Author: Joshua Yang

Amidst Germany’s worsening housing crisis, an influx of new migrants, and rising anti-immigrant sentiment, experts have warned that the German government’s current asylum policies give preferential treatment to Ukrainian refugees over their Afghan counterparts.

For nearly a decade, Germany has taken in by far the most refugees out of all the European nations. In 2015, in the face of Middle Eastern crises that had displaced millions from their home countries, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel adopted asylum policies that led the country to accept the vast majority of the refugees fleeing to Europe. As a result, between 2015 and 2021, Germany granted asylum to 1.24 million refugees, most of whom came from Syria and Afghanistan.

But following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an influx of nearly one million Ukrainian refugees threatened to overwhelm Germany’s migrant processing system, leaving the government scrambling to find additional housing for the new refugees amidst a nationwide housing shortage.

In some cases, the government chose to prioritize the needs of Ukrainian refugees over Syrian or Afghan refugees. “[Some] Afghans were in hotels for more than a year before [the German government managed to] find them proper housing,” said Abdul Wahid Wafa, the former director of the Afghanistan Center at Kabul University. “But there was a lot of news about the different kind of welcome by the government [for Ukrainians].”

Indeed, in April 2022, Foreign Policy reported that Berlin’s local government was displacing Afghan refugees from state-provided accommodations to free up room for Ukrainian refugees. “Of course it’s not the Ukrainians’ fault, but we have to reflect on our solidarity if it’s only targeting certain people,” Tareq Alaows, a board member of the Berlin Refugee Council, told Foreign Policy. “The last months showed that different treatment of refugees is possible.”

Since the Russian invasion, Afghan refugees have also voiced frustrations that they are subject to far more restrictive integration policies than their Ukrainian counterparts. Under the European Union’s Temporary Protection Directive, Ukrainians are automatically granted asylum upon arrival in Germany and are eligible to begin working immediately. In contrast, most Afghan refugees are only granted a temporary residence permit while they wait to apply for asylum. “[With only a temporary residence permit,] you don’t have the right to take integration courses, you cannot apply for university courses or degrees, and sometimes you don’t even have a work permit,” said Khusraw Amiri, a staffer in the Afghan consulate of Munich (which still represents the former Afghan republican government, not the Taliban regime).

Of course, there are pragmatic reasons for enforcing different policies for the two groups of refugees, noted Wafa. “Ukrainians are considered short-term migrants who will [return to Ukraine after the war], but for countries in the Middle East, it’s not the case,” he said.

Ukrainian refugees also share more cultural and linguistic ties with their hosts, easing the refugees’ integration into German society. “Ukrainians are from Europe; they are close neighbors, and they are closer in terms of culture and language and their way of clothing,” Wafa added.

But according to Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, a Princeton University professor who studies modern Afghan and European affairs, part of the difference in refugee policies should be directly attributed to racism. “[I know someone] who fell in love with an Afghan refugee,” he said. “After seven years, [the refugee] couldn’t even get a passport, because he’s Afghan and Muslim. That’s it. That’s the story.”

Germany’s flailing economic health could also play a factor in the disparities between Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. “If the economy isn’t doing that well, [attitudes toward migrants] will be even more antagonistic,” Danspeckgruber said. “If you feel that you are in a total crisis mode [at home], you will protect first those who are part of your wider family, which the Ukrainians are — and which all the others outside Europe are not.”

Indeed, Danspeckgruber warned that far-right political parties are using Germany’s economic situation to stoke increasingly nativist views toward migrants from the Middle East, which will exacerbate policy differences. “[People are now] super conscientious of the ‘them versus us’ [narrative],” he said. “The ‘them’ are the Islamists, meaning the Afghans and other non-Judeo-Christian migrants in Europe.”

Current attitudes and unequal treatment aside, however, Wafa argued Germany still bears a high degree of moral responsibility for Afghan refugees at the end of the day. “[European] countries went [to Afghanistan] for 20 years; they had forces there, soldiers were there, and they had a lot of projects,” he said. “There is a lot of obligation as human beings and as part of a member of nations around the world to keep these migrants.”

Our day began with a historial deep dive. Michael, our tour guide, walked us through Checkpoint Charlie, the remnants of the Berlin Wall, and the Brandenburg Gate. It’s difficult to imagine how there was even a wall. However, something I’ve observed in my short time in Germany is that there is a very serious and thoughtful effort to remember the past, especially when it’s painful. Less relevant but deeply joyful, Michael and I were wearing matching dark blue jackets!

