Afghanistan: + evacuation of German citizens has started +

05:51 am

Evacuation of the US embassy in Kabul completed

The evacuation of the US embassy in Kabul has been completed, according to the State Department. All embassy staff are located on the premises of Kabul airport, the area around which is being secured by the US military, the ministry said. According to earlier statements, a large part of the staff will be flown out from there. It was unclear which and how many employees should remain in Kabul. According to media reports, the US flag had previously been brought down on the premises.

05:46 am

Intelligence Researcher: Western services have failed

The rapid advance of the Islamist Taliban has sparked a debate as to why the NATO member states were not better prepared for the triumphant advance. The secret services of the major NATO countries had failed, explained the German secret service researcher Erich Schmidt-Eenboom in an interview with the ARD studio Brussels. According to his assessment, the intelligence services should have recognized much earlier that President Ghani’s Afghan government was unable to hold out. The intelligence researcher criticized the German Federal Intelligence Service in particular. The BND has been very present in Afghanistan for years, reports Schmidt-Eenboom, with an unusually large number of representatives in the country. Against this background, the federal government should have known earlier what danger the Afghan local workers are. For years they worked as interpreters, craftsmen and informants for the German armed forces. The federal government should have flown them out earlier because it was clear that they would be the target of acts of revenge by the radical Islamic Taliban, criticized Schmidt-Eenboom.

05:39 am

Opposition criticizes late evacuation

There is massive criticism from the opposition about the pace of the evacuation. The FDP external expert Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told the “world” that Heiko Maas, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer had “failed all along the line”. The campaign also started too late for the Greens parliamentary group leader Anton Hofreiter. “You have to ask yourself why the federal government seems so surprised by the Taliban’s rapid advance,” he told the dpa news agency. The federal government must act very quickly now. The parliamentary group leader of the Left in the Bundestag, Jan Korte, called the actions of Maas in particular “scandalous”. Korte accused the Foreign Minister of endangering human life.

AfD parliamentary group leader Alexander Gauland criticized in the “Welt” that the federal government had “overslept” at the right time for the evacuation. The SPD parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Rolf Mützenich, had already rejected allegations against Maas yesterday. “Heiko Maas not only heads the task force for rescuing German nationals and embassy staff, but has also taken care of the departure of Afghan local staff and other people who are active on site beyond the support of the Bundeswehr in the last few weeks.” He is also in constant contact with international partners.

05:36 am

Trump calls on Biden to resign

After the Taliban invaded Kabul, ex-US President Donald Trump asked his successor Joe Biden to resign. It is time that Biden resigned “in shame” for what he allowed in Afghanistan, “said Trump. He also criticized Biden’s immigration, economic and energy policies. Under Trump, the first direct talks between the US government and the Taliban began in Doha in Qatar in 2018. The talks culminated in an agreement on February 29, 2020, in which a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops was set out. The withdrawal was delayed in the meantime, but then began under Trump’s successor Biden in May. At the same time as the USA, the other NATO troops withdrew from Afghanistan, including the Bundeswehr. Trump has criticized Biden’s withdrawal plans several times, claiming that he managed the troop withdrawal “very differently and much more successfully.” In a further statement, Trump wrote on Sunday: “What Joe Biden did to Afghanistan is legendary. It will go down as one of the greatest defeats in American history.”

05:33 am

Large airlines avoid Afghan airspace

Major airlines such as United Airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic say they will no longer fly over Afghanistan’s airspace. The reason is the current development in the country. Airlines have become more cautious when flying over conflict zones after shooting down a commercial aircraft over Ukraine in 2014 and shooting down a machine in Iran in 2020.

05:31 am

Taliban: Foreign military personnel have to leave Afghanistan

All foreign forces must leave Afghanistan before government restructuring begins, a Taliban leader, who does not want to be named, told Reuters on the phone. But it is still too early to say how the government will be taken over. He added that Taliban fighters in Kabul had been warned not to frighten civilians. In addition, citizens should be allowed to resume their normal daily activities.

05:29 am

First German diplomats flown out

The evacuation of German citizens from the Afghan capital Kabul has begun. In the night, according to information from the dpa news agency, 40 employees of the German embassy landed in a US plane in Doha in the Gulf emirate of Qatar. Four members of the Swiss representation in Afghanistan were also on board the machine. In the past few days, the militant Islamist Taliban had taken one city after the other, some of them without a fight, at a rapid pace. They also invaded the capital Kabul yesterday and already have the presidential palace under their control.

In view of the dramatic situation, the federal government decided to reduce the embassy staff to a minimum. Yesterday all employees were brought to the airport, which is secured by thousands of US soldiers. The first evacuation flight was carried out with a US machine, as the German armed forces only wanted to send two A400M transport machines from Wunstorf in Lower Saxony to Kabul that night. Over the next few days, they are to be a central component of an “airlift”, via which, in addition to the embassy staff, other German citizens and local staff who have worked or are still working for the Bundeswehr or federal ministries in Afghanistan are to be brought to Germany.

05:29 am

Washington: US military has secured Kabul airport

After the Taliban marched into Kabul, US soldiers secured the Afghan capital’s airport and the surrounding area, according to the government in Washington. The evacuation of the US embassy in Kabul has now been completed, said US State Department spokesman Ned Price. The entire embassy staff is now on the premises of the international Hamid Karzai airport, “the area of ​​which is secured by the US military.”

05:29 am

International community: it must be possible to leave the country

More than 60 countries have called for the possibility of safe and orderly departure from Afghanistan. Afghans and other citizens who want to leave the country should be allowed to do so, it said in a joint statement released by the US State Department. To do this, roads, airports and border crossings would have to remain open. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Austria, Spain and the EU foreign affairs representative are among the signatories. “Those in positions of power and authority across Afghanistan are responsible – and accountable – for protecting human life and property and for the immediate restoration of security and civil order,” it said. The Afghan people have a right to a life of security and dignity. “We in the international community are ready to support them in this.”