Afghan refugees stage protests in Abu Dhabi over prison-like conditions
The Afghan refugees living in a camp in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), since the chaotic US withdrawal from their country have staged a protest to condemn their prison-like conditions, demanding to be resettled as promised by Washington.
The demonstrations kicked off on Wednesday and continued on Thursday, and Afghans, who are living in the tightly-controlled facility in Abu Dhabi, carrying banners calling for freedom and demanding to be relocated to the US.
According to the Afghan newspaper Etilaat Roz, a female soldier in the former Afghan government said she had been waiting in the camp to be resettled for six months.
Abdulsamei Faizi, an Afghan sportsmen living in the camp, also said, “The Americans drove them (the refugees) out of Afghanistan, thus they have to transfer them from Abu Dhabi to another place.”
He said the refugees were living in rooms like prisoners and their patience had run out.
Advocates and protesters estimate that 12,000 Afghans are housed in Abu Dhabi.
According to Etilaat Roz, the United States has assigned only six employees to review the cases of those Afghan refugees, and the documents of nearly 20 people are reviewed every day.
Reuters cited one of the protesters as saying that, as the protests broke out, Emirati authorities arrested some Afghans.
Ahmad Mohibi, a former US counter-terrorism adviser in Afghanistan who has assisted those fleeing the South Asian country, told Reuters that US flights carrying Afghans from the UAE stopped in November last year. He slammed the US resettlement process for the Afghans in the UAE facilities, saying, “There is no transparency.” Mohibi said some Afghans had even asked to be repatriated to Afghanistan.
Amid the chaotic withdrawal of the US-led forces from Afghanistan last year, thousands of Afghans were evacuated to third countries, including the UAE, on behalf of the US and other European countries.
Soon after the Taliban laid siege to Kabul in mid-August, US and its international partners raced to cut off Afghanistan’s access to international aid and froze roughly $10 billion in assets belonging to the country’s central bank.
The Taliban have warned Western diplomats that insisting on sanctions as a means to pressure their governance could undermine security and trigger a wave of economic refugees.
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