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March 2016

Rolling Up the Welcome Mat: Berlin Moves to Curb Afghan Refugee Influx By Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt, Susanne Koelbl, Christiane Hoffmann and Konstantin von Hammerstein

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans are seeking refuge in Germany from their country’s turmoil. Berlin plans to increase its deportations and scare tactics in order to lower the number of asylum-seekers from the region.

Here at least, things seem to be safe. The grounds of the German consulate in downtown Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan are surrounded by a massive concrete wall. The Americans turned the former hotel into a fortress before they rented it to the Germans: There are vehicle gateways with automatic steel gates, thick bullet-proof window panes, panic rooms and heavily armed police officers in combat uniforms.

On this sunny afternoon in early February, Hayatullah Jawad is tasked with conveying the truth to the German Interior Minister in the consulate’s unadorned conference room. “Everyone who can is currently leaving the country,” the migration expert says, before letting the sentence sink in for a moment.

Thomas de Maizière only has one question: Why? “There are three reasons,” says Jawad. “Firstly: the departure of foreign troops. The people don’t believe that the Afghans can take care of security by themselves. Secondly: It is simple to reach Europe.” And thirdly? Jawad keeps a straight face. “Smiley government.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s message of welcome to the refugees has made all the difference, he says. Everyone is getting a passport as quickly as possible. After all, who knows how long the German government’s warmth will last.

And it can’t last. There are simply too many. Since the fall, the number of Afghan refugees who reach Germany has grown markedly. In the past year they represented the second largest group among asylum applicants. This January, one out of five refugees registered in Germany came from the Hindu Kush region.

If Merkel wants to lower the number of refugees as she has pledged to do, then the chancellor absolutely needs to take Afghanistan into account. But it’s a difficult proposition. Since its military intervention a decade and a half ago, the West has carried a special responsibility for the country — a land that is now once again in danger of sinking completely into civil war. The idea of categorizing Afghanistan as a safe country of origin, like the Balkan states, is unthinkable. On the contrary: The security situation is getting worse. If it continues along these lines, millions of Afghans could be entitled to protection under the Geneva Convention. And the smugglers on the route to Europe are highly professional. This maelstrom is a nightmare.

In order to have more power to deport people to Afghanistan, the government has declared part of the country safe. But the Taliban are constantly expanding their influence. The government in Kabul is weak, the economic prospects are dire. “Afghanistan is at serious risk of a political breakdown during 2016,” US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recently said during a Senate hearing.

Despite this, the German government is hoping to convince a high four-digit number of Afghans to voluntarily make the return trip. A week ago, 125 Afghans returned to Kabul in a Czech charter plane with the media watching. In exchange, Germany is giving them €700 ($760) for a new start in their homeland.

But according to current plans by the government, rejected asylum applicants who do not want to return of their own free choice will soon also be deported in larger numbers. According to an internal German government memo, forced repatriations will be “tackled” in a next step, which is already being prepared behind the scenes.

Worsening Situation in Afghanistan

This marks yet another change of direction in German asylum policy. For years, a general ban on deportations to Afghanistan had been in place, with only 47 people having been sent back to the country since 2011. Last year, just nine were sent packing.

Deportations to Afghanistan are morally dubious, laborious and costly. But the interior minister doesn’t see any alternative. In 2015, three times as many Afghans applied for asylum than in 2014. In total, 154,000 refugees came from the Hindu Kush. A further 18,099 were registered by the authorities this January. For that reason, measures like the one taken last Wednesday are mostly meant to have a symbolic effect. De Maizière is hoping that the news will spread around Afghanistan that the generous times have passed. The welcome mat has been rolled up.

Since the withdrawal of the International Security Assistance Force’s (ISAF) protective troops in 2013, the security situation in the country has deteriorated dramatically. “There are safe provinces and there are less safe provinces,” de Maizière said during his visit in early February — an optimistic description. A Western diplomat in Kabul expresses it this way: “There are unsafe and less unsafe provinces.”

In practice, the Interior Ministry is already well aware of this. Each week the officials of the Group 22 in the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) compile an Afghanistan briefing based on the most up-to-date information available. It is a litany of horrors: military clashes, suicide bombings, kidnappings, assassinations. According to the latest statistics released by the UN’s Afghanistan mission, the number of civilians injured or killed last year — 11,002 — is the highest since the toppling of the Taliban.

In order to determine the level of security in a province, the German Federal Administrative Court has developed a macabre “body count” calculus. If the ratio of civilian victims to overall inhabitants is lower than 1:800, then the risk to life is too low to receive protection in Germany.

