This young girl is an Afghan refugee (wrapped in a plastic sheet) after being rescued off the cost of Lesbos, Greece on Friday. Before SYRIZA temporarily loosened restrictions on refugees & immigrants, thousands were stuck in squalid filthy prisons, subject to right-wing vigilante attacks, homeless, unable to move on to other European countries because Greece functioned as the front line of Frontex & denied them papers.
There were many reports about thousands of Afghan youth trying to cross the barrier wall Greece had built on the Turkish border. They had worked their way from war & unemployment in Afghanistan to homelessness & incarceration in Greece. Some did make it through the Frontex barriers to homelessness in Germany & elsewhere.
The European Union has every obligation under international law to grant sanctuary to these refugees–& sanctuary with social service benefits, not just the right to sleep under a bridge. Particularly because most the EU member states deployed troops in Afghanistan under NATO.
It’s not certain how many NATO troops remain in Afghanistan since the US claims its withdrawn & is closing down the war. Just like they claimed in Iraq & we see how that’s turned out.
One of the most important historic missions today is to rebuild the international antiwar movement demanding the US get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, & every other country that it’s bombing. Antiwar opposition is not just another “worthy cause” but of preeminent importance when people are being bombed to smithereens & treated like neoliberal chattel. It is a call to arms because it affects every aspect of society in the aggressed & aggressor countries: female oppression, racist, ethnic, & every other form of discrimination, economic inequality.
Rebuild the international antiwar movement. US-NATO out of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Uganda, & everywhere else it is.
(Photo by Visar Kryeziu/AP)