sheberghan for almost two years hoping to join the ALP or pro-government militia forces in the province. As a follower of Salafism, he intended to expand the Salafi ideology in the province at the same time. In November 2016, he established a Salafi madrasa called E’ya-ye Sunnat (Rehabilitation of the Sunnah) in the city and where male and female students attended classes. This created concerns among the dominant Hanafi Sunni scholars. Both sides engaged in a serious public debate about the interpretation of certain religious subjects. Eventually, the provincial department of the Ministry of Hajj issued an order to shut down Nemat’s madrasa. In November 2016, the madrasa was closed and Mufti Nemat banned from teaching in the province. He then reached out to Qari Hekmat and also joined the Daesh-affiliated group in Darzab.

In the case of Jawzjan, when compared with power-saving opportunism, it was ideological motivation that seemed to play a lesser role among commanders and their fighters to link up with Daesh. According to local sources, the Salafi ideology is a core motivation among Daesh fightersin eastern Afghanistan (see AAN analysis here) but has limited followers here. According to Muhammad Rasul Mujahaz, head of the Ulama Council in Jawzjan, Salafism only appeared recently in the province. “There was no Salafi mosque or madrasa, only in Darzab district a small group of Salafis attempt to promote the ideology.”

The appearance of Daesh has created a serious challenge for how the local Taleban handle disgruntled commanders. According to Taleban sources, a number of delegations from the Taleban side were sent to meet Qari Hekmat and to assure him a position and authority in the province; an offer he rejected. Simultaneously, Daesh also courted him. Hekmat received several delegations from their side, too. In 2016, for instance, the Taleban detained a five-member Daesh delegation that tried to reach Qari Hekmat and were killed by local Taleban. In revenge, Qari Hekmat fighters captured and killed ten Taleban members. In August that year, another high-level delegation from the Taleban side, including Mawlawi Abdulrahman, Sheikh Abdulbari, Hafiz Nurullah and Abdulkhaleq reached Qari Hekmat to encourage him to rejoin the Taleban. According to Taleban sources “the discussions left no impact.”

Conclusion: A three-way struggle

The emergence of Daesh as a second insurgent group in the northwest and its attempts to establish a footprint among the Turkic communities has created serious concerns for the local government, as well as for the Taleban. The local conflict constellation is now a triangle with Daesh as its weakest side. Governments in neighbouring Central Asia are watching this development with concern as a potential threat to their countries.

Daesh’s emergence presents an unprecedented outlet for Taleban commanders who either do not want to subordinate themselves to the stricter discipline of the Taleban movement or want to keep their local fiefdoms free of too much outside interference. On the other hand, this is a rather dangerous option for them, as such shifts of allegiance often is followed by a strong Taleban reaction. According to locals from the north, in a number of cases, local Taleban even eliminated suspected commanders for fear of them shifting their allegiance to the new group.

Nevertheless, Daesh constitutes a challenge to the Taleban recruitment strategy among the non-Pashtuns. They see the danger of losing followers to the new group, particularly those who have a strong local base. But, so far, they have tried to keep the conflict at a low profile. Ethnic sympathy among the Uzbeks, to which both sides belong, might contribute to this kind of approach.

This is reflected by Qari Hekmat’s case, where the Taleban used a soft, political approach to win him back by negotiations. So far, the Taleban have not taken serious action against Qari Hekmat. This is largely because the Taleban want to avoid invoking infighting among the local Uzbeks; not least because it would make media headlines, which would be against their desire to tackle the issue at the local level. They also fear this could drive more of their commanders to Daesh.

The overwhelming presence of the Taleban in most districts of Jawzjan, as well as in the wider north, so far prevents potential Daesh sympathisers to openly join the ranks of the “Islamic State Khorasan Province.”

Also, the government has failed so far to take advantage of the three-way conflict by winning over disgruntled Taleban commanders. Already earlier, a number of Taleban field commanders, who had ‘joined the peace-process’, went back to the Taleban given its failure to ensure security and job opportunities for those who change to its side (read media reports here, here and here).

Edited by Thomas Ruttig

 

(1) A German journalist who just travelled on the Mazar-Sheberghan road told AAN of clearly visible Taleban presence in the few villages along this route.

Chinese VP10 Armored Personnel Carrier

Chinese Dongfeng CSK141 Light Protected Vehicle

Tag: migration crisisMogherini

Chinese Type 99G Main Battle Tank

The number of Afghan asylum seekers in Italy has been steadily rising over the last decade. Numbers grew particularly rapidly between 2013 and 2015 and only in recent months have they slowed down. Throughout the last ten years, not only has Italy become a fixture in the mental map of Afghan migrants, but it has seen its role changing from that of a country of mere transit to one of destination. For some, Italy is a safe second-choice when they could not reach their intended destination or have been rejected from there. For others, it is a stopgap to obtain legal papers on their way to another place. Afghans in Italy remain a mostly ‘transitional’ community, despite the thousands seeking and obtaining asylum. In the end, only a fraction of those arriving remain for good. AAN’s Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica have been looking at the path of Afghan migration to Italy in the last decade and at the direction where it is heading.

