In Search Of Refuge: The Story Of Jawad From Kandahar

This Christmas Day is different for Jawad, 27. He is at last united with his young wife and daughter under the same roof and they have enough food on the plate. This is the best present that this Afghan could have received this holiday season.

After all Jawad has been on the run ever since he was able to tell his left hand from his right one. But for the past three months he has found refuge in a camp in the Austrian capital Vienna with wife Nabia, 26 and one year old daughter Shahbano by his side.

“This is perhaps the longest that I have stayed in one place,” says this furniture designer from Kandahar, Afghanistan who has been deported countless times out of one European country after another. He dreams of finding asylum in Austria now.

“All that I want is a single room any where in the world but which is safe for me and my family. I would live in Afghanistan only if it was not such a dangerous place for human beings today,” says Jawad whose father was a senior police official killed by the Taliban. After that tragic incident his older brother made it to England while his mother fled to Iran with Jawad and his younger brother. Soon after the mother died at the age of 47 years.

Then Jawad was forced to journey across the Mediterranean Sea with other refugees to Greece. Once in Europe he hoped to meet his older brother in England. In the meanwhile the younger brother left behind in Iran disappeared and many out of the thousands who dared to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe perished before his eyes.

Jawad did make it to England but was soon deported back to Greece. He tried to live in Italy but could not. Finally he found his way to a refugee camp in southern Hungary from where he joined a flood of other refugees on a four hour train journey into Austria last September.

Jawad is only one out of a steady flow of people fleeing war and poverty mostly in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. He is at present in a refugee camp in Vienna that is supported by Caritas, an international charity organisation even as right wing politicians continue to protest against the hosting of refugees here, suspicious of especially Muslim refugees in a Catholic country.

Out of about 250 refugees, 35 are from Afghanistan in this camp.

“The making and selling of arms fire these conflicts. This must be stopped,” a Caritas volunteer said in the midst of a colourful Christmas celebration organised here also with the help of ordinary citizens for human beings in distress.

Caritas in Latin means love and this is what the good people of Vienna are challenging themselves to practice today. Many have opened their heart and homes to refugees and migrants who snake their way here through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary.

“The refugees are not a problem but my own humanity is at stake today. What is it that we can collectively do or not do for other human beings so desperately in need, is the question,” says Elisabeth Penzias, journalist and art historian who is working round the clock to find clothes, food, medical help and homes for as many asylum seekers as possible.

The refugee problem has divided Europe like never before. There is no unity in Europe regarding the crisis of refugees. Austria, Germany and Sweden are sympathetic while Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi feels that Italy has already done its share for refugees.

Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann expressed disappointment at the response of Hungary and those Eastern European countries unwilling to share the burden of taking care of those who have less.

“It is one and the same European Union. In the past, it was about addressing economic and social inequality. Now it is about humanitarian inequality. Germany and Austria, after all, have been showing solidarity for years -- both countries are net payers (meaning they pay more into the EU than they got back in subsidies). In order to cope with the movement of refugees we need penalties against those who violate principles of solidarity,” Faymann told Der Spiegel, Germany's top news magazine.

Hungary responded to Feymann's comment as "mindless slander" that is "unworthy of a 21st century politician.

According to the United Nations, the arrival of refugees in Europe crossed one million in 2015. Today refugees use road, railway and sea transport to arrive in affluent Europe where markets never sleep and are over flowing with goods. However in the scramble for safety and security the flood of refugees sometimes faces tragedy.

Last August 71 refugees suffocated to death in a lorry abandoned in Austria and out of the 150,000 refugees who crossed the Mediterranean into Europe today, more than 1,900 of them died. But that was yesterday. Today Jawad is happy to have escaped also the ethnic rivalry in Afghanistan. He, a Tajik dances with his wife, a Hazara as both flee the wrath of many Pashtun in his country.

“In Vienna so far away from home I feel just like another human being sharing the same troubles as my Syrian and Iraqi friends here who are Arab,” ends Jawad hugging his daughter a little more closer.