The last thorough situation analysis by the German Foreign Ministry and the BND foreign intelligence service makes for grim reading. It describes a “downward spiral.” The “performance, reliability and operational morale” of the Afghan army is sinking and after the Taliban’s brief conquest of Kunduz in September 2015, the militants see themselves “justifiably in a position of strength against the government.” In addition to the Taliban, the Islamic State terror militia is also gaining a foothold in some provinces.

For the BAMF and the German administrative courts, the situation is has become rather chaotic, with officials left to answer some very tough questions. Is someone who flees from the Taliban in Kunduz safe in Kabul? Does a man have a right to asylum in Germany if he is supposedly being forced to fight by two opposing militias and he’d rather stay neutral? Can a feud between two rival clans be a justification for asylum? Or a planned forced marriage?

According to an internal report by the German Foreign Ministry about the “situation pertaining to asylum and deportation” the status of women has improved since the end of Taliban rule, but their human rights are “still frequently violated” by way of abuse, forced marriages, sexual assaults or murder. Children have been forcibly recruited, sexually abused and afterwards sometimes killed. “Within the ranks of army and police in particular,” it claims, the sexual abuse of children and youths is a “large problem.”

New Guidelines in Germany

Still, the German Foreign Ministry has picked out individual regions in which “the situation is comparatively stable despite selective security incidents.” In the view of the German government, rejected asylum applicants can be sent to these provinces.

BAMF is now expected to investigate more thoroughly whether “domestic refuge alternatives” are feasible — ie. whether it is imaginable that a person could stay afloat in one of the country’s safe regions. They are considering young men who are fit to work, who are neither pursued by the Taliban nor persecuted for their religion, and merely made the journey to Europe with the hope of a better future.

Members of the German government believe the new guidelines will lead to a decrease in the number of Afghan applicants ultimately granted asylum status. But it’s unclear whether the calculation will pay off. The administrative courts have the final word in decisions. These courts can also be soft in their rulings.

It’s 9 a.m. on Feb. 23 in a Berlin court. A young Afghan stands in front of Administrative Judge Claudia Perlitius. With its green carpet and gray chairs, the environment has an aura of bureaucratic sadness. The Afghan’s application for asylum has been rejected by BAMF, and now he is taking legal action against it. The man grew up in Iran, which isn’t rare: About 1 million Afghans have fled to their neighboring country.

The judge explains clearly that the man has no right to asylum in Germany because he is not being persecuted in Afghanistan. And the so-called subsidiary protection as a refugee from civil war doesn’t apply to him. But during questioning, it becomes clear that the man doesn’t have any contact with his relatives in Afghanistan. The judge decides it is untenable to send a man to Afghanistan who has no network of family there to provide him with support. The judge lifts the deportation and orders that the man can stay in Germany.

After Syria, Iraq and Eritrea, it is Afghans who are most frequently granted asylum status in Germany. And even a rejected application doesn’t necessarily result in deportation. Obstacles could include medical treatment that cannot be interrupted, or a missing passport. Of the approximately 200,000 foreigners who are set to be deported in Germany, the orders have been dropped in almost 150,000 of those instances.

News of that fact has also spread in Afghanistan. Reports on social media suggest that Afghans have little to worry about in terms of getting deported back to the Hindu Kush, an internal Foreign Ministry memo states. This, in turn, has spurred the refugee smuggling business in the country, where market forces appear to be alive and well. High demand has created a wide array of offerings, sophisticated infrastructure and sinking prices in trafficking.

One and a half years ago, migration expert Hayatullah Jawad explains, his uncle had to pay $15,000 to get his relatives to Vienna. Their trip took three months. Now an entire family can come to Europe via Iran or Turkey in only 12 days for the same price.

‘Have You Thought About It?’

That’s what Hussain Saydi wants. The electrical engineer is a member of the Shiite Hazara minority. He comes from the Qarabagh district in the eastern part of the country. Now he’s sitting in the living room of a friend in Kabul. Saydi is waiting for his passport, and next week he wants to leave — for Germany.

As an employee at a human right’s organization, the 28-year-old once wrote an article about the “double standard” of men who believe themselves to be good Muslims because they attended the mosque, but don’t allow their wives or daughters to leave the house or go to school. After it came out, the Qarabagh ulama, the local council of Muslim clerics, summoned him, at which point Saydi says he was threatened. Now he’s planning his escape together his wife, who studied business administration.

It’s expected to cost $10,000, with each smuggler immediately receiving a portion after performing his part of the service. Arrival in Germany is guaranteed.