This research was supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

Read our previous separate dispatch about unaccompanied Afghan minor refugees in Italy here.

After years of growth, now is a good moment to take stock of the phenomenon of Afghan migrants in Italy. This year is in fact seeing the continuation of a trend which first became apparent in late 2016. The number of Afghans seeking asylum in Italy, rapidly growing for a decade, is now beginning to taper off. Reasons for this are multiple, as we will see, but let us first get acquainted with the chronology and the specificities of this relatively new episode in the decades-long history of Afghan exile.

Afghan refugees in Italy: From ‘pure’ transit to a more mixed approach

The history of Afghan asylum-seeking in Italy might with some cynicism be summarized under the title: “From the Aristocracy to the Lumpen-Proletariat of Political Asylum-Seekers”. The gap between the first Afghans who sought refuge in Italy and the latest newcomers is vast. The first to escape political turmoil and seek shelter in Italy arrived in 1973; they were the former king, Zaher Shah, with a small retinue of aides, and members of the aristocracy who fled Afghanistan after the coup d’état by which Sardar Muhammad Daud seized power. They were occasionally joined by a few more of the old monarchist elite, each time a power change shook Kabul’s security to a new degree of violence. Altogether, they never amounted to more than a few hundred persons, and they had the financial and social means to fully integrate and start a new life in Italy or, eventually, in other European countries. (1)

Afterwards, only occasionally did Afghans arrive in Italy, a few hundred people mostly from urban backgrounds who had been displaced by the civil war of the 1990s. They were joined by groups of Hazaras, who fled Afghanistan during the harsh times of the Taleban campaigns to subdue Hazarajat in the late 1990s and, after a stopover of some length in Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and/or Greece, would make their way to Italy between the late 1990s to the mid-2000s. Most only transited through Italy on their way to northern Europe, but a significant number, amounting to a few thousands, ended up applying for asylum there.

The early 2000s: A squat in Rome

Afghans aiming for Europe in the early 2000s had the Scandinavian countries, UK, Belgium or Germany in their sights, but definitely not Italy. However, a major route bringing Afghans to Europe crossed Italy. Most Afghans would arrive, hidden on ferries coming from Patras or Igoumenitsa in Greece which sailed to the Adriatic ports of the Italian peninsula, while others travelled on small boats, crossing from Greece or Albania and arriving on the southern shores of Italy. If identified by the police, Afghans would be brought to various big camps for asylum seekers, but would quickly manage to hit the road again and regroup with fellow countrymen – most were men or older boys – in Rome. (2) The capital was then a hub for information and organisation for the next stage of the journey. Afghans heading to northern European countries would typically spend some weeks in Rome before embarking for their next intermediate destination, France.

This role, as a linking point, brought about the most famous episode involving Afghan refugees in Italy, the creation of la Buca – the hole or the pit – a spontaneous squat where mainly Afghans lived open-air or in tents and makeshift shelters in and around Rome’s Ostiense train station. Afghans transiting through Italy would concentrate there between 2007 and 2012. They received support from only a few organizations, such as MEDU (Medici per i Diritti Umani or Doctors for Human Rights). They resisted several attempts to evict or relocate them by state authorities. The camp hosted a couple of hundred persons at its height, but its centrality and the sheer length of such an unsolved situation shocked the public opinion, drawing attention to the plight of Afghan refugees, until then an unheard of phenomenon for the Italian public.

In those days, some Afghans would stop and apply for asylum in the country, either out of necessity or realizing for the first time that Italy could offer a reasonable degree of safety and protection of rights. Also, many had been fingerprinted on arrival before travelling on, only to be sent back by other European states under the Dublin Agreement. Among other things, this made the country of an asylum-seeker’s entry to the European Union, if it could be proved, responsible for their case. (3) The story of a man from Bamiyan interviewed by AAN in Rome helps illustrate the type of vicissitudes Afghans were then subjected to:

I left Afghanistan in 2005 and came to Italy, from Greece, for the first time in 2006. They put me in a big camp in Crotone, and after some days I walked out of it. My objective was to reach Scandinavia, so I continued my travel and applied for asylum in Norway. After I got there, they told me that I was a ‘Dublin case’ because I had left my fingerprints in both Greece and Italy: they said they would not send me back to Greece because there were no guarantees that my rights would be upheld there, but that, if Italy had accepted responsibility for my case, I would have to go back there. I said “Fine, I didn’t come here to break the law.” Italy accepted me, so I came back. As soon as I arrived, they sent me back to the same camp in Crotone. Then they said I had my fingerprints in Greece and I was to be sent back there. I travelled to Rome and found a lawyer. I said “How is it possible that Italy accepted responsibility for my case from Norway and now wants to send me away? If they summoned me here, they should deal with my case.” Eventually, I won in the court and I was granted the five-years protection in 2009.

