US Airbase Ramstein (Germany) Turned Into A Refugee Camp
  • 3 years ago
A sea of tents sprawls over the US American airbase Ramstein (Germany, state of Rhineland-Palatinate) to host at least 20,000 Afghans; more likely 34,000 already. About a thousand arrivals land every day and the troops have moved a 5,000 of them to their nearby military base 'Rhine Ordnance Barracks.' The US works feverishly to expand its capacity there to host even 6,000 of them. And while many conservatives have dropped the ball in their obsession to exploit any failure of the Biden administration, the uneasy question who can be rescued, correctly identified and who can not remains unanswered. Commentator after commentator shows compassion with that 50% of women that will have to live under the Taliban despite the Pew Research finding that 99% of those very women want to live under shariah law. Everybody feels heartless asking how the other 1% can be identified so we don't import the very Taliban we once set out to fight. And now with the sprawling camp smack in the middle of Europe nobody knows how to get some of the "rescued" back home again.

sources:
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https://www.tichyseinblick.de/daili-es-sentials/manche-us-fluechtlinge-aus-afghanistan-bleiben-in-deutschland/
https://www.tichyseinblick.de/kolumnen/knauss-kontert/afghanen-in-ramstein-deutschland-hinter-der-fichte/
[about the Court of Justice ruling*]https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2021-09/europaeischer-gerichtshof-asylantrag-minderjaehrige-fluechtlinge-eltern-nachzug-urteil
https://www.bild.de/regional/hamburg/hamburg-aktuell/nordoestlich-von-hamburg-frau-23-in-ahrensburger-fluechtlingsheim-getoetet-77606234.bild.html
https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/charlottenburg-wilmersdorf/messer-attacke-auf-gaertnerin-afghane-29-zunaechst-schuldfaehig
[parliamentary correspondence on the number of army and foreign office cooperators 'Ortskraefte']https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/054/1905454.pdf

[thumb, Ramstein air base] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:C-130_and_Ramstein_AB_Control_Tower.jpg
maps:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4a/Deutschland_politisch_2010.png/620px-Deutschland_politisch_2010.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/56/Germany_in_the_European_Union_on_the_globe_%28Europe_centered%29.svg/620px-Germany_in_the_European_Union_on_the_globe_%28Europe_centered%29.svg.png

*CAVEAT: I didn't see an English source for the court ruling. ZEIT, a major German newspaper, does just write 'European court of justice' (europaeischer Gerichtshof) which could be wildly interpreted as any court in Europe. Without context, such as in this article, the expression is about the EU Court of Justice. But given that I cannot find an English source immediately chances are that ZEIT could have made a mistake.
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