Afghanistan: The dangerous handling of lists of names

Should the federal government work with the Taliban and give them lists of names in order to fly local workers out of Kabul? The parcel service provider DHL had at least success with this risky strategy.

It was in the night from Saturday to Sunday that Hussain was hoping that it might work. “We were around 200 German local staff and were driven to the airport in four buses. A pickup with Taliban escorted us from the airport gate onto the site.”

Hussain, who does not want to give his real name, is a former local employee of the Bundeswehr, he was a translator. The bus in which he was sitting was on the way on behalf of the German initiative “Kabul Airlift”. When they were at the airport, a Taliban had come – with a yellow envelope. He took out a list and then read out names.

“Anyone whose name was read out was allowed to go into the airport. And whoever wasn’t, should go again,” says Hussain. His name wasn’t on the list, he had to go back. But why did the Taliban have the names of German local staff? Yesterday the Federal Foreign Office wanted to send a request to the ARD Studios South Asia do not comment.

“Limited information” was shared

Today government spokesman Christopher Burger says: “No, we did not give the list of our local staff to the Taliban.” Not the list of local employees, but still names of Afghans who have worked for Germans. According to Burger, there were two private initiatives that were logistically supported by the federal government.

“In order to ensure the practical implementation of the action, at the express request of the organizers, limited information was only shared with American partners about the specific people to be transported on one plane, who kept the logistical process at the gate, including contact with the Taliban “says Burger.

According to information from ARD Studios South Asia This includes local staff from DHL, the parcel service of Deutsche Post. The action was successful. “All of these people were safely flown to Doha by US planes,” says Burger.

Deutsche Post apparently more courageous than the federal government

A company spokesman announced in writing that the Post employees actually made it to the flights. “We can confirm that our employees and their immediate family members were flown out of Afghanistan and brought to safety with the help of the German and US governments.”

But for security reasons one couldn’t say more. Apparently the Deutsche Post was more courageous than the German federal government. Last week, US media reports had already announced that the Americans had given names of local staff to Taliban security forces at the airport – successfully. The radical Islamists kept their word and let the local staff through. The main purpose of the strict controls in front of the airport, according to the Taliban, was to hold back people who did not have sufficient papers for the flights.

This is no longer of any use to the former Bundeswehr translator Hussain. He’s already prepared to take another – more dangerous – route out of Afghanistan.