The 2010s: ‘Dubliners’ on the move

Starting from 2010 onwards, the number of asylum application by Afghans started to swell rapidly.

Statistics show that, by 2007, the number of Afghan refugees had surpassed those of the late 1990s, with 971 asylum requests; this number doubled the following year, reaching 1840. Another sharp rise was registered from 2013 onwards, with 2056 asylum applicants in that year, then 2994 in 2014 and 3975 in 2015 (the year with the highest total). (The data, from the Ministry of Interior, is available here.)

While the first Afghan refugees to come to Italy had been mostly Hazaras, by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Pashtuns began to comprise the main group of Afghans transiting through Italy. They were the majority in Ostiense, in Rome, and in the following years also became the majority of those who applied for asylum in Italy. The vast majority came from just a handful of provinces, namely: Nangarhar, Laghman, Kunar, Logar, Paktia, Baghlan and Kunduz. A high number among them had lived most of their lives in Pakistan and some had been born there (the same was true for many Hazaras, who had dwelt in Iran or Pakistan before – see also this AAN dispatch).

On top of a streak of Dublin cases sent back to the country where they were first fingerprinted, Italy had also become the ‘backup’ choice for other Afghans. Italy has a record of making few ‘Dublin transfers’, ie sending migrants to the EU country where they were first recorded as having made ‘landfall’. This has made it a sort of safe haven for those Afghan refugees who had ‘dangerous’ Dublin fingerprints, for example from Hungary and Bulgaria (and later also Croatia), or, in a paradoxical reversal, for Afghans who had managed to reach northern European countries without leaving their fingerprints en route, but who had been refused asylum in the north and were being threatened with deportation to Afghanistan. Some of those migrants would then make their way back to Italy to apply for asylum there, hoping it would not send them back, as Dublin cases, to Norway, Sweden, Denmark or the UK.

On top of ‘returnees’ who had already been up north without success, Italy started to be considered a more viable first choice by many Afghans who had just arrived in Europe and who either doubted their chances of obtaining asylum in northern European countries, or who were out of money, tired or unfit for further travel or simply afraid of further shocks connected to illegal travel or threats of deportation. The main reason for this was that Italy guaranteed Afghans an almost absolute certainty of receiving some sort of asylum protection.

What seems to have been the most important factor in informing Afghan migrants’ decision about whether to apply for asylum in Italy and, indeed, whereabouts in Italy, was concern about the waiting time at various stages in the process, as Italy has problems in coping with asylum seekers, in general. There was the wait before the hearing of one’s asylum case, the wait for the subsequent, albeit usually positive, answer and the wait for asylum documents and other papers (ID card, travel document, etc) to be issued by the local authorities. Immediately after this concern came considerations about the type of reception locally available (time of wait before accessing reception in a facility for refugees, hospitality in camps versus private housing, type and amount of benefits provided).

The most important factor in decision-making was the presence of fellow Afghans from the same home area, if not of close friends and relatives, as they were the main factor in passing information on to and shaping the perception of newcomers. Their counsel was the main drive behind the choice of individuals coming for the first time to the EU or having been rejected from other EU countries and deciding to head (back) to Italy and/or to a specific part of it. The distribution of Afghan asylum seekers in Italy, influenced by these factors, resulted in their concentration in the north-eastern regions, in particular in Friuli Venezia Giulia, which is easily accessible for both new arrivals from eastern Europe and returnees from northern Europe and where, at least in the regional centre of Trieste, a reception programme with higher standards than those found in many other parts of Italy was already in place.

Chances of ‘recognition’ and reception in Italy

Before looking at the most recent trends, it is useful to look at two factors which govern the treatment of asylum seekers and whether they chose to stay in a country or try to go on: the rate of recognition and how they are received.

Italy has consistently had one of the highest rates for recognising Afghans as asylum seekers in Europe. In 2015-2016, the rate was stable at 97 per cent of all asylum requests, much higher than Germany (55 per cent), Sweden (46 per cent) and the UK (35 per cent). (For Germany see previous AAN research, for data about other countries see here.) In the words of an Afghan interpreter who works with the commissions who adjudicate the cases of Afghan asylum seekers: “(For Afghans), Italy is good in that nobody asks you who you really are or what did you do before.”