None of this is good news for Thomas de Maizière. That’s why the German government is now testing a Facebook campaign to try to deter young Afghans from fleeing to Germany. Large signs in Pashtu and Dari read: “Leaving Afghanistan? Have you given this careful consideration?” It sounds rather discursive and many people wouldn’t consider that much of a deterrent. The Australians, for example, air ads on Afghan television that dispel any illusions. They show a grim officer in a uniform: “If you travel by boat without a visa, you will not make Australia home. There are no exceptions!”

Donald Trump: The Post-Truth Candidate By Ian Tuttle

On Thursday night, live in front of nearly 17 million Americans watching on national television, Donald Trump abandoned a central plank of the hawkish immigration platform that has helped propel him ever closer to the Republican presidential nomination.

The H-1B visa program makes it easier for employers to import highly skilled foreign labor, and has been widely abused to undercut American workers. Trump has declared himself against such abuses, stating in the immigration platform available on his website that, if president, he would require employers using H-1B visas to hire American workers first. Just last Sunday, Trump highlighted two former Disney IT workers replaced by foreign workers.

But by Thursday night, the front-runner had changed his tune. When moderator Megyn Kelly cited his previous waffling on the subject, Trump announced that he was “softening” his website’s hard line. “We need highly skilled people in this country,” he said. “And if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in.”

Yet one flip-flop was not enough. Just after midnight, Trump’s campaign announced that he was reversing his reversal in a statement that promised to “end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.”

Well, then. Will the real Donald Trump please stand up?

Culture Rot: Donald Trump Is the Effect, Not the Cause A sick society breeds gutter politics. By Andrew C. McCarthy

A few years back, I began reliving, in reverse, the most treasured part of my upbringing. On sunny summer Sundays, my son, age seven and falling in love with baseball, would curl up next to me on the couch to watch the game. The great American ritual of a man passing on to his boy not just the national pastime but a cultural heritage; the odd bits of hard-knocks wisdom sprinkled around the infield-fly rule. There was even symmetry across the decades: The Mets providing just enough drama to break your heart in the end.

There was, however, a vexing intrusion on the ritual: the remote control. And not because we didn’t have a remote control for our black-and-white RCA TV set in the Bronx circa 1966; it was because we didn’t need a remote-control back then. And not because there were only six other channels, as opposed to today’s 600; it was because, as his wide-eyed seven-year-old was taking it all in, my dad wasn’t worried about having to switch off Viagra commercials between innings.

So what is the natural progression from turning the campus and pop culture over to Amerika-hating radicals, to the vigorous years-long media defense of Bill Clinton’s right to turn the White House into a cathouse, to the inability of a father to watch baseball with his young son at one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon without being ready to address erectile dysfunction?

It is the cretinous Donald J. Trump campaign.

Israel: ‘Apartheid’ State or Blessing to the Arabs? By P. David Hornik

It’s that time of year again—Israel Apartheid Week. This “week” starts in Europe in February and spreads to North America in March. It’s an arm of the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel) movement, which is in turn an arm of the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Israel Apartheid Week is essentially an invasion of Western universities by Middle Eastern terrorism. Its aim is to abet the destruction of a country, Israel, by poisoning the minds of a whole generation against it. Its cri de coeur is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” In other words, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—no “two-state solution,” no compromise, no Israel.

One way to further that aim is to spread the “big lie” of Israeli “apartheid.” The Israel Apartheid Week activists know that it’s a lie, as does anyone—that is, anyone not blinded by ideological hatred—who has ever spent time in Israel. Here’s an Israeli Arab Supreme Court justice. Here’s an Israeli Arab brigadier general. Here’s an Israeli Arab leader of a parliamentary faction. Class, can you point to equivalents among blacks during apartheid South Africa?

It’s not only, though, that “apartheid” is a ludicrous lie to toss at Israel. It’s also that—as grim, hate-ridden Israel Apartheid Week plods on—Israel is increasingly a blessing not only to its Arab citizens but to the Arab world as a whole.

To start with the Israeli Arabs—as Evelyn Gordon notes, a poll in 2015 asked them:

“If you had the opportunity to become a citizen of the United States or any other Western country, would you prefer to move there or to remain in Israel?” Fully 83.4 percent said they would rather remain in Israel—virtually identical to the proportion among Israeli Jews (84.5 percent).

Israeli Arabs know, of course, that Israel gives them a level of freedom, democracy, and economic advancement that the surrounding Arab countries can hardly match. It’s very possible that if Israel had not become Israel, it would now be Southern Syria. The poll didn’t ask if Israel or Southern Syria would be a better place to live, but one can imagine where the responses would fall.

