Wednesday, December 29, 2021
After a change of power in Afghanistan
Germany grants visas to 5,600 local employees
After 20 years of fighting the Taliban, the terrorist group will regain power in Afghanistan in August. The withdrawal of US and NATO troops has made numerous aid workers vulnerable. Germany is issuing visas to thousands of former local workers.
According to a report, since the radical Islamic Taliban came to power in Kabul, German diplomatic missions in the region have issued more than 5,600 visas for local workers and particularly vulnerable people from Afghanistan. The newspapers of the Funke media group reported, citing the Foreign Office, that the embassy in the Pakistani capital Islamabad alone has so far approved 3,700 applications. The embassies in Islamabad and New Delhi in India issued around 1,100 visas in the area of family reunification.
The Taliban had taken power in Afghanistan in August after 20 years of fighting against the government backed by the US and NATO troops. During the hasty withdrawal of the Bundeswehr and other German institutions, thousands of local aid workers were left behind in the country. The German government is trying to get them to leave because many of them fear acts of revenge by the Taliban.
Before Christmas, the German government announced that it wanted to accelerate the evacuation of particularly vulnerable people from Afghanistan. For this purpose, bureaucratic hurdles in issuing visas are to be removed, as Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said. There are still 15,000 people in Afghanistan that Germany has agreed to accept. Among them are 135 German nationals.
Human rights defenders, for example, but also former Afghan local staff from the Bundeswehr, the Federal Foreign Office or the Ministry of Development are particularly in need of protection. “You are not forgotten,” said Baerbock. “We are working flat out to get everyone to safety.” So far, the federal government has brought around 10,000 people to safety in Afghanistan since the Taliban came to power, 5300 of whom were flown out by the federal government.