For anybody acquainted with the accurate research done in some European countries on the personal background of Afghan asylum seekers, the amount of knowledge acquired by the Italian ‘Territorial Commissions’ (bodies composed of UNHCR officials, members of the local administration and the Ministry of Interior deciding on refugees’ applications) is indeed minimal. Cases are usually adjudicated after a single interview that lasts between 40 minutes and three hours. Only rarely are people summoned for a second hearing. There are probably differences between the commissions in different locations – their number has risen in recent years from 10 to 20 to deal with the increased workload – with some reportedly trying to be more accurate. (3) However, the decision to grant Afghan nationals some form of protection based on their need for asylum is less a matter of investigating and ascertaining that an individual has actually fled persecution than one stemming from a concern that Afghanistan is generally unstable and unsafe.

Italy, for example, does not allow for the principle of “a safe place inside one’s country” as some northern European countries do who suggest that somebody who got into trouble in Jalalabad could move to Mazar-e Sharif to live a safe life. Therefore, the only way Afghans can be denied protection is when their Afghan identity is questioned (for example, there have been several instances of Pakistanis trying to pass themselves off as Afghans). Otherwise, the debate revolves mainly around what type of protection should be given. In line with the rationale behind the decision to grant almost all Afghans asylum because of the general state of their country, the most common type of protection issued is what is called ‘subsidiary protection’, given to individuals fleeing a conflict zone: 86.8 per cent of Afghan asylum seekers whose cases were adjudicated in 2016 received this. A handful of Afghans coming from areas considered comparatively safe (by now, basically a few spots like Mazar-e Sharif and Bamiyan), or who have not been able to claim convincingly that their lives would have been at risk had they stayed in Afghanistan, are given ‘two-year humanitarian protection’ (only one per cent of the total in 2016). Only those individuals who can prove they were members of the security forces or who were specifically targeted because of their public standing are entitled to the most secure status of ‘political asylum granted’ (9.2 per cent in 2016). (4)

Waiting times for the various decisions in an asylum-seeker’s life vary considerably from one Italian city to another and depending on the season and the overall number of arrivals of migrants. Typically, increased numbers of boat trips across the central Mediterranean in summertime clog the reception system, the related bureaucracy and the work of the commissions. Taking as an example Trieste in north-eastern Italy, where between 2012 and 2015, Afghans formed a majority of asylum seekers (and which has accounted for at least one-tenth of all Afghan asylum seekers in Italy in the last five years), waiting times for accommodation ranged between one day and more than one month. (When there were constant arrivals of people from the Balkan Route,  on the eve of the opening of the Balkan humanitarian corridor in the summer of 2015, one of the Old Port’s dilapidated warehouses had a stable population of as many as 200 migrants, in a small replica of Belgrade’s Savamala; see previous AAN reporting about Belgrade squat here and here).

In the nearby city of Gorizia, an additional factor – the hostility of local politicians to refugee support organizations – meant accommodation was extremely underdeveloped and several dozen refugees were living in the town’s parks, making the alleged problem of their mere presence all the more acute for the population. The waiting time from asylum request to interview in north-eastern Italy was usually around six to seven months for ‘non-Dublin’ cases. That got increasingly longer before 2015, when new commissions were opened relieving the one in Gorizia of some of its burden.

Where the problem, nationally, of long waiting times went even deeper is in the issuing of various documents by police stations. Having to cope with a population of migrants which rose from fewer than 300 in 2014 to 1200 in 2016, Trieste police station started to experience serious delays in issuing the required papers, permits of stay and travel documents. This culminated in mutual frustration. Asylum-related paperwork in many parts of Italy, excepting a few small towns hosting limited numbers of migrants, but endowed with effective and experienced local institutions, can be even more complicated and subjected to delays (for a geographic breakdown of the waiting times for some asylum-related documents see here).

The Balkan humanitarian corridor of 2015-16 and its backwash into Italy

As mentioned, asylum requests from Afghans reached their height in 2015, with 3975 applicants. This is tiny compared to countries like Sweden, who in the first eleven months of 2015 received 36,262, but more than others like the UK, who got 1446 (data from here). This increase in arrivals could be read as a direct effect of the opening of the humanitarian corridor in the summer of 2015, when migrants were allowed through the Balkans to the EU (the corridor was effectively closed with the signing of the Turkey-EU deal in March 2016), but in fact the trend had been there since the end of 2014. (It is sometimes forgotten that the humanitarian corridor was a reaction to a situation already at boiling point, ie huge numbers of people trying to cross south-eastern Europe, as much as it was a factor which contributed to more people’s decisions to try to reach Europe).

The most direct effect of the opening of the ‘institutionalised’ Balkan Route for Italy was the reduction and near end of Afghans crossing the sea from Greece to the Italian Adriatic ports. Rome was thus cut off from the transit route towards northern Europe as almost no Afghans were then travelling through Italy to go northwards. At the same time, the number of Afghans turning to Italy after first applying and being rejected for asylum in northern European countries increased. The phenomenon assumed a new dimension because many Afghans (together with other refugees, like Iraqi Kurds) would choose to move to Italy to ask asylum even before their cases were thoroughly dealt with in the countries where they had first applied for asylum.

