Afghan women threatened by the Taliban evacuated to France


A modest but symbolic first. France welcomes on Monday a handful of Afghan women threatened by the Taliban and exiled in neighboring Pakistan, an evacuation operation long demanded by their supporters who call on Paris to change gear with a humanitarian corridor dedicated to women. They are currently five Afghan women, including one accompanied by three children, who are to land Monday afternoon at Paris Roissy airport, several months after fleeing the Taliban regime which regained power in Afghanistan in the summer. 2021.

Former directors of the University of Sciences, consultant for NGOs, television presenter or teacher in a “secret school in Kabul”, they have in common not to have been able to benefit from air bridges to Western countries during the fall power in the hands of the Taliban. And to have had to flee on their own to neighboring Pakistan.

“According to the instructions given by the President of the Republic, particular attention is paid to women who are primarily threatened by the Taliban because they have held important positions in Afghan society (…) or close contact with the Westerners. This is the case for the five women who are arriving today,” Didier Leschi, director general of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii), a body under the supervision of the French government, told AFP. Ministry of the Interior.

Hundreds in Pakistan

As soon as they arrive, these women will first be housed in a “transit” center in the Paris region, registered as asylum seekers and then directed to “long-term” accommodation, while the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and stateless persons (Ofpra) decides on their files, he specified. “With low noise, the Apagan operation (to exfiltrate Afghans to France) continues”, added the prefect Didier Leschi, stressing that this type of evacuation operation is “made to happen again if other women corresponding to this profile have found refuge in Pakistan”.

“Thank you (to) the government for showing that it is possible”, reacted Monday the former socialist minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, now president of the NGO France Terre d’Asile, whose center will initially welcome these women. . “Next step: get out of the dropper to set up a real humanitarian airlock for the attention of these Afghan women,” she claimed on X, formerly Twitter.

For the moment, if these arrivals constitute “good news”, they are “not the result of a political decision” but were “obtained in a hard fight” by activists who fought “to obtain visas” in these women, lamented to AFP Delphine Rouilleault, director general of France land of asylum. The association, which has been supporting calls for the exfiltration of these women for several months, estimates that there are hundreds of Afghan women “hidden” in Pakistan.

“Abandoned”

In the summer of 2021, President Emmanuel Macron had promised that France would remain “alongside the Afghan women”, in the midst of an evacuation operation – 15,769 people between the spring of 2021 and the end of July 2023, according to the authorities. Two years later, “women, in particular single women who did not have the necessary interpersonal skills, have been largely neglected”, lamented at the end of April in a forum at the World the Welcoming Afghan Women collective, led by journalists.

Since its return to power, the Taliban regime has gradually reduced the rights of Afghan women who can no longer go to school after 12 years, access universities or parks or sports halls. Women, who must cover themselves fully when they leave their homes, also no longer have the right to work for NGOs and are excluded from most civil service positions.

Will the evacuation carried out on Monday be followed by others, more substantial? Solicited, neither the Quai d’Orsay nor the Elysée wished to speak. And without taking a position by the government, deplores France Terre d’Asile, the operation does not have the value of “France’s commitment”.





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