A sure sign of warmism in decline: Yale closing down its ‘Climate and Energy Institute’ By Thomas Lifson

Peak warmism has already hit, and the global warming movement is now on its long glide path through loss of government funding, budget and hiring cuts, less media attention, on the way to unfashionability, embarrassment, and eventually obscurity, a historical footnote like phrenology (which was once the rage in elite academic circles). In retrospect, the December 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which was still able to draw heads of state but which could accomplish nothing substantive other than promise money, may well be seen as the definitive moment at which the movement began its official decline.

Now elite institutions, which always have their antennae attuned to the ebb and flow of the concerns of the world’s power elite, are acting out the consequences of decline. If you are a university president responsible for raising mega-donations by convincing the holders of wealth that they can achieve prestige and maybe a little immortality by funding your Good Works, then you have to be aware of their changing concerns.

Only a few years ago, global warming seemed like a sure winner to Yale’s then-president Richard C. Levin, when he announced in 2009 the establishment of the Yale Climate and Energy Institute and secured Rajendra K. Pachauri as its first head. Pachuari was the head of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the major force pushing global warming as a central battle to be fought to save humanity, and he was to serve both the U.N. and Yale at the same time, locking them together as leaders of the fight to rescue us all from doom.

Obama’s unrequited Cuban romance The president is unable to tell the difference between friend and enemy

Nothing is more embarrassing to watch than a suitor pursuing unrequited love. There’s no thrill in such romance. Every bouquet of long-stemmed roses and every box of candy Barack Obama sends to Havana is returned with a demand for roses with longer stems and a bigger box of candy.

Over the past year, President Obama has removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, re-established diplomatic relations and opened an embassy in Havana, and now Mr. Obama announces that he will be the first American president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years. He’ll no doubt shave extra close for Fidel’s anticipated kiss.
There have been good reasons for previous presidents to withhold the prestige of a state visit. The Castro alliance with the Soviet Union produced a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from the Florida coast. For those 13 days the world held its breath in fear of World War III. The Castro regime has since attempted to subvert democratic governments throughout the Hemisphere and organized cabals against the United States.

Mr. Obama’s attempts at romance continued this week when the White House sent to Congress legislation to maintain restrictions on American civilian ships entering Cuban waters. The bill arrived on Capitol Hill on the 20th anniversary of the day the Cuban air force shot down a civilian rescue plane over international waters, a plane operated by an American relief organization called Brothers to the Rescue. The pilots were trying to locate and rescue Cubans fleeing prison or death in Cuba.

“These are the same waters that have witnessed record numbers of Cubans risking their lives to reach freedom because of the oppression they are facing under the Castro regime, a regime that has found an ally in President Obama,” says Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida Republican.

Germany: Migrant Rape Crisis Worsens Public spaces are becoming perilous for women and children by Soeren Kern

Sexual violence in Germany has skyrocketed since Angela Merkel allowed more than one million mostly male migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East into the country. The crimes are being downplayed by the authorities, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

“The moment they [male migrants] see a young woman wearing a skirt or any type of loose clothing, they believe they have a free pass.” — Restaurant owner at a mall in Kiel.

“Every police officer knows he has to meet a particular political expectation. It is better to keep quiet [about migrant crime] because you cannot go wrong.” — Rainer Wendt, the head of the German police union.

Police are warning about a potential breakdown of public order this summer, when women who are lightly dressed are confronted by young male migrants.

Jakob Augstein, an influential columnist for the magazine Der Spiegel, says that Germans worried about migrant crimes are motivated by racism. His views shed light on the worldview of German multiculturalism: Migrants who assault German women and children are simply rebelling against German power structures. Germans who criticize such assaults are racists.

Police in Cologne received more than 1,000 complaints from women, including 454 reports of sexual assaults, related to New Year’s Eve. Police in Hamburg received complaints from 351 women, including 218 reports of sexual assault that took place on the same evening.

A mob of asylum seekers from Afghanistan assaulted three teenage girls at a shopping center in the northern German city of Kiel. The attack — which occurred over two-hours on the evening of February 25, and mirrored the mass assaults of German women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve — shows, once again, that public spaces in Germany are becoming increasingly perilous for women and children.

Europe’s Migration Coma Border controls offer a pause to contemplate more lasting action.

Ahead of one more “make or break” summit on Europe’s migration crisis on Monday, an unstated plan of sorts already seems to be going into effect: Sink the Continent’s system of borderless travel into a medically induced coma and hope the patient can heal itself during the snooze.