As detailed in previous reports by AAN (read our thematic dossier here) a great number of Afghans arrived in Europe between the summer of 2015 and March 2016 traveling through the Balkan countries. The route from Serbia to Hungary was replaced by that through Croatia and Slovenia, with the same destination as before: Austria. From there, a majority of Afghans proceeded further, most to Germany and some to the Scandinavian countries. While the humanitarian corridor was open, only a tiny fraction of these Afghans turned south once they were in Austria to come down to north-eastern Italy. In fact, the boom of arrivals in Trieste and Gorizia in the summer of 2015 was mostly caused by Pakistani nationals (the second biggest group of asylum seekers in Italy, now largely Punjabis) who had Italy as their first choice of destination. The effect of the Balkan Route was more evident starting from the late spring of 2016, when asylum seekers who had arrived in Germany or Austria a few months previously started to flow in, travelling south from the Austrian border and applying for asylum in the Friuli Venezia Giulia, Veneto and Trentino Alto Adige regions of Italy (read media report here).

Fear of deportation seems to play a decisive role as well. As one of the Afghan refugees interviewed by AAN, a young man from Paktia who just arrived in Gorizia from Germany put it: “We were in Germany and one day our president asked the German government  ‘Please send our dear youth back to us’ …  so we all knew we would be deported and we had to run away.” (5)

There are other instances of migrants who got caught in the ambiguous stances of European states and have come to Italy as a last chance to get protection in Europe, to make the risks and costs of the project worth it, for example, Afghan migrants who in November 2015 crossed the Russian-Norwegian border bicycling. According to those among them who turned up in Trieste almost one year later, they were told that the reported loophole in the border regulations, with Norway recognising asylum seekers who arrived on bike, was meant for Syrians only and that Afghans who came that way were collectively denied asylum. The official story was that all migrants who had thus crossed were to be sent back to Russia, irrespective of their nationality (see also this AAN reporting). The Afghan cyclists who came to Trieste had done so to avoid deportation by Norway.

In another, concerning development, several Afghans – including families – who crossed Croatia via the humanitarian corridor of 2015-16 and were fingerprinted there, purportedly only for ‘security purpose’, and who ended up applying for asylum in Switzerland or Austria, were later been labelled as ‘Dublin’ cases with Croatia being the responsible nation. They were deported to Croatia whence some eventually fled to nearby Trieste. In July 2017, the European Court upheld the right of states to deport as ‘Dublin cases’ even those asylum seekers who had passed through the Balkan humanitarian, despite the fact that migrants were then routinely told their fingerprints in Croatia would not result in responsibility of that country under the Dublin Regulation (media report here).

Meanwhile, the use of the Balkan Route by Afghans did not stop, men and older boys (see our separate report on unaccompanied Afghan minors here) trying to sneak across the Turkish-Bulgarian border and then into Serbia (see also this AAN report on smuggling route through the Balkans here), whence they would sometimes continue through Croatia, Slovenia and Italy; others would come by ferry from Greece while families started to occasionally arrive in Italy on container ships coming from Turkey. (6)

Changing demographic profiles and decreasing asylum applications

Afghan asylum seekers in Italy are somewhat more varied since 2015 than they were between 2012 and 2015: personal observation by one of the authors of Afghans applying for asylum in Trieste from June 2016 (thus, persons who were mostly arriving from a failed or interrupted asylum request in another European country) showed 24 provinces of Afghanistan represented, although there was a strong predominance of residents of Nangarhar who represented one-fifth of the total. The number of individuals from Kunduz and Baghlan, who until 2015 were very common among asylum seekers in this part of Italy, seem to have reduced, while smaller numbers of Hazaras, who used to be the majority until around 2010, are again featuring among asylum-seekers. What has remained a constant compared to the pre-2015 situation is gender: Afghans in Italy are overwhelmingly single adult men (92 per cent of a sample contacted by IOM in February-April 2017 in Friuli Venezia Giulia, with 6.5 per cent of the sample being male minors).

One might wonder why the number of Afghans seeking asylum seekers in Italy decreased from 2015 to 2016 (with 2856 applications), if so many Afghans are leaving central and northern European countries out of hopelessness or fear of being deported, while new arrivals from Serbia and Greece have not stopped? It is now dropping even more considerably, with only 684 requests for the first seven months of 2017. The reason seems to be France.

France has some advantages for Afghan asylum seekers over Italy. This transalpine country features a recognition rate for Afghans almost as high: in 2016, 82.4 per cent of Afghans seeking asylum were given protected status in some way (data here). Apart from already being an established destination for Afghan asylum seekers, France was historically the common staging point for Afghans coming from Rome and traveling further north, to Scandinavia or to the UK.

