Outgoing State Secretary Ankie Broekers-Knol (Migration and Asylum, VVD) on Sunday withdrew a number of statements about the evacuation of Afghans, which caused criticism earlier this weekend. In an on the website of the national government published statement Broekers-Knol says that she made some statements, which she made on Saturday in an interview with the AD, should have worded more carefully or should not have done it at all. The State Secretary received criticism from, among others, MPs from the three coalition parties D66, ChristenUnie and CDA.
In the interview, Broekers-Knol spoke, among other things, about the Afghans who have helped the Dutch mission in their country in recent years, and who are therefore entitled to evacuation by the Dutch government. She stated that hundreds of thousands of Afghans may still want to be removed from the country, numbers that the Dutch asylum system cannot handle, according to her. The State Secretary also said that the departure of these people causes harmful effects brain drain, the phenomenon whereby highly educated people leave their country of origin en masse.
The intention was to “outline dilemmas related to the issues surrounding the protection of people in need worldwide and the possibilities for the Netherlands to contribute to this”, Broekers-Knol said in the statement published on Sunday. “My comments about the brain drain and the reception capacity were intended in that general sense,” said the State Secretary. “I should have worded that more carefully and regret that I didn’t.” Nor should she have mentioned the “hypothetical number of 100,000.”
After the Taliban took over Kabul in mid-August, the Netherlands evacuated just under 1,900 people from the country, including nearly eight hundred people of Dutch nationality. It is a controversial subject: according to critics, the Dutch government underestimated the fundamentalist movement and was overwhelmed by the speed with which the country fell into the hands of the Taliban. Many who helped the Dutch mission and thus stand a chance of evacuation, could not be removed in time and are still in Afghanistan.
