These Afghan sex attacks cannot be ignored

What role are Afghan nationals playing in the recent spate of sexual offences carried out by illegal male migrants? This question is becoming more urgent than ever, with polling showing that most Britons now believe that the small-boats crisis poses a serious threat to the safety of women and girls.

We should guard against sweeping generalisations about entire nations. Afghanistan, after all, is an incredibly diverse country. But there are hard realities and identifiable trends that can no longer be ignored. According to the Georgetown Institute’s Women, Peace and Security Index, Afghanistan ranks bottom out of 181 countries on almost every measure of women’s wellbeing, from the threat of partner violence to gender-based political persecution and general women’s safety.

It does seem as if some Afghan nationals now in the UK have brought their society’s deeply misogynistic attitudes with them. Earlier this year, the Telegraph published data drawn from the police national computer which showed that Afghan nationals were more than 20 times more likely to account for sexual-offence convictions than British citizens across England and Wales. In fact, on this metric, Afghan nationals have the highest rate of sex offending among all nationalities.

Little wonder, then, that over the past year or so, there has been a string of harrowing sexual-violence cases in the UK involving Afghan nationals. Just this month, two Afghan 17-year-olds, Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal, were jailed over the rape of a 15-year-old girl in the Warwickshire town of Leamington Spa. Ahead of the sentencing, Warwick Crown Court heard an impact statement on behalf of the victim in which she said: ‘The day I was raped changed me as a person. Now every time I go out I don’t feel safe.’

The sentencing of Jahanzeb and Niazal came on the back of a guilty plea submitted by 23-year-old Afghan national Ahmad Mulakhil – also at Warwick Crown Court. He admitted to one count of raping a child under the age of 13 in Nuneaton, a town also in the county of Warwickshire. He appeared alongside co-defendant Mohammad Kabir, a fellow 23-year-old Afghan national – he denied attempting to take a child, aiding and abetting rape of a child under 13, and intentional strangulation.

In Falkirk, in Scotland, an Afghan national who entered the UK illegally on a small boat raped a 15-year-old schoolgirl. He was sentenced to nine years in jail earlier this year. What made this particular attack even more shocking was that it unfolded during daylight in a busy town centre. Sadeq Nikzad sought to defend himself by citing language barriers and cultural differences between Afghanistan and the UK – the differences cited involved child marriage being a common custom in his homeland of Afghanistan.

It is clear that the small-boats emergency and the UK’s dysfunctional asylum system pose a threat to the safety of women and girls. It is also clear that this threat is related to the arrival of young and young-ish unattached males originating from relatively violent and misogynistic societies, such as Afghanistan. It is not racist and xenophobic to point this out. There is nothing progressive about turning a blind eye.

Rakib Ehsan is the author of Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong about Ethnic Minorities, which is available to order on Amazon.