“Go to Basel and you will find your way”

swissinfo.ch

With his stylish clothes and thin, carefully manicured beard, Nawid Karim might be a university student or perhaps the son of a diplomat in Switzerland's capital.

Instead he is starting over. The 20 year old recounts his upbringing in Afghanistan, the quick beginning and end of a journalism career and the moment that forced him to leave everything behind.

“It’s really hard for me. I really miss the voice of my mother,” he says. He speaks of the past in deliberate English, occasionally punctuated with the German he has learned in the nine months that have passed since he arrived in Switzerland as an asylum seeker.

“My grandfather was very famous, and after that my father. They’re rich and they have connections,” he says of his family, with which he no longer has contact.

After developing political enemies at an unusually young age and converting to Christianity, Karim fled the country. His fate now lies in the hands of Switzerland’s immigration officials.

The Federal Migration Office, which is in charge of handling Karim’s file, said it does not comment on individual cases.

“Cases are processed according to an internal priority list,” spokeswoman Marie Avet wrote in an email. “Asylum seekers whose lives are at risk are not returned to their original country.”

In 2008, the Migration Office received 405 applications for asylum from Afghans. It granted asylum to 21 and subsidiary protection to a further 88.

Rules

As a boy Karim did not like rules. “When I was a child, my parents sometimes told me that I was a little different from the other children around me. I was more quiet and sometimes I did things they did not wish I would do.”

He recalls playing foil to the family circumciser. “When the doctor came to do this to my cousin, I did not know what he was going to do. When I saw the knife, I picked it up and chased the doctor.” He chuckles.

Apart from a year spent studying in Pakistan, he had seen nothing of the world. “It was a closed society. I didn’t visit Europe and I didn’t have any plans to leave my country.”

The restaurants and hotels of Karim’s grandfather had bequeathed the family a fortune and an unusually high standard of living in war-ravaged Afghanistan. “If a family is famous or rich, they have more focus on their child, so they don’t let her or him go outside the house.”

His father spent many of Karim’s formative years as a businessman in Russia and pushed him to attend business school. But the young Karim enrolled in a journalism course instead.

He was quickly recruited by a television network and assigned to hosting a children’s television programme.

His superiors had other things in mind. “After working one year in television, they requested me to do the Islam and politics programme because I have the best voice in Persian, especially in Dari,” he told swissinfo.ch. He also speaks Pashto.

Conversion

“When I didn’t accept this programme, I had to leave the station,” he said. He did not mention that he had left Islam for Christianity. The decision was made after reading a book about world religions.

“I told them I was a free person. I am always free.” He was 18 years old.

Karim was baptised several months ago by an evangelical church in Bern. “It was a day I cannot forget,” he said. He describes the decision as both a blessing and a burden; there are rumours in the mosques that one Afghan converted.

Karim has been questioned while playing football with other Afghans. He changes the subject.

In 2006, Abdul Rahman, an Afghan citizen, faced execution after converting. The country’s constitution provides limited freedom of religion but the penalty for apostasy is death. Rahman was granted asylum in Italy.

Karim has difficulty imaging life in Afghanistan without having to suppress his beliefs or placing his family in further danger.

Members of his extended family had already been threatened by armed Pashtun gunmen several years ago, leading to the death of an uncle.

Politics

Karim tried his hand at political organising and became associated with an opposition party, one of the country’s largest, laying the groundwork for what would become the country’s disputed presidential elections that took place in mid-August.

Months later, there were troubles within the party. Some members quit and Karim says he was expected to follow. He didn’t.

Karim was taken near the northern city of Mazir-i-Sharif. “It was quite a big car. People called me and I approached the car. I thought he was going to ask me for some information or for an address. They very quickly opened the door and three people at the back of the car pulled me inside.”

Three days later, he was released without explanation. “Why I became free and why they didn’t cut my hand or punish me too much, I don’t know.”

His father later mentioned in passing that he didn’t want to pay a second ransom. Karim was not told where to go by his father but just to leave.

“I had 24 hours to make a decision to leave Afghanistan and leave this family,” he said. “I said that I was angry to leave.” He has a sister aged seven, a brother of 11 and an older brother.

He was handed to a smuggler, who had forged his papers, and crossed into eastern Iran by car. “On my visa, I found that my name was something else,” he says with shame. The trip to the Islamic Republic’s western frontier took roughly a week.

Through Turkey

Karim joined other refugees in the city of Urmia and they entered on foot through the mountains on Turkey’s eastern border. They stopped at Gawar, a Kurdish city, before heading to Van, taking care to avoid police stations.

It took several weeks until he reached Istanbul, where the travelling became easier. “I wasn’t very free but I could travel by bus,” he said.

From Istanbul, another man placed him inside a shipping container bound for Bari, a port on Italy’s southern Adriatic coast. Travelling by container ship is phenomenally risky.

“They have water and a piece of bread,” Karim said. Up to 70 people fit in a standard-sized container but Karim was alone. He estimates the trip cost his family $15,000 (SFr15,500).

After two days, he arrived. The container was driven two hours outside of the city and he was unloaded. He was passed off to another smuggler, a Pashto- and Urdu-speaker with an Italian passport.

The man provided Karim with a change of clothing and an order to head north. “I chose Switzerland because there are not many Afghans here,” he said.

The instructions were simple: get on the train, act normally, keep your headphones on and show your ticket when the conductor comes. “Go to Basel,” the smuggler said. “And you will find your way.”

Justin Häne, swissinfo.ch

Nawid Karim’s name and minor details of his story have been changed for the protection of his family.

Immigration

Karim arrived at the Basel train station on December 20, 2008.

He asked an African man where the asylum centre was. The man was heading there himself and they went together.

“When I arrived there, I found there were a lot of asylum-seekers. I found that there were lots of people that like me, were leaving their countries.”

“Their eyes were saying they had lots of problems. Their eyes were very tired, these people.”

Karim has been granted an N residence permit by immigration authorities while his asylum application is being processed.

Without infraction, asylum-seekers are allowed to be employed three months after they are granted the N permit.

Karim says that the permit makes it difficult to find a proper job and impossible to attend university. He believes it will be years until he receives a different permit.

The Migration Office told swissinfo.ch it does not process a case faster so that asylum-seekers can gain employment.

“The wait time differs from case to case and depends on the complexity of each individual case,” it wrote.

Afghan applications

New applications
2008: 405
2009: 454 (as of Sept. 17)

Asylum granted
2008: 21
2009: 9

Subsidiary protection
2008: 88
2009: 102

Subsidiary protection is granted for people who have not received asylum but who would be in danger if returned to their former countries.

Their cases are reviewed periodically.