Saturday, November 13th, 2021
Escape from Afghanistan
Maas continues to negotiate with the Taliban
Many Afghans still want to leave the country after the Taliban took over again. Foreign Minister Maas will therefore not let the thread of talks with the radical Islamic new rulers in Kabul tear off.
The German government continues to negotiate with the radical Islamic Taliban government in Kabul about the departure of thousands of Afghans to Germany. “We are also talking to the Taliban because there are still many thousands of Afghans who have been accepted into Germany waiting to leave the country,” said Foreign Minister Heiko Maas of the Düsseldorf “Rheinische Post” and the Bonn “General-Anzeiger” .
Since the fall of Kabul and the end of the evacuation by air, the German government, in cooperation with the government in Islamabad, has brought more than 2,000 former local workers and human rights activists overland to Pakistan and from there to safety in Germany. Maas traveled to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan at the end of August in order to have the governments of these three countries open the borders for those Afghans to whom the German government stood up. However, crossing the border is still hardly possible in some cases.
“It doesn’t work equally well with everyone. It is extremely difficult in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan,” said Maas. According to the Foreign Minister, they have since started flying people out of Afghanistan on civil charter flights in order to speed up the process.
According to the US envoy to Afghanistan, Thomas West, the operation of Kabul airport in the upcoming winter has not yet been ensured. This threatened new difficulties for people who wanted to leave the country in the Hindu Kush. Many runway lights are damaged and not functional. Therefore, the few commercial flights take place only during the day and very irregularly and are associated with great financial and technical risks for the airlines.