OP-ED: Collaborating with the Taliban regime in the name of “administrative” matters?

By Mehdi Kassou

I was deeply surprised, while reading the press this weekend, to discover that Belgium had, through Freddy Roosemont, Director General of the Immigration Office, taken part – on behalf of a group of around twenty European Union member states – in negotiations held last week with the Taliban regime. Officially presented as a simple “administrative fact-finding mission,” the initiative in fact consisted of travelling to Kabul to negotiate directly with the Taliban the possibility of expelling Afghan nationals, variously described as people “with criminal records” or as “undocumented migrants.”

Belgium would therefore now be negotiating openly with the Taliban, and the competent minister, Anneleen Vanbossuyt (N‑VA), would even have been, according to Het Laatste Nieuws, the driving force behind this mission organised under the auspices of the European Commission. This is information one might have expected to trigger a political shock, dominate national headlines, provoke widespread indignation and mobilise parliamentary oversight and/or opposition. Yet, at the time of writing, nothing of the sort has occurred.

The news has slipped by almost unnoticed, wrapped in carefully chosen language designed to neutralise public debate and defuse any ethical, deontological or political questioning. Presented as a mere “administrative mission,” it is said to aim at reviving so-called “technical” co-operation with the Afghan authorities on identification, with a view to returns described as voluntary or forced. Behind this alleged technicality, however, lies a political choice with far-reaching consequences – namely, accepting, assuming and normalising functional and operational co-operation with a regime responsible for massive, systematic and well-documented human rights violations.

Describing this approach as “administrative” amounts to a dangerous fiction. Administration is never neutral when it involves identifying people, classifying them and producing decisions that determine their future, their freedom and sometimes their survival. Entrusting – even indirectly – this identification to the ministries and intelligence services of an authoritarian, theocratic and non-democratic regime is tantamount to granting it operational legitimacy and assigning it an active role in the management of human lives – lives that had fled that very regime in order to survive.

This logic is not new in Belgium. As early as 2017, under the authority of Theo Francken, an official Sudanese delegation, including members of the intelligence services of a regime led by Omar al-Bashir –  then subject to arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity – was invited to Brussels to identify Sudanese nationals for the purpose of expulsion.

That co-operation sparked legitimate outrage, led to deportations followed by credible allegations of ill-treatment, and resulted in Belgium being condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for violating the principle of non-refoulement. Presenting the Afghan initiative today as a simple technical operation amounts to deliberately ignoring the lessons of a precedent already heavy with human and legal consequences.

The linguistic precautions taken, or statements asserting a lack of “affinity” with those in power in Kabul, are therefore of little relevance. One does not collaborate with an apartheid regime, just as one did not innocently collaborate yesterday with a regime accused of crimes against humanity, because such cooperation entails full political and moral responsibility.

The argument that women and minors would not be forcibly returned is not sufficient to allay concerns. The principle of non-refoulement is not limited to the final act of removal; it covers any preparatory action likely to expose a person to a real risk of persecution, including identification by the authorities of the country of origin. The Sudanese case demonstrated this clearly: the danger begins long before boarding a plane.

The rhetoric used to justify this co-operation is itself deeply troubling. Prioritising cases of “illegal criminals” fuels confusion between administrative status and criminal offence, entrenches lasting stigmatisation and prepares public opinion to accept exceptional policies. This drift is neither new nor trivial; it is part of a broader dynamic, now openly embraced by the Trump administration and by parts of the European far right, which normalise migration brutality in the name of so-called common sense.

What is at stake here goes far beyond the Afghan case alone. It represents another step in a global movement towards the hardening and outsourcing of migration control to some of the most repressive regimes in the world. Taliban-ruled Afghanistan has not changed. What has changed, however, is our collective threshold of tolerance and the ease with which lines once deemed uncrossable become negotiable in the name of political realism.

For the way in which we collectively agree to treat human beings – and with whom we agree to do so – will always say something fundamental about the true state of our democracy and the liberal values it still claims to embody, especially when these are tested by fear, withdrawal into oneself and authoritarian temptation.

Mehdi Kassou is Director of BelRefugees.

This op-ed was originally published in Le Soir newspaper on 28 January.