Afghans made up a consistent part of the population of the migrant camp known as ‘the Jungle’ in Calais – personal observation suggests it was common for Afghans migrants in Trieste and Gorizia to start for Calais shortly after receiving their Italian asylum documents. In October 2016, together with the dismantlement of the Jungle, France put some efforts into improving its reception for migrants, opening up many new camps and facilities and improving the conditions for asylum seekers. It was at this point that France became a favoured destination for Afghans, in particular for those arriving from Greece or Serbia, who would no longer stop in Italy, but aimed for the better reception benefits (reportedly 350 euros per month versus 250 euros on average of an Italian decent-quality project) and a better job market. Afghan asylum applications in France jumped from 2122 in 2015 to 5646 in 2016, making Afghans the second most numerous group of asylum seekers there.

Italy, now a second chance destination for failed asylum seekers, but a chance for what?

Through the last decade, obtaining protection and the various necessary documents in Italy has not meant the beginning of a new, sedentary life for the majority of Afghan newcomers. Mostly, they would move out of Italy to try and find a job in some other European country – usually in the black market, hoping to regularise their position in due time. Or, if they were discovered, they had the fall-back plan of returning to Italy, rather than just face deportation to Afghanistan.

But what of those who stayed in Italy? One Afghan interpreter who has been working for years with asylum seekers all over the country assesses the percentage of those who ‘gave it a try’, and stayed in Italy for some time at least after receiving their asylum documents, at maybe 40 per cent. (Personal observation of the Afghans in Friuli Venezia Giulia through the last three years leads to the impression that the percentage is even lower).

Some of those who stay for a while after the end of the state-sponsored reception, move on to private housing, mainly with a view to start the procedure for family reunification. For them, Italy represents a mid-term solution: they work for a while and in the meantime, apply for family reunion; as soon as the wife and kids arrive on a family visa, they travel further and without him to northern European countries where recognition rates for women and children are still relatively high. Afterwards, they are able to reunite with the husband who would not have been able to get asylum status in those countries as a single man. (7)

As the Italian economy has not performed particularly well during the years of the boom of Afghan arrivals, the economic incentives to remain for good have been few. Also, with an increased number of refugees, Afghan newcomers receive less attention and fewer educational and vocational training opportunities compared to those who arrived five or ten years ago. Individual Afghans without strong local connections who have made it have either been lucky or very brave and perseverant in pursuing an individual choice, instead of joining the mass of Afghans trying their luck out of Italy. But chances for integration might be narrowing amid the increasing number of migrants and the creeping xenophobia to which Italians, relatively new to being hosts of mass migration, are falling prey. As a 20-year old boy from Jalalabad commented on a recent episode involving an Afghan and two Pakistani asylum seekers in Trieste, accused of raping a 12-year old girl (see media report in Italian here):

People come here very young, they are barely kids, they leave their families behind and the moment they arrive in Europe, they forget [their families]. … Then they are accepted in a reception project, they get their documents and then they get kicked out of the project. And then they end up in the streets again, back to sleeping in the stations. And then they do something wrong. Somebody does something wrong and everybody gets a bad name because of that and the public opinion turns against the refugees and the state becomes eager to get them out of the reception projects more quickly and that only makes things worse.

State-sponsored reception programmes can last up to six months after an asylum seeker has received his or her positive answer, although in many parts of Italy, the local prefectures reduce this amount of time. Entry into a SPRAR (Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees) project that offer more time and support for integration, once and ideally still the standard practice, has by now become a rare occurrence due to the large numbers of migrants of all nationalities.

Many Afghan refugees coming to Italy are bruised by past experiences in Afghanistan, during the travel or while applying for asylum in other countries; they seldom engage immediately in learning Italian, even in the few places where courses are available in sufficient number and quality. They often say they are not sure whether it is worth it until they know the result of their application, but this does not ring true: they know that the recognition rate in Italy is extremely high. More realistically, they still do not know what they will do after they get protection, as their original project for a new life in Europe has not been achieved. Also, a large number of refugees coming from the same cultural area, like the Afghan-Pakistani transitional community of asylum seekers in Trieste that is almost one-thousand strong, can work as an obstacle towards integration. It reduces the incentives for individuals to find their own paths to integration, something Afghans and other refugees need to pursue to gain access to the job market in Italy.

Italy lacks an established Afghan diaspora, a cohesive and economically well-developed community which could provide newcomers with support, advice and job positions. The nature of the first Afghans who settled in Italy, members of the elite who were negligible in number, exacerbated a phenomenon that can be found in Afghan communities in other European countries as well, that is an ‘insulation’ between older migrants, from urban and educated backgrounds who are integrated at a cultural level, and more recent newcomers.

