PARIS: Europe’s largest nations have displaced more than 9,000 Afghans from their country in recent weeks and predict the possibility of hundreds more thousands arriving, in what would be a major test of the region’s ability to absorb another wave. of immigrants from the Muslim world.
Officials are determined to avoid a repeat of the chaos of the last major wave of migrants in 2015, when more than 1.3 million people from Syria, Afghanistan and other nations poured into Europe, fueling social unrest and politicians across the continent.
A central challenge for the authorities is to quickly and effectively examine newcomers who come from a conflict zone controlled by Taliban forces hostile to the West and where Islamist terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State operate. Many do not have passports or other reliable identification documents.
There have already been problems. French and German authorities said this week that they had marked several evacuees as security risks, and France put five of them under surveillance.
A greater challenge is posed, as Afghans traveling by land routes are expected to arrive on the continent in numbers that officials expect to be much larger.