exclusive
14 instead of 12,000 people – that’s the result around a year after the start of the federal admission program for at-risk Afghans. Aid organizations report chaotic conditions and an overwhelmed German bureaucracy.
Maryam Mozaffari was one of thousands of Afghans who desperately tried to leave Kabul in August 2021. The Taliban advanced on the capital. The last planes took off for freedom at the airport. She didn’t make it.
Before the rule of the Islamist Taliban, Mozzafari worked as a lawyer and represented women in court who had experienced domestic violence. That’s why she now lives in constant fear of the Taliban and is threatened with death. She has been hiding in different apartments across the country for two years.
“There is no longer a single day in my life when I feel safe. I have to expect that I will be arrested every minute. They have already taken some of my colleagues with them,” reports Mozzafari in an interview with ARD-Magazine monitor.
Promise of the Foreign Minister
But she still has hope. She wants to believe in a promise that German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock made to her and many other vulnerable Afghans after the Taliban came to power: “They are not forgotten. We are working hard to bring everyone to safety.”
The federal admission program was therefore launched in October 2022 with the aim of bringing 1,000 particularly vulnerable Afghans like Maryam Mozaffari to Germany every month. Specifically, the program is aimed at “Afghan nationals in Afghanistan who have particularly exposed themselves through their commitment to women’s and human rights or through their work (…) and are therefore at individual risk.”
In the first year, 12,000 people should have come to Germany. Upon request from MONITOR the Federal Ministry of the Interior wrote that 14 Afghans had actually entered the country through the program so far.
The ministry explained the difference by saying that the number of acceptances depends on the people “available for selection”. However, “unused quotas could be carried over to the following month”. After 18 months they want to check the success of the program.
Multi-stage process
Left-wing member of the Bundestag Clara Bünger is already sharply criticizing the government: “On the one hand, there would actually have to be the political will to take in people from Afghanistan. I see nice words from politicians, but I don’t see any political action , no actual action in the political sphere.” In addition, the program is too bureaucratic and too non-transparent.
In order to be able to enter Germany via the program, Afghans at risk must go through a multi-stage process. First, they submit a request for help to one of around 70 selected German aid organizations. You cannot apply directly to a government agency.
The “Kabul Airlift” association is one of these selected aid organizations. Around 40,000 people contacted them alone in the first week after the program started. “We then had to communicate to people that we would not be able to process all of their cases. We cannot replace the federal government in this regard. The federal government has to create resources itself,” reports Therese Herrmann about the overload of the aid organization.
Various government agencies, such as the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the Ministry of the Interior, the Foreign Office and German security authorities then use a lengthy, multi-stage process to determine whether people are suitable for the program. Numerous test steps are planned; some data must be entered manually and exchanged between the different departments.
Audition only at the embassy in Pakistan
Only after overcoming these bureaucratic hurdles do Afghans at risk meet an employee of the German authorities for the first time. To do this, however, they have to travel to the Pakistani capital Islamabad to appear at the Federal Republic consulate there. Applications cannot be processed in Afghanistan itself because the German embassy in Kabul has ceased operations.
But the situation for Afghans in neighboring Pakistan is dramatic: More than a million Afghans are currently threatened with deportation, and local authorities have apparently taken particularly rigorous action in recent days. Those who are supposed to come to Germany through the federal admission program are also threatened with deportation. People at risk often wait so long for appointments at the German embassy that their Pakistani visa expires.
In view of the threat of mass deportations, the Foreign Office was also concerned. A spokesman for the Foreign Office said this week that they are in close contact with the Pakistani authorities in connection with Afghans who are supported by the federal government in leaving Pakistan. They explained that people who came to Germany from Pakistan through the so-called federal admission program would be exempt from deportations. But these people are now apparently also threatened with deportation.
Whether Maryam Mozaffari will ever be able to leave Afghanistan for Germany is now more questionable than ever. She must continue to hide indefinitely. In the hope of not being discovered by the Taliban – despite the big promises from the federal government.
You can see more about this and other topics in the Monitor program at 9:45 p.m. on Erste.