Afghan communities in Italy are also still small and scattered. Of the 20,000 Afghans who may be residing permanently in Italy (there are no official statistics), Rome is said to host around 6000. There are two main communities loosely aligned with two ethnic groups: the Hazaras and the Pashtuns. They are roughly equivalent in number and each also attracts Tajiks, Uzbeks and other Afghans.

These two leading communities worship at different mosques and never get together to organise official gatherings or festivities, although at an individual level, there are sometimes very strong friendships. Neither of the communities has managed to produce a leadership or an organization which could work for the advancement of Afghans in Italy. Past attempts have ended unsuccessfully, while current associations labelled as Afghan whom AAN interviewed are ineffective and aimed only at extracting money from migrants in exchange for help in completing necessary paperwork.

Afghans in Rome are active in a variety of jobs, mostly in restaurants and as manual labour. They have so far failed to create the sort of string of commercial ventures that communities such as the Bangladeshis have done. Those with a more solid background who invested their capital in such enterprises lament the high taxes and the many obstacles they feel are put in front of them by state authorities, who, as one man said, “are not used to the idea of refugee businessmen and every time refugees open a shop, go and make trouble for them by subjecting it to unending controls.”

Without easy access to the job market or solid roots in the country, it seems the destiny of many Afghans who come to Italy is to eventually move on: they spend maybe three to four years there waiting to obtain asylum documents during which time they try to find a job or bring their families to Europe, but then they hit the road again, to start anew somewhere else. At the moment, according to some of the Afghans interviewed by AAN, at least some, after receiving Italian asylum documents, go on to France and apply for asylum there, as well, opportunistically signing up for another round of reception in a project for asylum seekers, for lack of other prospects.

Bureaucratic mechanisms devised by European countries to prevent ‘asylum-shopping’ are ineffective: refugees still try to improve their situation step by step, that is, country by country. The different standards in different European states, in terms of recognition rates, reception benefits, opportunities for family reunion, risks of deportation and job opportunities and standards of living provide too many incentives and pushes for Afghan migrants not to try shifting from one country to another to better their situation. The risk is that they do not invest enough of their energies and time putting down roots anywhere. This attitude may be easily portrayed as opportunistic by those who resent their presence, but the truth is that the prime victims of such a system are the Afghans themselves. As one proverb says: dar ba dar, khak ba sar – going from door to door brings nothing but destitution and humiliation.

The years-long perpetuation of conditions of liminality, economic dependence, uncertainty and unfulfilled integration must be seen as a real disaster for thousands of Afghan youths. The shortcomings of the current Italian reception system and its lack of help with integration and the contrasting attitudes towards Afghan asylum seekers by different European states risks creating scores of what could be termed ‘failed citizens’. In Italy, as elsewhere, this may lead to a multiplicity of ills: social distress, criminality, xenophobia and right-wing populism, expansion of illicit economies run by mafia networks, indentured and inhuman labour conditions for refugees stuck in a legal ‘limbo’ or rootless and unable to stand for their rights. As they are Afghans, it may be easier for commenters to later blame the ‘failed state’ they come from for any troubles they cause. Others may blame the failure of European politics.

Edited by Sari Kouvo and Kate Clark

 

(1) This was not the first instance in which an Afghan king sought asylum in Italy, as King Amanullah famously also chose Italy as a place of exile after being dethroned in 1929. Also, in his case, only a few families of supporters followed him and settled in the country.

(2) There were many instances of push-back on arrival by the police in Adriatic ports such as Bari, Ancona and Venice. Afghans and other migrants would often end up traveling back to Greece on the same ship on which they had arrived.

(3) The Dublin Regulations are a series of EU laws determining which of the Union’s countries are responsible to examine asylum applications, making the first country through which the person entered the EU and left his/her fingerprints responsible. The first convention was signed in 1997, while new regulations were implemented in 2008 and 2013 (non EU-countries like Norway and Switzerland also apply its provisions).

(4) Initially they were based in: Gorizia, Milan, Rome, Foggia, Syracuse, Crotone, Trapani, Bari, Caserta and Torino. As of 3 October 2016, the Ministry of Interior referred to 20 Territorial Commissions and 27 sub-Commissions. During 2015 and 2016, new Territorial Commissions started operations in Verona, Ancona, Brescia, Bologna, Cagliari, Catania, Firenze, Lecce, Palermo and Salerno; sub-Commissions were established in Forlì, Campobasso, Enna, Reggio Calabria, Perugia, Frosinone, Caltanissetta, Ragusa, Genova, Agrigento, Novara, Bergamo, Livorno, Monza-Brianza, Padova, Vicenza and Treviso (see here).

(5) This high recognition rate and the fact that there are fewer Afghans appealing against the commission’s decision (unless they aim at a higher type of protection than what they were given) makes Afghans less affected, at least for the moment, by the new law reform Minniti-Orlando, severely curtailing the options of asylum seekers appealing. However, the law also aims at penalises asylum seekers who move from one European country to another as Afghans have been forced to do by recent developments. For an interview summarizing criticism of the changes brought by the law see here, see here.