Next, we arrived at the American Academy in Berlin for a self care workshop. Gavin Rees, Senior Advisor for Training and Innovation with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma at Columbia University, encouraged us to think about self-care through a biopsychosocial lens. Thinking about our responsibility to the stories we are entrusted during this trip — the way we move through Berlin, the way we report our final projects, the way we move through the rest of our lives — feels immense. However, Rees emphasized the importance of focusing on the small things: physically taking care of yourself (i.e. eating, sleeping, drinking water), calling loved ones to debrief, and breathing. I’ve learned so much during this trip, and finding small beats of rest has been essential. 

Right after the self-care workshop, I headed to my first set of interviews. I spoke with two organizers of an intercultural garden where migrants from Ireland, Austria, Cameroon, Chile, and Ukraine volunteer. I was struck by how gardening is healing. It’s easy to share your family history when you’re comparing potatoes from your hometown. I didn’t share my own experiences, but it was self-care to listen to the stories of people with the same vision that community gardens make the world a better place. While touring the garden, I saw ripe rose-hips for the first time, learned the German word for chard (mangold), and tried a new lettuce! Serendipitously, during the tour, a woman with BENN Mierendorff Insel offered pamphlets to the garden organizers detailing how to apply for up to 30,000 euros. With new refugee housing being built in the neighborhood in the next year, BENN Mierendorff Insel is working on providing opportunities for refugees to further integrate into the community. We said our goodbyes, but not before we created a group chat, with a group photo as our profile picture!

Our last activity for the night was an English language table at Cafe Refugio, a place for long-time and new-time Berliners to come together in community. Funnily enough, we were not the only Americans there, with a Californian and New Jerseyan in attendance! We drank tea, ate delicious biscuits, and discussed our lives. I spent a good portion of my time there talking to Ahmad, a 24 year old Syrian refugee. He mentioned that his least favorite thing about Berlin is that there isn’t enough sun. As someone who grew up in a desert, I deeply agreed! Ahmad moved to Berlin when he was 18 and went through a year of high school, which he described as “isolating” as one of the two Syrians at his school. However, he’s now much happier in Berlin, connected with the community at Cafe Refugio and beyond. Ahmad’s experience of feeling “isolated” reminded me of conversations I’d had just an hour earlier with garden organizers. Not that community gardens can fix everything, but I do think they can help us imagine a lot less lonely ways of being with each other. 

Even though it was our first full day in Berlin, I am really enjoying the city, and can’t wait to see what’s next!

I was shocked by a statistic mentioned in the article “My Neighbor the Suspected War Criminal” — “Decades after passing the first substantive human rights statutes that make it possible to prosecute war criminals for crimes like torture and genocide, the U.S. has successfully prosecuted only one person under the laws.” Yet on some level, this statistic also makes sense. I’ve previously written about how the U.S. has long held pragmatic interests that prevent the prosecution of war crimes (last week, I mentioned this in the context of Israel-Palestine, and after the events of the weekend, prosecution seems even less likely…). Indeed, if the U.S. still functions as the “world’s policeman,” then the U.S. should hardly be the “world’s judge.”

But what country should step in to take its place? We hear about the efforts of two Syrian refugees to hold the Assad regime in Germany, thanks to the German legal system’s concept of universal jurisdiction. But prosecution in Germany only goes so far — even if Germany has no pragmatic/realpolitik objection to prosecuting war crimes — the New Statesman article notes that “most Syrians …  cannot follow it in detail in their home country.”

Actually, this observation gets at what I’ve been curious about regarding war crimes prosecution. If the most “justice” Syrian refugees will get is to come from trying Assad in abstentia, to a largely uncaring international audience, then what is the point of holding a trial in the first place? That is, what is the point of holding a trial if nobody will be deterred from committing war crimes in the future, nor will anyone have to suffer real consequences as a result of the trial? On the other hand, there are cases where Syrian officials have been held responsible in Germany, as The New York Times article discusses. But this, too, is an imperfect process: Witnesses are intimidated and refugees are afraid to speak up about their trauma in court.

