EU invites Taliban to Brussels on deportations, angering rights groups

The workers who carry the burdens of displacement, who flee violence and poverty only to find themselves treated as cargo to be returned to the very dangers they escaped, have a fundamental interest in safety and dignity. The decision being made in Brussels does not include their voice. It should.

I look upon this news with a heavy heart, not because I am surprised by the duplicity of the powerful, but because I am reminded of how easily the mask of “order” is used to hide the machinery of oppression. The European Commission, representing the interests of capital and state stability in Europe, has invited officials of the Taliban to discuss the deportation of migrants. To the casual observer, this may appear as a matter of diplomatic procedure, a cold calculation of borders and treaties. But to the worker, to the man who knows that his livelihood depends on the solidarity of his fellow laborers, this is a profound betrayal of the human spirit. It is a signal that the state cares more for the comfort of the wealthy than for the lives of the poor.

We must ask ourselves: who benefits from this arrangement? The answer is clear. The ruling classes of Europe benefit. They seek to manage the flow of labor, to keep wages low by threatening the immigrant worker with expulsion, and to maintain the illusion of control over their borders. They benefit from the division of the working class. When the native-born worker is pitted against the migrant worker, when the fear of the “other” is stoked by the state, the true enemy - the exploitation of labor by capital - is obscured. The Taliban, for their part, benefit from the legitimacy that comes with being treated as a partner in governance, regardless of their record on human rights. But the cost is borne by the migrant, the asylum seeker, and indeed, by every worker whose rights are eroded by the normalization of authoritarianism.

This is not merely a moral failing; it is a strategic error for the working class. Solidarity is not a sentiment; it is a practical necessity. If we allow the state to treat human beings as commodities to be shipped back and forth like sacks of grain, we undermine the very foundation of our collective power. The worker who is deported today is the worker who might have organized a strike tomorrow. The asylum seeker who is turned away is the person who might have joined a union and strengthened our ranks. By dividing us, by creating a class of disposable people, the state weakens us all.

I have spent my life fighting for the rights of workers, and I have seen how the state uses the law to protect property rather than people. In my time, the federal troops were sent to break strikes, to protect the railroads from the men who built them. Today, the same logic applies. The European Commission is acting to protect the social order, which is an order built on the exploitation of labor. They do not care about the Taliban’s treatment of women or their suppression of dissent; they care about the return of migrants to a system that can be controlled. This is the arithmetic of power: whose life is valued, and whose is not?

We must reject this false choice between security and humanity. There is no security in a system that relies on the oppression of the vulnerable. True security comes from solidarity, from the recognition that we are all in this together. The worker in Brussels and the migrant in Afghanistan are bound by the same chains of capital and state power. To invite the Taliban to Brussels is to invite the devil to dinner, hoping that he will behave because he is wearing a suit. It is a deception that serves only the interests of the powerful.

What would it look like if the workers of Europe acted together? If they recognized that their fate is tied to the fate of the migrant, if they refused to accept the division that the state seeks to impose? They would demand an end to deportations, an end to the criminalization of poverty, and an end to the collaboration with regimes that violate human rights. They would build a movement that transcends borders, a movement that says: we are all workers, and we will not be divided.

This is the lesson of history. The state is not neutral. It is an instrument of class rule. When it invites the Taliban to Brussels, it is not acting as a guardian of human rights; it is acting as a guardian of the status quo. We must see through this. We must stand with the migrant, not because we are sentimental, but because we are wise. Our strength lies in our unity, and our unity is broken when we allow the state to treat some of us as less than human. Let us not be fooled by the language of diplomacy. Let us speak the language of solidarity.