Afghan refugee figures soar in Sweden
Asylum seeker figures in November show that there is an increasing number of Afghans applying for refugee status in Sweden. According to newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN), Syrians are the largest group among asylum seekers for the entire 2015, but looking only at this month, Afghans have climbed to the first position.
During the first eight days of November, 5,010 Afghans have sought asylum in Sweden, compared to 3,258 Syrians. In January this year, only 350 Afghans arrived in Sweden.
More than half of the people coming from Afghanistan are unaccompanied minors, DN reports.
According to Michael Winiarski, foreign affairs commentator at DN, most of the Afghan refugees are Shia Muslims coming from Iran. He says that there is no clear reason as to why the figures are growing now.
Afghanistan expert Barnett Rubin tells Swedish Radio that one factor could be that young Afghans in Iran are afraid that they will be recruited by force to fight in Syria on President Bashar al-Assad's side.
"Right now, they're under tremendous pressure to be conscripted into fighting in Syria. And there are quite a few of those Afghans who have been killed in Syria, so they're trying to escape that," Rubin says.
Rubin explains that most of the Afghan refugees are well-educated and young people, so their departure will have bad long-term consequences for their country.
"That's because the international presence created a class of relatively educated and professional people capable of serving as local employees of those international organizations. And as those organizations leave, these people lose their jobs and there's no alternative employment that is available for them," Rubin says.