(6) Italy has not been pro-active in sending Afghans back to their country: in the last five years, there were only two or three voluntary repatriations per year from Italy to Afghanistan, and, also given the high recognition rate, virtually no risk of deportation to Afghanistan. (IOM data by personal communication; data for 2016 is available here.) By comparison, France has organised 529 voluntary repatriations of Afghans in 2016 (see here).

(7) Statistics of the number of Afghans arriving to Italy by sea corroborate the growing importance of the land route through the Balkans even before the opening of the humanitarian corridor in 2015. They also show the sudden drop of arrivals by sea during the time of the corridor, and their partial resuming from mid-2016 onwards, as an old-fashioned alternative to the now more difficult land route.

2012: 651 (only until mid-June, when there was a stop in reporting from the Ministry of Interior)

2013: 964

2014: 784

2015: 117

2016: 437

2017: 73 by sea in the first six-months (the last data is coherent with the drop in the overall numbers of Afghan asylum seekers which was 616 in the same period of 2017).

Data from the Ministry of the Interior as shared by IOM Italy, personal communication.

(8) This instrumental use of family reunification has been confirmed by, among others, lawyers offering legal aid to asylum seekers in Rome. The procedure for family reunification was relatively easy in the past, but it has become increasingly difficult. In particular, it seems to be hard for the relatives in Afghanistan to gain access to the Italian Embassy in Kabul to complete all the necessary paperwork and because of newly-required medical tests to prove consanguinity.

Chinese Type 86G Infantry Fighting Vehicle

The EDA GOVSATCOM Demo Ad-Hoc Working Group will meet this week to further proceed with the Project Arrangement detailing the rules and procedures of the Governmental Satellite Communications (GOVSATCOM) Pooling and Sharing demonstration project. Additionally, Member States have recently agreed for the EDA to conclude an Implementing Arrangement with the European Space Agency (ESA) on their cooperation for GOVSATCOM. This Arrangement will maximise synergies between the activities of the two Agencies to support the European Commission in its efforts for preparing an EU GOVSATCOM initiative.

The EU GOVSATCOM initiative aims to provide EU Member States, organisations and operators with assured satellite communication services by 2020. As part of the programme, the European Space Agency (ESA) this week contracted Airbus to produce a demonstrator providing a technical solution for secured interconnections between different SatCom architectures and users. 
This demonstrator contract follows on from two design studies running between 2015 and 2017 on behalf of the ESA and EDA respectively. The studies served to define and quantify the nature of the European governmental users’ needs and assess the various technologies and architectures of the GOVSATCOM programme, as well as the advantages of the ‘pooling and sharing’ model. 
The GOVSATCOM programme will initially focus on the pooling and sharing of communication capabilities provided by governmental satellites and commercial operator satellites already in orbit. In June 2017, 14 EDA Member States (Austria, Belgium, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) and Norway agreed to develop a demonstrator for pooling and sharing satellite communication capabilities. 

Background

Reliable, stable and secure communications are crucial in any CSDP mission or operation. Yet, terrestrial network infrastructures are not available everywhere, for instance in areas hit by natural disasters, at sea, in the air or in hostile zones. Satellite communications (SATCOM) can be the solution: rapidly deployable, flexible and distance insensitive, they offer communication links where terrestrial networks are damaged, overloaded or non-existent.

However, access to SATCOM cannot be taken for granted at any time, especially not when government users require them at short notice and without pre-arranged agreements. In situations of high demand, competition with other users of commercial SATCOM capacities creates a risk of non-availability and high costs. Against this backdrop, EU leaders decided in 2013 that there was a need for a new solution combining the advantages of commercial and military satellite systems in order to address both civil and military needs through European cooperation. The European Defence Agency, in collaboration with the European Commission and the European Space Agency, is now preparing the next generation of GOVSATCOM. 

GOVSATCOM will be a capability that is placed in between the commercial satellite communication market and the highly protected military satellite communication capability.

 

More information 

• 14 EDA Member States to pool & share GOVSATCOM capabilities
• Governmental Satellite Communications (GovSatcom)

The continued fragile security situation in Eastern Europe and the resurgence of Russian power politics prompts the Subcommittee on Security and Defence to examine, also in the context of the upcoming Russian-Belorussian military exercise "Zapad 2017" to take place in Belorussia in mid-September and close to the EU's external borders, various angles of the ongoing development in the post-Soviet space, which impact on regional stability and beyond.

Location : Paul-Henri Spaak 4B001
Further information
Hearing programme and documents
Presentation by Anna Dyner, Analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) and Eastern Europe Programme Coordinator, Warsaw
Source : © European Union, 2017 - EP

Russian T-80BVM Main Battle Tank

Russian T-90M Main Battle Tank