That’s the best interpretation as a growing number of countries impose border controls on frontiers that used to be crossed freely under the Schengen agreement for passport-free travel. The latest enforcers include Belgium along its frontier with France, and Austria and nine Balkan states that are trying to seal off Greece from the rest of Europe. They join Sweden, Hungary, Denmark and others in imposing controls of various sorts.

The aim is to contain the crop of Middle Eastern and African migrants currently in Europe where they are right now. Belgium wants to prevent them from decamping from Calais to the Flemish ferry port of Zeebrugge as they try to get to Britain. Austria and the Balkan states want to block the migrant path from the Aegean up to Germany. In recent days, thousands of migrants have piled up along the newly closed border between Greece and Macedonia. Border closures would deter migrants, especially those coming for economic opportunity.

It’s no coincidence European Council President Donald Tusk travelled to a nearly closed-off Greece this week to warn economic migrants to stay home. Europe faces a brewing humanitarian disaster as a result of the border closures, but perhaps less of one than would develop if migrants started appearing by the hundreds of thousands as the weather warms this spring.

One aim of Monday’s summit with Turkey will be to goad Ankara into accepting economic migrants who are deported from Europe. Speeding up the application of European immigration and asylum laws in this way would still leave Europe with the many thousands of legitimate refugees pouring out of Syria and Iraq, but discouraging economic migrants would take some of the strain off Europe’s already overloaded system. CONTINUE AT SITE

Gunmen Kill 16 at Yemeni Home for the Elderly Not clear who was responsible for deaths of staff members at home founded by Mother Teresa’s nuns By Saleh al-Batati and Asa Fitch

NOT CLEAR WHO DID IT????RSK

Unidentified gunmen killed 16 staff members at a Missionaries of Charity home for the elderly in the Yemeni city of Aden on Friday, a local security official said, the latest deadly assault to shake the southern port since a Saudi-led military coalition took it over last year.

The official said several militants stormed in after pretending to have come to visit the mother of one of them. They then started shooting people inside, he said.

Those killed appeared to be staff, including four nuns, who worked at the home in Aden’s northern Sheikh Othman district, the official said. The facility, run by a Roman Catholic group based in India, is called “Mother Teresa’s Home.”
“People usually are asleep or getting ready for [Friday] prayers at that time, and the attackers knew that people would not notice them and they would be able to escape,” the official said.

It wasn’t yet clear who was responsible, the local security official said. A motive wasn’t immediately clear, but extremists had previously targeted Christians in Aden. Unidentified attackers bombed a Catholic church in Aden in December.

Sunita Kumar, a spokeswoman for the Missionaries of Charity, said three gunmen carried out the attack in the morning during breakfast. One of the nuns they killed was Indian, while two were from Rwanda and one was from Kenya, she said. They killed all the support staff present, she said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Clinton’s Email Jeopardy Aides shouldn’t take the fall for her self-serving actions.

Hillary Clinton’s Super Tuesday victory gives her a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination, but Bernie Sanders has never been her biggest obstacle to the White House. Her real liability is an email scandal that has put her in legal jeopardy.

Camp Clinton is arguing that the State Department’s Monday release of the final batch of emails ends the controversy over her private server. Yet that release is merely the end of one judicially mandated exercise overseen by a bureaucracy friendly to the former Secretary of State. The real action is in the courts, the FBI and Justice Department.

But even the friendly State Department review has been damaging. Of 30,000 emails Mrs. Clinton turned over to State, we now know that 2,093 were classified as “confidential” or “secret.” Another 22 were classified “top secret”—and State withheld their contents from public release. Mrs. Clinton keeps claiming these were “retroactively” classified, but that’s been vigorously disputed by intelligence community members, who note that at least some of the top-secret emails refer to intelligence projects classified from the beginning.

The latest release provides fresh evidence that Mrs. Clinton knew her server held national secrets. In one email from April 2012, aide Jake Sullivan forwarded Mrs. Clinton a blog post from a jihadist group. Mrs. Clinton replied: “If not classified or otherwise inappropriate, can you send to the NYTimes reporters who interviewed me today?”

The fact that Mrs. Clinton had to ask if this one was classified suggests she knew that people were sending sensitive information to her unsecure server. The new email dump also shows then-Sen. John Kerry sending Mrs. Clinton intelligence he’d obtained from top Pakistani generals.

There’s more to come. Federal judges have spent the past year doing what the State Department wouldn’t—that is, upholding the Freedom of Information Act. Judge Emmet Sullivan recently granted Judicial Watch discovery into whether State and Mrs. Clinton deliberately thwarted FOIA laws. CONTINUE AT SITE