Afghan survivors of the English Channel shipwreck: ‘Either we make it to the UK or we die’

They spent two hours in the water, at dawn, without knowing how to swim. They say that they shouted for help, that they whistled very loudly, but that no one came. They were alone in the middle of the English Channel — the strait that separates France from the United Kingdom — until they were finally rescued.

On August 12, it was confirmed that at least six people had died in the shipwreck, the second-deadliest event in the Channel since November 2021. But even so, Afghan citizens Mohsin, Aref Amir, Hajjomid and Sadaqat will try again. They see no other option. While they wait to board another boat to the U.K., they hide among the trees on the outskirts of Calais — a port city in the north of France — along with hundreds of other migrants. They live in fear of being evicted by the police.

The French city has been synonymous with barbed wire, concrete walls, fences and high-tech cameras for several years now. Police patrols are common, taking place in the middle of the night and at unexpected checkpoints, inspecting the vehicles that head towards the local beaches. The city council — led since 2008 by Natacha Bouchart, of the right-wing Les Républicains — has even authorized the placement of hundreds of rocks around the town, to prevent the installation of tents. The objective is to avoid the setup of a new “Jungle,” a camp inhabited by 10,000 refugees before it was dismantled in 2016, and to stop irregular immigration to the United Kingdom through the Channel, one of the busiest maritime crossings in the world.

Today, the camps are smaller and more dispersed. NGOs have denounced that the police dismantle a camp every 48 hours. The harassment is constant. “[The police] didn’t come yesterday, so they’ll probably be here tomorrow,” anticipates Mohsin Zazai, a 24-year-old Afghan who has been in Calais for more than a month. His friends were in the boat that sank that Saturday. He lives with them in a tiny settlement, which can be reached via dirt roads and by jumping over a pool of greenish water. In the surroundings, police vans come and go at all times.

The current strategy is to further bolster the number and size of patrols. This past March, the British government promised to contribute more than 540 million euros ($583 million) over the course of three years to intensify controls. The NGOs working on the ground, however, consider this effort to be counterproductive.

“None of the implemented strategies work,” says Pierre Roques, coordinator of the Auberge des Migrants association. “The more the border is protected, the more indispensable the [human] traffickers become,” he explains. Another of the consequences, he points out, is that the exits from French soil are moving further and further south. Earlier in August, French rescuers saved 25 people from a drifting boat off the coast of Le Touquet, 44 miles south of Calais. From there, the journey is even more dangerous, since it lasts longer.

Mohsin, like his friends, arrived at a beach at night to get onto an inflatable boat. But he changed his mind when he saw the state it was in. However, 24-year-old Aref Amir decided to stick with his plan. He says that the boat had capacity for 40 people. “But we were more than 60,” he recalls. The young man is originally from Mazar-e Sarif, in northern Afghanistan. “The [person] who was [steering] the boat had no experience,” he continues. Those who offer to sail the boat usually get a more advantageous price for the journey. Mohsin and his friends paid between 1,500 and 2,000 euros each to risk their lives.

On board were two Sudanese nationals and two Iraqis, now indicted for their possible responsibility in the shipwreck, according to the prosecution. But most of the passengers were from Afghanistan, where the Taliban seized power in August 2021, following the abrupt withdrawal of American and allied troops. This takeover is one of the reasons why they emigrated. A relative of Mohsin, for example, was killed by the fundamentalists. Others say that they were policemen during the previous government and that they received threats after the Islamist group captured Kabul.

The objective, now, is to reach British territory by any means necessary, start a new life and leave behind the violence that accompanied the thousands of miles traveled. Sadaqat, a 17-year-old survivor of the shipwreck, shows EL PAÍS the wounds on his hand. At his side, Hajjomid, 21, assures this newspaper that his worst experience was in Bulgaria, where the security forces set dogs on him. They no longer want to look back.

“Either we get to the U.K. or we die,” they repeat, when asked if they will keep trying after the accident. Shipwrecks rarely discourage crossings. On August 16, four days after the drama, 444 migrants arrived at the shores of England in eight different boats, according to official figures.

Most of the migrants hoping to cross the English Channel are from Afghanistan and Sudan, a country at war. But there are also new arrivals from Albania, Syria, Lebanon, Guinea, Eritrea and Yemen. To reach Calais, many have had to cross the Mediterranean Sea, also by boat. And, while they know that the government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has toughened the British immigration policy, they see no other option. Since the closure of the port and the Eurotunnel terminal in 2018, more than 100,000 migrants have crossed the maritime corridor, according to figures from the British authorities. So far this year, there were almost 17,000 crossings. In 2022, there were 45,000 — much more than in the two previous years combined.

At the camp in Calais, Mohsin is now in charge of phone calls — he’s the only one who still has his mobile device. Every hour, he receives messages from family and friends of the other survivors, whose mobile phones were confiscated by the police. The Paris Prosecutor’s Office, which is in charge of conducting the investigation into those behind the shipwreck, tells EL PAÍS that this is standard procedure, as the phones can provide crucial information to help the authorities identify the traffickers.

In the group, which consists of about 15 people, there is a child under the age of 13. His uncle, who lives in London, calls him through Mohsin twice in just two hours. He’s worried; he asks his nephew to behave himself and to not smoke.

As night falls, the group builds a small bonfire and prepares a dish of rice with chickpeas. To drink, there is tea with milk and sugar. The food is distributed by the Calais Food Collective, a small NGO that also places large water tanks in different parts of the city. Recently, the organization accused the police of removing one of these tanks from the middle of the city center. Installing “any permanent infrastructure is impossible,” laments Chloé Magnan, 26, one of the team’s volunteers. Another volunteer, 23-year-old Fanny Donnaint, adds: “There’s no evolution. There’s always a police presence — our work [is always being] obstructed.”

Neither Mohsin nor Aref Amir nor Hajjomid nor Sadaqat know how long they will remain on the outskirts of Calais. For now, they try to make themselves comfortable. Next to some blue tents, they place a blanket on the grass to sit down. After a long silence, they say that they hope that the bodies of their friends — the six deceased Afghans — can return to their country of origin.

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