This month, French authorities have been demolishing the 'Jungle,' a toxic wasteland on the edge of Calais. Formerly a landfill site four kilometers square, it is now populated by approximately 5,000 refugees pushed there over the last year. A remarkable community of 15 nationalities adhering to various faiths comprises the Jungle. Residents have formed a network of shops and restaurants which, along with hamams and barber shops, contribute to a micro-economy within the encampment. Community infrastructure now includes schools, mosques, churches, and clinics.
The Jungle is an impressive example of how people from different nationalities and ethnicities can live together in relative harmony, despite oppressive hardship and infringement of universal rights and civil liberties. Arguments and scuffles sometimes break out, but they're normally catalyzed by French authorities or traffickers.
Afghans, numbering approximately 1,000, constitute the largest national group in the Jungle. Among this group are people from each of the main ethnicities in Afghanistan: Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and Tajiks.
Earlier this month, British Home Secretary and Member of Parliament Theresa May won a significant battle to restart flights deporting Afghans back to Kabul, on the grounds that it is now safe to return to the capital city.
Just three months ago I sat in the Kabul office of Stop Deportation to Afghanistan, a support group run by Abdul Ghafoor, a Pakistan-born Afghan who spent five years in Norway only to be deported to Afghanistan, a country he had previously never visited. Ghafoor told me about a meeting he had recently attended with Afghan government ministers and NGOs. He laughed as he described how the non-Afghan NGO workers arrived at the armed compound wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, yet Kabul has been deemed a safe space for returning refugees.
The hypocrisy and double standards would be a joke if the upshot was not so unfair.
Back in the Jungle, 21 miles from the British Isles, nearly 1,000 Afghans dream of a safe life in Britain. Some have previously lived in Britain, others have family in the U.K. Many have worked with the British military or NGOs. Many refugees are discouraged by the treatment they've received in France where they’ve been subjected to police brutality and attacks by far-right thugs. For various reasons they feel the best chance of a peaceful life is in Britain.
Deliberate exclusion from the U.K. just makes the prospect even more desirable. Certainly the fact that Britain has agreed to take only 60 refugees per 1,000 of the local population who claimed asylum in 2015 — compared to Germany, which is taking 587 — has played into the dream that Britain is the land of exclusive opportunity.
I spoke with Afghan community leader Sohail, who said: "I love my country, I want to go back and live there, but it's just not safe and we have no opportunity to live. Look at all the businesses in the Jungle, we have talents, we just need the opportunity to use them.”
One day after this conversation, the area was set ablaze, the street of shops and restaurants razed to the ground.
After the fire, I spoke with the same Afghan community leader. We stood amid the demolished ruins where we had shared tea. He was deeply saddened by the destruction.
"Why did the authorities put us here, let us build a life, and then destroy it?"
The British government has consistently used the Dublin Regulations as legal grounds for not taking its equal quota of refugees. These regulations prescribe that refugees should seek asylum in the first safe country they land. But that regulation is now simply impractical. If it was properly enforced, Turkey, Italy, and Greece would be left to accommodate the millions of refugees.
As it is, European refugee camps are playing into the hands of human traffickers. One Afghan told me the current going rate to be smuggled into the U.K. is now around €10,000—the price having doubled in the last few months.
Setting up a U.K. asylum center would remove the violence that often occurs between truck drivers and refugees, as well as tragic and fatal accidents which come about during transit into the U.K. It's perfectly possible to have the same number of refugees entering the U.K. via legal means as there are by the ones which exist today.
The south part of the camp now stands desolate. An icy wind whips across the expanse of littered wasteland. Debris flaps in the breeze, a sad combination of rubbish and charred personal belongings. Currently there's a stalemate situation — some NGOs and volunteers are reluctant to rebuild homes and constructions that might quickly be demolished anew by French authorities.
The Jungle represents incredible human ingenuity and entrepreneurial energy being exhibited by refugees and the volunteers who have poured their lives into making a community to be proud of. Simultaneously, it's a shocking and shameful reflection of the decline in European human rights and infrastructure, where people who flee for their lives are forced to inhabit communal crate containers, a form of indefinite detention.
France and Britain are currently shaping their immigration policy. It will be especially disastrous for France, with a constitution founded on "liberté, egalité, fraternité," to base that policy on demolishing temporary homes, excluding and incarcerating refugees, and forcing refugees into unwanted asylum.
By giving people the right to choose their country of asylum, assisting with basic needs such as accommodation and food, and responding with humanity rather than suppression, France will be enabling the best possible practical solution — and do so in compliance with international human rights, laws set down to protect the safety and rights of everyone in the world today.
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