I’m also deeply curious about the level of moral responsibility that we should attribute to leaders given the weight of historical context. Take the events of this weekend in Israel: There’s a fair argument that the extreme right-wing government of Israel, by refusing to respect the possibility of a two state solution and brutally trampling on the rights of Palestinians, bears some level of responsibility for provoking the Hamas to engage in increasingly violent terrorism. Of course, the brunt of the responsibility for taking hostages and killing civilians falls squarely on the shoulders of the Hamas — but should the actions of the Netanyahu government be any sort of mitigating factor in any war crimes trials that arise in the future? To what extent should past historical context influence the level of moral responsibility? Should the number of Palestinians oppressed and killed by Israeli soldiers be weighted against the number of Israelis killed and taken hostage this weekend? And, if a trial happens under universal jursidiction, should the German court system be the one responsible for determining the answers to all of these questions?

I’m curious about the relationship between Ukrainian refugees and Afghan refugees. I’ve seen news reports that Afghans have been forced out of government-provided housing in Germany to make room for Ukrainian refugees, and while there have been Afghans quoted in the media as being (understandably) frustrated by the German government’s prioritization of Ukrainian refugees, I wonder if Afghan and Ukrainian refugees have actually had direct contact with each other. That is, do the two groups encounter each other in Berlin at all? Are they able to communicate with each other, and if so, do tensions arise?

This is an especially relevant topic now that winter is approaching and refugees will need to be housed; I know Berlin has also been experiencing a housing crisis, meaning that housing is in short demand in general, especially for refugees.

A good starting point for this might be Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, where both Ukrainian and Afghan refugees are housed together — I could wander around and interview refugees staying in the container homes there. I’d also be curious to learn about the German government’s thinking on Ukrainian vs Afghan refugees — I wonder if I could get a source from BAMF, the Federal office overseeing migrants and refugees. (I already have leads from Deb for two people who have an understanding of the situation on the ground, which should give me somewhere to start on this idea once I’m in Berlin.)

Another good place to go might be Tegel Airport, which still seems to be the site of Ukrainian refugee processing. (Interestingly enough, at Tegel, Ukrainian refugees are sent to different federal states, but trans refugees are specifically kept in Berlin — I’m curious about why.) I also wonder if any Afghan refugees are still trickling into Berlin — I sort of doubt it, but I think I could ask around about that, too.

Finally, if there are community centers for Afghan people, I think it would be worthwhile to make a visit and see if I could just do interviews with anybody there.

As for Princeton people to talk to, I have contact with Ambassador Raz (the former Afghan ambassador to the U.S., who’s now at the Afghan Policy Lab housed in the University) and Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, the founding director of the Liechtenstein Institute of Self-Determination — he’s worked extensively on Afghanistan issues and he’s been great to talk to. There’s also Wahid Wafa, of course. Since I haven’t written about Ukrainian refugees yet, I’m less sure of who to speak to for that topic, so I’d appreciate any help on that front.

If my idea about the relationship between Ukrainian and Afghan refugees doesn’t work out, I could also consider going to Hamburg (also known as little Kabul) to try and report on that community. I’m less eager to take that on, though, because that would involve six hours of travel in a single day. I’d also have to set up everything beforehand (to avoid wasting my time), and I’m not sure if I have a clear enough angle about Hamburg to justify the trip there.

I thought it was quite interesting that international criminal proceedings — especially war crimes prosecution — bears so many differences from U.S. domestic law. There is, of course, the difference of trying to actually prosecute war crimes, but I was also struck by how much public opinion matters for international  justice — the Forbes article mentioned that a primary Russian strategy to stave off a war crimes investigation is running a public misinformation campaign. As journalists, this difference is something worth paying attention to — jurors in a U.S. trial are specifically prohibited from reading news coverage, but it seems like the media actually has an active role to play in enabling (or not enabling) prosecution of war crimes.

But perhaps the biggest difference is the countless political considerations that factor into play. The Western world has strong political incentive to prosecute Russia for war crimes in Ukraine — but when political and legal considerations intersect (i.e. in other parts of the world), what happens? For example, there is documented evidence of human rights abuses in the Israel-Palestine conflict, but because the U.S. has historically been a strong supporter of Israel, I doubt any prosecutions are coming anytime soon. With that consideration in mind, I wonder if journalism organizations ought to report on international crime proceedings as judicial proceedings or simply political proceedings — I worry there’s some level of danger to obfuscating war crimes prosecution with, say, the Justice Department’s prosecution of a white-collar criminal because of the highly politicized nature of the former.

