TEHRAN: Promises of more help for Afghan refugees made by the European Union aid chief on his visit to Iran this month were not enough to dissuade Mariam Haidari from wanting to head to Europe.
She plans to go to Germany to join her husband and three of their children who were among a million-strong wave of irregular migrants to arrive in Europe last year, causing a rift among the bloc’s members who struggled to agree on how to deal with them.
“Life was very difficult here and my husband was the only breadwinner for the family ... We couldn’t afford the living expenses,” said Haidari, who was at a refugee administration center in Tehran when EU humanitarian affairs commissioner, Christos Stylianides visited the facility.
To help stem the influx, the bloc is increasing aid to certain countries on migrant routes in the hope of persuading people there to stay put. So far these have included Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon and some African countries.
Now the EU is trying this strategy in Iran, which sits on the main transit route for Afghan refugees — the second-largest group after Syrians to have reached Europe by sea last year.
In Tehran, Stylianides announced the doubling of EU humanitarian aid to Iran to 12.5 million euros this year, with a special focus on education and health services for Afghan refugee children.
“It’s better to be close to your home and move back when the situation gets better than to be far away,” Stylianides said.
“It’s better for Afghan refugees to integrate in this society than in Europe. Here it’s the same religion, similar mentality, culture. It’s much harder in, let’s say, Germany.”
Iran ties
Iran has only recently become more accessible to such EU diplomacy, enabled by a tentative rapprochement after a landmark agreement last year for Tehran to scale down its nuclear program and the West to ease its hard-hitting sanctions.
The EU hopes humanitarian aid could help re-establish ties with Iran, an Islamic republic of some 78 million people, which has a high number of executions and ranks second in the world on the highest number of imprisoned journalists.
Freedom of expression, rights of ethnic and religious minorities and women there all are a major concern for the bloc.
But during his visit Stylianides carefully avoided criticizing Iran on that, instead playing up the need to rebuild ties with Tehran to be able to engage more on the ground.
Education
Nevertheless, EU’s aid to Iran fades compared to 3 billion euros the bloc promised to Turkey for its help in managing migration.
Iranian officials said foreign aid covers only about 6 percent of the cost of hosting the Afghan refugee community and said the EU should do more.
“I would call it an investment for the European Union, any kind of support to the education system,” said Hamid Shamsaldili at Iran’s Bureau for Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs. “Any kind of support to this country will prevent these people from going to European countries.”
The situation of the three million Afghan refugees in Iran is often dire.
Iran has hosted the large refugee community for more than 30 years now as Afghans first fled the Soviet invasion, then the long Taliban insurgency and now Daesh attacks.
A third of them have a formal refugee status with some limited benefits. But the other two millions are “undocumented,” meaning that for generations they have had no access to education, jobs or health care.
Last year, as its ties with the West started to improve slowly, Tehran allowed children of the “undocumented” Afghan refugees to attend public primary schools. Aid groups on the ground say some 48,000 such children enrolled in 2015.
It was the first time Western aid agencies could reach out to this large and extremely vulnerable group.
“There has been quite a lot of hope, from the Iranian authorities as well as from our side, that this political opening will create more funding options,” said Olivier Vandecasteele, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head in Iran.
“So far it has raised interest but it hasn’t translated into any additional huge funding decisions.”
At the time of Stylianides’ visit, Swedish officials were in Tehran to pick 157 Afghans for resettlement, a tiny share of the large numbers of such requests.
It is mostly the younger Afghans who want to go to Europe but EU’s asylum acceptance rates for them are low.
And they face dangers along the way: For those crossing the Mediterranean, as most Afghan refugees do, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said 2016 is shaping up to be the deadliest year yet.
European Union reaches out to Iran over Afghan refugees
European Union reaches out to Iran over Afghan refugees
One killed in attack on oil tankers off Iraq, rescue operation ongoing: authorities
- Iraq’s oil ministry said in a statement on Thursday it had “deep concern” about incidents involving oil tankers in the Gulf, without providing details
BAGHDAD: An attack on two oil tankers near Iraq killed at least one crew member, authorities said on Thursday, as Iran carries out a campaign to disrupt global energy markets.
Farhan Al-Fartousi, from Iraq’s General Company for Ports, told state television that one crew member had been killed and 38 rescued while the “search continues for the missing.”
He did not specify the crew members’ nationalities or provide details on who was behind the attack, which occurred roughly 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the coast.
The Iraqi government’s media cell told national news agency INA that “two tankers were subject to sabotage.”
Iraq’s oil ministry said in a statement on Thursday it had “deep concern” about incidents involving oil tankers in the Gulf, without providing details.
“The safety of navigation in international maritime corridors and energy supply routes must remain free from regional conflicts,” the ministry added.
The Strait of Hormuz — the waterway carrying a fifth of the world’s oil — remains closed to almost all oil tankers, and Iran has vowed that not one liter of oil would be exported from the Gulf while its war with the United States and Israel continues.
US President Donald Trump said Wednesday that US forces have struck 28 Iranian mine-laying vessels more than a week into the Middle East war.
Images of a ship at sea with plumes of smoke rising from a huge fire, were broadcast by state television channel Al-Ikhbariya. AFP could not verify the images.
An employee at Iraq’s Basra oil terminal told AFP that it was unclear “whether it was a drone attack or explosive-laden boats.”
The Iraqi State Organization for Marketing of Oil (SOMO) confirmed in a statement that two oil tankers were attacked, without providing details on how.
Maltese-flagged oil tanker ZEFYROS was attacked as it was preparing to enter the port of Khor Al-Zoubair, where it would have taken on board an additional 30,000 tons of liquid naphtha — primarily used in petrochemicals, SOMO said.
The second targeted vessel, SAFESEA VISHNU, was sailing under the Marshall Islands flag and was chartered by an Iraqi company, according to SOMO.
The incidents come just hours after the US embassy in Baghdad warned that Iran and Tehran-backed Iraqi armed groups might target US-owned oil facilities in Iraq.
