An Afghan refugee points system
It's impossible to know what we owe Afghanistan. And some things can't be repaid. But as I see people quibble over numbers of refugees, saying Britain is 'full up', here's a stab at a calculation
Afghan refugees. Everyone’s talking about them. Unpopular opinion, but regardless of the UK Government’s commitment to take in 20,000 (over five years), I believe in a points system for accepting refugees. I know that might sound crass – human beings in distress reduced to quotas and qualifying criteria, but hear me out.
I propose a cumulative points system – not to determine whether a refugee is worthy of entry to our glorious democracies, but to determine a minimum number of refugees a country should have to take in. After all: if you break it, you buy it. And after 20 years of occupation, Afghanistan is more than slightly foxed. The countries that invaded this sovereign nation for the worst of possible motives (whatever human rights malarky they might have subsequently hidden behind) should have to take responsibility for at least some of the people whose lives are going to be hellish (or, frankly, just harder) if they stay.
Let’s talk about numbers.
Refugees
1 for 1: For every soldier you sent into another country, armed and with the authority to kick in doors, detain and kill, we should take in one refugee. This is really quite generous to the invaders. The damage one soldier will have done to civilians (and to those legitimately resisting an occupying force) is hard to calculate, particularly since countries like the USA refuse to let their soldiers be tried for war crimes. But that’s why this is cumulative. That’s why there are further points….
5 for 1: For every civilian death (for the moment we can exclude the deaths of people who were fighting against an occupying force of foreign soldiers), you must accept 5 refugees. A conservative number really, considering that a mother killed by a bomb or drone or helicopter gunship strike leaves easily three dependents behind. And, America, you sneaky prawn, I’m watching you. During your occupations I know you like to class any boy/man between the ages of 16 and 60 as a combatant if they are somewhere you decide they shouldn’t be (in their own country). But that won’t fly. Unless you want to let other nations decide who counts as a military target here? No? Thought not.
Obviously, this will be hard to calculate because after a while we stopped counting civilian deaths and punished our service personnel when they leaked this information.
3 for 1: For every fighter not part of the Taliban hierarchy/leadership that you have killed, you will take in 4 refugees. In the Afghan patriarchy, men are still breadwinners. Kill the father, you leave a family destitute in a country with (partly thanks to the invasion) little in the way of a formal social security safety net. And since you trained and armed so many Afghans to resist foreign invaders when those invaders had Cyrillic on their tanks, I’m sure you won’t be so western/white supremacist as to argue that fighting back is only bad when it’s against English speakers. Right?
10 for 1: For every Mujahidin fighter you trained (and in order to make this an adaptable programme in future, for Mujahidin please read any armed group used to fight a proxy war for your country or its allies), you will take in ten refugees. These groups have caused so much harm for almost 100 years, the brunt being carried by the poor and marginalised. It’s time to make a small nod towards apology and restitution.
1 for 1,000: For every 1,000 bullets your forces fired in the country, you will take in one refugee. Some people will baulk at this, I know. Why a thousand and not one for one? Because we have to be pragmatic, not idealistic. I’m not unreasonable. The US military budget alone (not even thinking about the disgusting amount the UK spends every year on the ability to kill people) is so huge that they have been able to outgun any resistance by sheer volume of munitions. But each one of these bullets could have killed a person, and each contributed to a society remaining in shock and virtual paralysis for decades. So there should be a cost to the nation that chose to fire those rounds.
20 for 1: This is a tricky one. I’m open to advice here. How many people should be taken in per bomb dropped and per missile fired? I am not an expert. But infrastructure destruction, the ceasing of ordinary life etc have to be accounted for. Also, bombs planted by insurgents – how much blame is to be assigned to the person planting a bomb versus the reason they feel they have to? 50%? 30%? It’s tricky, and I don’t want to justify or valorise violence against civilians or glamorise theocratic gangs, but I think we need to be a little grown up and admit that these bombs would not have been planted if we were not there. Yeah? So something is owed.
Now, should we see the opportunity to leave as the only things our invading nations owe the people of Afghanistan? Of course not. The idea of going into someone’s house because their dad is a bastard and setting fire to several of the rooms, trashing the rest of the place while the dad and his buddies (and some of his children) try to get you to leave is not suddenly made better if you invite everyone to stay at yours afterwards. Restitution must be made.
So apart from letting them in and providing every refugee with a decent place to live, an allowance for the first two years, the opportunity to work and free education and training, we should offer them incentives to stay. Could we start with a cash-based alternative? Not just hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds or Euros to each person eligible to seek asylum, but an equivalent investment in civil society and infrastructure in Afghanistan (with absolutely zero profit going to firms whose share prices increased due to any link with the occupation).
Financial compensation does not make up for the invasion of a nation or for the civilian dead. But it is not nothing.
Payments and investment should also be made to aid agencies, charities and civil society organisations working in the country, local and international – the people who were left to work for the ends governments later claimed they were trying to achieve all along. The people of Afghanistan who stay should be gifted with something better than what they were left with. Obviously we don’t really want to fund the Taliban. So how about infrastructure projects throughout the country, funded by the invaders? How about teacher training, doctor training, universities and agricultural investment, administered jointly by INGOs and local authorities? Investment could be made, as an apology, as compensation.
How much? How about the same amount that was spent on the war? Or hey. Let’s be real. War is more expensive that peace. That’s why capitalists love it. Let’s make it half of what was spent – on our military effort, on private security firms with even less oversight and accountability than the invasion, on logistics firms and weapons suppliers and anyone who got paid to make this war last so very long. Take that total, halve it, and invest it in the country.
Too expensive? Is all of this too costly, in economic and social terms? All the better. As conservatives are so fond of arguing, there need to be consequences for bad behaviour. Responsibility. Accountability. Teaching a country a valuable lesson they’ll thank you for later.
Consequences build character. So let’s start here. We can talk about war crimes tribunals later.
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While you listen, I’m trying to decide between two topics for the next Newsletter. Want to help me decide? The whole OnlyFans debacle which thankfully resolved well today is one. The other is vaccine passports and why they are a bad idea. What would you prefer to read? Get in touch via one of the methods above and let me know your thoughts! Also just to be clear: no amount of money and no number of refugees is enough to make up for the decimation of a country. I just think that this is not the time to quibble about making restitution. Even if it will never be enough. Okay that’s all from me today. I hope you are being as kind to yourself as you would be someone else who needs it. xoxo