On a separate note, I think this type of OSINT provides an interesting counterpoint to the type of reporting we discussed a few weeks ago — the type of reporting that just involves a journalist wandering around a war-torn country and getting slice-of-life details. Although I noted the ethical problems that “drive-by reporting” poses, is OSINT necessarily a more ethical way of doing journalism? If it is more ethical (because it relies completely on open-source intelligence and doesn’t rely on perhaps biased perspectives), is it a more effective way of doing journalism? Does it provoke the same response among readers? What I’m getting at, I think, is whether the majority of newsreaders nowadays read to be informed or read to be entertained/emotionally provoked — so I’d be curious to learn which type of reporting (on-the-ground vs OSINT) is more commercially viable or gets more clicks online.

I’m also interested in the commercial model behind Bellingcat’s journalism; I checked on Bellingcat’s website and it says a significant chunk of their revenue come from private donations. Actually, this seems to be a wider trend in new journalism ventures; the Texas Tribune is another prominent example of a nonprofit newsroom that I can think of. I wonder if the source of funding behind a newsroom influences the editorial decisions it makes (despite the supposed business/editorial firewall all newsrooms profess to have); I’d be interested in learning whether financial constraints ever play a role in determining what gets investigated — does a newsroom like Bellingcat ever give up on an investigation because there aren’t enough funds, or will they specifically raise funds until an investigation/story can get completed? (The second option would imply that a newsroom specifically funds coverage story-by-story.)

I found Ben Taub’s story on Khaled al-Halabi (the Syrian intelligence official who “disappeared” in Europe) to be fascinating. This comment doesn’t have to do with the content of the piece, but as I was reading, I was amazed by the technical execution of the article, especially the structure — even though I thought I was getting lost amidst all the details and acronyms of the story (not to mention the multiple time jumps and chronological reorderings) the final flow of events made clear narrative sense to me. Another technical note: It was amazing that Taub got so far with his reporting despite Khaled al-Halabi declining to speak with him — it’s a feat worthy of Gay Talese. Also, the inclusion of the detail about Brunner was really interesting — in some way, the detail makes it clear that this is not a story about wrongdoings of officials in the Syrian regime, but the wrongdoings of officials throughout history. Incidentally, Taub asserts at the beginning of the article that “the Austrian [Brunner] was a monster; the Syrian [al-Halabi], by most accounts, is not,” but after reading about al-Halabi’s alleged war crimes (including the torture device in Raqqa), I found myself wondering whether that assertion is perhaps a little too simple.

As for the content itself, I found myself wondering what the purpose of the piece was. It doesn’t seem like a profile; for one, al-Halabi never makes an appearance (except maybe on the balcony in the final paragraph), and we as readers never reach any satisfactory conclusion over what type of person al-Halabi is. We also have no concrete information regarding his thought process behind certain key actions — from deciding to flee to Turkey to agreeing to work for the Mossad. But at the same time, Taub’s piece doesn’t seem like an investigation, either: We hear about all sorts of wrongdoing (most egregiously in the BVT), but even the title of the article (“How a Syrian War Criminal and Double Agent Disappeared in Europe”) makes it clear that this piece isn’t meant to be a type of watchdog-style exposé of corruption. (Plus, Taub’s piece is deeply entertaining in many sections — I chuckled when al-Halabi tried to claim French asylum on the grounds of his alcoholism and secularism.) Taub’s piece doesn’t even feel like the New Yorker article we read from last week, which followed a single Afghan women through years of turmoil; the Afghanistan piece’s purpose felt like it was to describe the evolution of a country through a single vantage point, whereas Taub’s article never felt like it had any concrete narrative it wanted to tell — except to recount a crazy, John le Carré-esque saga, a là Isn’t this a wild story? The most substantial argument that Taub advances is regarding international criminal proceedings — he points out that al-Halabi (among other Syrian officials) have largely escaped prosecution, even in Europe.

All of this brings me to wonder — how (and why) did Taub begin reporting on this story in the first place? Also, was locating al-Halabi important for technical reasons (to interview him and flesh out the story) or important for narrative reasons (so readers could learn what had happened to him)?

There’s one quote from the New York Times investigation on U.S. drone strikes that has stuck with me after reading — “Publishing a military document only allows you to see through its eyes in the sky — and from everything I had now learned through my years of reporting on America’s air war, that view alone is usually a dangerous one.” I thought this description of the reporter’s methodology succinctly sums up the value that on-the-ground journalism can offer, but I also think there’s an interesting moral question here: The U.S. government necessarily operates with “eyes in the sky” — the Pentagon and similar actors are focused on preserving American interests on the global level of geopolitics, and therefore very infrequently stoop down to showing concern over the life-and-death situations of individual, ordinary people. This is not just true in the Middle East, but in places like Ukraine (and maybe Taiwan soon, too) — the government will usually operate with some level of realpolitik that eschews our ideological values (concern about human rights, etc) in favor of pragmatic, strategic interests. The only way we’re reminded about individual stories on the ground — especially when they concern human rights abuses — is through the work of journalists.

