Despite fleeing attacks in their homeland from the Taliban and alleged Islamic State militants, their quest for a safer life is being blocked at border after border in Europe — and no country along the route wants to take the blame. Serbia says it's blocking the Afghans after holding talks with Slovenia to the north and with Austria, which borders Slovenia and represents the end of the Balkan migrant route for those fleeing war, violence and economic hardship in the Mideast, Africa or Asia. A chain of deportations ... (is) taking place all the way down the Balkan land route," said U.N High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, adding that Afghans stranded between Macedonia and Greece are exposed to "abject conditions. While no Europeans officials are willing to say why the Afghans are not being allowed to travel through, it would be difficult to claim that they, as a group, no longer qualify for asylum because security has improved back home. "If they want to block the road, they should block (it) for all," declared Azizi, who says he was an interpreter for NATO forces in Afghanistan, not an occupation looked upon kindly by the Taliban. Karl-Heinz Grundboeck, her Austrian counterpart, also said his country remains open to all seeking asylum — as long as the number applying at its southern border does not exceed 80 people a day. At a meeting Monday in Vienna, regional interior and foreign ministers announced specific new border controls and warned that borders across Europe may close for all sooner or later. At a Serbian crossing point into Croatia, from where migrants are taken by train to the Slovenian border, refugee agency field worker Giorgi Sanikidze said the regulations for who could come in are changing "on a daily basis."
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