The Coming Afghan Migration Crisis Europe understandably fears a refugee surge like the one from Syria.
The immediate crisis in Kabul will end when U.S. forces depart, but President Biden’s surrender to the Taliban will have deleterious effects far beyond Afghanistan. Another migration crisis in Europe could be among the most consequential.
“Migrants and refugees from Syria, Iraq and Libya will be joined by people from Afghanistan,” Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko saidMonday. “Even though they are going to end up in the West, they will be going and flying through Belarus.”
Mr. Lukashenko, isolated after his brazen theft of last year’s presidential election, has been facilitating illegal immigration into Europe. So far more than 4,000 have crossed into neighboring Lithuania this year, up from a few dozen in 2020. Poland and Latvia also have had to reinforce their borders with Belarus as they cope with thousands of illegal crossings.
The strongman has made clear that Minsk is weaponizing the migrants over the European Union’s sanctions on his government’s elites and some Belarusian industries. He told the U.S. and U.K. to “choke on your sanctions” earlier this month. Mr. Lukashenko has plenty of reason to believe he can behave with impunity.
The International Monetary Fund this week granted the regime a nearly $1 billion lifeline through “special drawing rights.” (See nearby.) Mr. Biden and his European counterparts, overwhelmed in Afghanistan, never organized effective opposition to the move despite their influence at the IMF.
Don’t be surprised if European leaders eventually move to cut deals with Mr. Lukashenko, as they did with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during the Syria migration crisis. Greece and others have shown that strictly policing the border can help. But the task will grow more complicated as more desperate Afghans flee the region.
NATO countries are admitting vetted Afghans who worked with them, as they should. The risk is a mass refugee flow that overwhelms borders and vetting as it did during the Syria civil war last decade. Terror groups could exploit a messy migration for future attacks. The chance of a new Covid wave is also possible.
The second-order political effects won’t help Mr. Biden’s vision of a network of global democracies working together. France has the most capable military on the Continent. It also has a fast-approaching presidential election in which Vladimir Putin supporter Marine Le Pen is already a serious contender. A migrant crisis will play into her hands.
Skeptics of the trans-Atlantic relationship in Germany, Italy and elsewhere could get a similar boost. The European dismay at Mr. Biden’s bungled withdrawal is severe and across the political spectrum.
The Biden Administration is spinning the Afghan disaster as an inevitable but short-term setback in its long-term pivot to East Asia. But that strategy requires stable and friendly European allies to shoulder more of their own defense burden. The President’s failures in Afghanistan will make that more difficult.
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