Berlin – Following the rapid advance of the Islamist Taliban movement in Afghanistan, the federal government is running out of time with its planned rescue operation for German nationals and Afghan local Bundeswehr personnel. On Sunday, the Taliban effectively took over power in the capital Kabul.
Originally, Bundeswehr forces were supposed to fly to the Afghan capital on Monday to initiate evacuation measures. This has now been brought forward to Sunday night. Foreign Minister Heike Maas (SPD) announced in the evening that the German embassy staff had been relocated to a militarily secured area at Kabul Airport. They are to be flown out in the next few hours. This means that what is probably the largest evacuation operation by the German armed forces has started.
The opposition has sharply criticized the government’s behavior in the crisis. The foreign policy spokesman for the Green parliamentary group, Omid Nouripour, spoke of a “huge chain of mistakes” by the government, which had led to a complete misjudgment of the situation and thus to the current situation. “We spoke in the Foreign Affairs Committee for the first time in 2012 about the situation of the Afghan local staff,” Nouripour told the Berliner Zeitung on Sunday. The government has repeatedly assured that evacuations are being planned. “Instead, the government bury its head in the sand,” said Nouripour.
Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) in particular is accused of having apparently misjudged the situation by his ministry. As recently as June, he said he did not expect the Taliban to quickly gain the upper hand in Afghanistan. In the evening he announced that the Afghan local staff should also be flown out. “The circumstances under which this will happen are difficult to predict.”
The Foreign Office’s crisis team met on Friday to prepare the evacuations in a hurry.
It is completely unclear how many local Afghan workers who worked for the German armed forces and who now fear the Taliban’s revenge will be able to leave the country. There have been contradicting statements from the government in the past few days. The Federal Foreign Office described the accusation that the German authorities had refused the offer of the US government to fly out threatened local workers as a “duck”.
The Green MP Margarete Bause, on the other hand, published a different response from the Federal Ministry of the Interior on Sunday on August 5th. After that, the federal government “took note of” the information on the airlift. One is working “on options for further support of the prompt and situation-adapted departure of local staff”. Precautions have been taken to support local staff “in the context of independent departure, if necessary, by providing flight tickets”.
The opposition alleges that the government has not acted
“This government is over,” said FPD security politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann of the Berliner Zeitung on Sunday. She was “deeply depressed about the situation in Afghanistan”. The federal government has never publicly dealt with what will happen when the Allies leave the country. “It was always clear that the Bundeswehr would withdraw when the USA left the country.” The Bundestag has repeatedly called for an exit strategy to be in place for the case. But nothing happened. For the future, it must be clarified whether it makes sense to adhere to the principle of training and advice when deploying abroad if there is no “nation building” at the same time, Strack-Zimmermann added. “We learn in horror that the Afghan soldiers are not ready to defend their country.” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) declared the Afghanistan mission to have failed.
In general, a wave of refugees from the country is now expected. The red-red-green Berlin state government is ready to take in Afghans who are fleeing the Taliban. This offer initially refers to the local staff, said the spokesman for the interior senator, Martin Pallgen, of the Berliner Zeitung on Sunday. But Berlin is also ready to take in beyond that. He did not want to give concrete figures.
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