Dobrindt negotiates with the Taliban: Deportations to Afghanistan planned!

Dobrindt negotiates with the Taliban: Deportations to Afghanistan planned!

Afghanistan - The German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt plans to lead direct negotiations with the Taliban in Afghanistan. These conversations are intended to facilitate the deportation of Afghan criminals from Germany. Austria's Interior Minister Gerhard Karner supports this plan and demands that deportations to Afghanistan are again possible at the EU level. The Federal Austrian Office for Foreign Affairs and Asylum (BFA) has already contacted Afghan authorities at the end of last year to support these processes. According to Dobrindt, contacts with the Taliban have so far only been through third parties, and he emphasizes that a permanent solution is not acceptable.

The situation in Afghanistan is tense. Since the return of the Taliban to power in the summer of 2021, international help has decreased drastically. Afghanistan is considered one of the poorest countries in the world, in which women in particular are very discriminated against and have little prospect of work. Dobrindt states that there were no deportations to Afghanistan until the Taliban seizure the Taliban seized. An exception was a return of 28 criminals in August 2022 with the support of Katar. The top leader of the Taliban, Hibatullah Akhundzada, directs the country's fortunes.

Austrian and German strategies

The political projects of Dobrindt not only include Afghanistan. He also plans to make agreements to withdraw citizens with the Syrian government. After a civil war, this was redesigned among Islamist power guards, and Dobrindt's predecessor Nancy Faeser has already visited Damascus to have talks with the new rulers. Austria also plans concrete steps for the training of security forces and the implementation of return and deportations to Syria.

A central concern of Dobrindt is to reduce the annual number of refugees. He criticizes the currently defined upper limit of 200,000 refugees per year. In the past two years, around 600,000 asylum applications have been made, to which around 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees were added.

criticism of deportations and legal situation

However, the federal government is under pressure. Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International have already expressed concerns that deportations to Afghanistan violate international law obligations. Julia Duchrow, General Secretary of Amnesty International in Germany, described these measures as "show policy" and warned that the security situation in Afghanistan was critical. Reports of extrajudicial executions as well as torture and declining of people in Afghanistan increase these concerns.
In addition, the Federal Government could make the accomplice of the Taliban if it actually implemented the deportations.