But when journalists do expose what conditions are like on the ground, I wonder what our response should be as the audience. For other types of investigative reporting — child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, for instance, or officials mismanaging the Flint water crisis — there’s often a clear policy response and remedy that public officials are subsequently pressured into enacting. But when it comes to the U.S. government’s actions, especially when it comes to national security and foreign policy matters, there seems to be little recourse except for us as readers to express our horror, make small fixes, and continue the same policies as before for the sake of pragmatic interests. Which is all to ask — should journalists in situations like these play a role not just in exposing issues, but also discussing solutions?

On a separate note, I was blown away by the New Yorker article — the framing device of focusing on a single character through a very long saga made the story much more compelling than jumping around between characters or simply telling the story from the perspective of the various actors involved in Afghanistan (U.S. government, Taliban, etc). One detail that jumped out at me was this paragraph: “After the [U.S.-led ]bombing, Mohammad’s brother travelled to Kandahar to report the massacres to the United Nations and to the Afghan government. When no justice was forthcoming, he joined the Taliban” — that one detail explains much better than any policy exposition or geopolitical analysis why America’s presence in Afghanistan was ultimately so unsuccessful.

For better or worse, the New Yorker article humanizes the Taliban. Rather than framing the group as terrorists and jihadists, Gopal describes how the Talibs, in many cases, are just normal Afghans who don’t define their identity as Talibans, but as farmers or religious students. As difficult as it is to read about the normal lives of people who believe in repressing women’s rights — among other terrible things — I’m glad it’s something Gopal offers up for our consideration.

To start, I was struck by the mundane — and oftentimes comic — details that everyone from Katia (from “The Other Front Lines”) to Lindsey Hilsum (from “Letters from Ukraine”) mentioned in their narratives. These details are especially jarring while juxtaposed against everything else happening in Katia and Hilsum’s lives: Katia talks about simultaneously worrying over her dog peeing and tanks outside; Hilsum describes receiving tulips on International Women’s Day from soldiers risking their lives on the battlefield and having to think about sleeping and eating, even during war. Other details simply register as bleakly poignant: Hilsum spots a poster for the (now presumably canceled) Odesa Jazz and Oysters Festival.

Like other blog posts have mentioned, I recognize that the inclusion of these types of details are meant to humanize Ukrainians and show how they’re not so different from us — but why exactly do details like the Odesa Jazz and Oysters Festival make us feel poignant? The inclusion of certain details — without further explanation or exploration — invites us Western readers to feel a certain way (i.e. the Odesa Jazz and Oysters Festival signals how Odesa is a relatively wealthy place with Western(-ish) practices, so it’s tragic to us that the event was disrupted by war), but is this how Ukrainians actually feel? Are we implicitly making too large of an assumption here based off a single detail? Especially when it comes to longform/magazine journalism, I think writers tend to hunt for certain, “literary” details that they feel will act as a metaphor for a larger idea, but I just wonder whether this type of detail-hunting can go too far and distort a story too much (not saying that the Odesa Festival detail goes too far — but just an example).

Uma also mentioned the ethical quandaries that arise from international correspondents’ actions; I agree that some part of what foreign correspondents do — visit a war-torn country, interview traumatized people, then fly out in a few days to return to their cozy lives across the world — feels uneasily wrong. I have two things to add to her comments: First, as Uma mentions, in many parts of the world (I’m thinking especially of within authoritarian regimes), only journalists who hold Western passports and have the support of American/Western news organizations can safely report on sensitive topics without fearing for their personal safety. Even then, however, foreign correspondents’ work involves working with, and possibly endangering, local sources. For example, let’s say a dissident network in an authoritarian country is helping improve locals’ lives — do we as foreign reporters have an obligation to report on the network? To not report on it?

Second, the type of oral history that Katia (among others on “The Other Front Lines”) provides offers deep insights into life on the ground in a war zone without necessarily involving a foreign correspondent — it could indeed be a model for citizen journalism. But as Frank Langfitt mentioned last week, journalists have experience fact-checking everything — although journalists shouldn’t be relied upon to report objectively, good journalists should still be relied upon to report factually. Within a war zone, maintaining that standard of accuracy might still remain uniquely under the purview of professional reporters.