Scholz announcement in the Bundestag
Deportations to Afghanistan – how is that supposed to work?
By Hubertus Volmer
06.06.2024, 14:18
After the murder of a police officer by an Afghan, Chancellor Scholz is calling for deportations to Afghanistan as well. He does not explain how this will work. The CDU/CSU and the Greens are skeptical – for very different reasons.
In his government statement in the Bundestag, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised to deport criminals to Syria and Afghanistan. Referring to the knife attack in Mannheim in which a 29-year-old policeman was killed, he said: “It outrages me when someone who has sought protection here commits the most serious crimes. Such criminals should be deported, even if they come from Syria or Afghanistan.”
Union parliamentary group leader Friedrich Merz and CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt took up this point, but also showed that they do not believe the announcements. “The time for warning and condemning, for downplaying and making announcements is now over,” said Merz. “People expect us to act.” Dobrindt predicted to the Chancellor that “with these Greens” he would “not be able to get any deportations to Afghanistan done, because they simply don’t want it.”
Scholz had said that Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser was looking for “legally and practically viable ways” to enable the deportation of criminals and dangerous individuals to Afghanistan. “The Federal Ministry is already in talks with Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries about the practical implementation.”
“That’s not that easy”
Scholz did not say what these paths might look like. Merz accused the Chancellor of claiming that there were no contacts in Afghanistan. However, development aid was being discussed with “technical contacts”. “Why can’t ‘technical contacts’ also be used to facilitate repatriations to Afghanistan?” he asked.
In fact, the Greens, as Dobrindt had announced, were skeptical in the debate. The legal situation is that once a certain sentence has been served, one loses the right to stay in Germany, said Green Party leader Omid Nouripour. However, it is “not so easy to deport people to Afghanistan” and one should not create any illusions. It is also not true that Germany is providing development cooperation with Afghanistan. What it is providing is humanitarian aid under international supervision.
According to Nouripour, deportations to Afghanistan would require recognition of the government there – which would be a significant change of course: the majority of countries worldwide, including all Western countries, do not recognize the Taliban as the legitimate Afghan government. Nouripour said that recognition of the “stone age Islamists” in Afghanistan would be “a gigantic international tailwind for these barbarians.”
Anyone who glorifies terror should be able to be deported
Green Party leader Britta Haßelmann stressed that the coalition had already tightened some deportation regulations, “and I now expect the states to implement them.” She did not reject deportations to Afghanistan outright, but she doubted that they were possible: “The Federal Ministry of the Interior and the state interior ministries will have to explain how this should work.” The question is how to talk about the issue of the “terrorist system” in Afghanistan. And “which third country should be attractive for taking in terrorists or serious criminals.” She is curious about the answers, but they will not be easy.
At the same time, it became clear in the debate that the Greens are in the minority with their scepticism in the traffic light coalition. FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr demanded that the “deportation of Islamist criminals to Afghanistan and Syria must be made possible.” Anyone who commits Islamist crimes apparently does not need protection from Islamist regimes, he added, referring to the Taliban.
Tightening of the rules is also to take place independently of new deportation regulations. Scholz said that it should no longer be tolerated “when terrorist crimes are glorified and celebrated”. The federal government will tighten the deportation rules so that approval of terrorist crimes will result in a serious interest in deportation. “Anyone who glorifies terrorism is going against all of our values and should be deported.”