Spain declared readiness to receive Afghans who worked with EU institutions over the past two decades.
The Spanish authorities will later send the arrivals to various countries.
“Spain is the port of entry. We received them for a few days and then sent to various EU countries ”, said the Foreign Minister of Spain, José Manuel Albaren.
Western states with a presence in Afghanistan started to evacuate their own citizens and local Afghan personnel.
However, migration experts warned that the vast majority of Afghan citizens already displaced by the fighting will be left stranded unless European states proactively work to negotiate a safe corridor out of the country.
A New Global Refugee Crisis
UNHCR says that at least 120,000 Afghans have fled rural areas to Kabul province since the beginning of the year.
But, the vast majority of them remain trapped within the country’s borders.
“We are not currently seeing a large exodus of refugees from Afghanistan,” a spokesman told The Guardian.
Migration experts warned that recent memories of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, and the perception that Europe failed to achieve it, are preventing European states from crafting a proactive rescue plan.
“There is a widely shared misconception right now that desperate people cannot leave the country.”
“In 2021, states are controlling their borders with force and brutality in the way they were not in 2015.”
Turkey is reinforcing its border with Iran. Meanwhile, Pakistan is about to complete a fence along the border with Afghanistan.
