Saturday 14 August 2021
Protection against revenge by the Taliban
Federal government plans major rescue operation in Afghanistan
The Taliban are advancing quickly on Kabul and want to take revenge on Afghans who supported the Bundeswehr and other German organizations. According to information from ntv, the federal government is apparently planning a major rescue operation – too late for some Afghan local staff.
At the top of the German government, plans are evidently being made to take several thousand Afghan aid workers out of the country at once in a comprehensive rescue operation and to save them from the revenge of the radical Islamist Taliban. According to information from ntv, Chancellor Angela Merkel, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer from the CDU and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas from the SPD discussed this on Saturday morning.
Preliminary result of the deliberations: For such an action, which would have to be carried out and protected by massive forces of the Bundeswehr, a new Bundestag mandate is required. The old, still running Bundestag mandate does not cover such an action, it was said in government circles. Now it should be quickly explored whether there is a parliamentary majority in the grand coalition or among the other parties. The Ministry of Defense is meanwhile examining the military feasibility with troops and material. The Chancellor was in favor of the action, they said. Kramp-Karrenbauer is said to have first brought it up to the federal government’s new Afghanistan crisis team.
The action would add up to a total of possibly up to 10,000 people, helpers and their “core families”. Over the past few years you have worked for the German Armed Forces, the Foreign Office, development aid and other German organizations, among others, and now you have to fear for your life: The Taliban, which is rapidly advancing on Kabul, have sworn revenge for you as “collaborators”. First helpers, including German media, have already been murdered.
In the last few days there had already been criticism of the slow repatriation of the so-called “local forces” of the Bundeswehr. Around 2000 of them are now in Germany.
Fight with the Taliban near the ex-Bundeswehr headquarters
The situation of those who are still in the country is getting more precarious by the hour: In the morning there were fighting over the Maidan Schar with the Taliban – the capital of the Maidan Wardak province, only 35 kilometers from Kabul. That’s what MP Hamida Akbari said. The Taliban already ruled a large part of the districts in the province.
Fighting between the Taliban and government forces continued in at least five provinces across the country. Mazar-i-Sharif, where the Bundeswehr had its headquarters until June, is also a clear target of the Islamists. The Taliban tried to penetrate the city in the north in the morning, but could be pushed back, according to local politicians. The ex-provincial governor Mohammad Atta Nur and the former warlord Abdul Raschid Dostum have set up a line of defense in the province of Balkh, in which Mazar-i-Sharif is located. The Taliban have already taken surrounding provinces.
In addition, the Islamists were able to take over what is now the 19th of the country’s 34 provincial capitals. Sharana, with its estimated 66,000 inhabitants in the Paktika province in the south-east of the country, went to the Taliban without a fight after being mediated by elders, three local officials confirmed. Fighting over the provincial capitals of Paktia and Kunar has been reported in the east. This week, Herat and Kandahar, the third and second largest cities in the country, fell to the Islamists.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a short TV address that he did not want the blood of innocent people to continue to be shed in Afghanistan. He had held consultations with political leaders in the country and international partners and wanted to share the results with his compatriots “soon”.
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