Status: 08/19/2021 11:46 a.m.
It is not yet clear how many people will be able to leave Afghanistan – and it is also unclear where they will then find protection. The admission of refugees is also being debated in Germany.
After the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Germany is also debating whether to accept refugees from the country. For example, CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt spoke out in favor of financial support worth billions in favor of UN refugee aid to accommodate refugees in Afghanistan’s neighboring countries. “Not repeating the mistakes made in 2015 also means that we will give UN Refugee Aid more support in fighting the causes of flight on the ground,” he told the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung. The goal must be to fly out the German citizens and Afghan local staff. “But there can be no general acceptance of refugee contingents in Germany.”
The SPD European parliamentarian Birgit Sippel said in the Deutschlandfunk, if you want to avoid images like 2015, you have to provide legal access to the EU. Because of the military engagement in Afghanistan, EU states have an obligation to give the people a perspective. One should not wait for all 27 states to agree on a solution. “Some have to go ahead. Anyone who does not want to implement the existing asylum law at all, does not have to count on the solidarity of the other member states, for example when it comes to funding,” continued Sippel.
Left leader sees German joint responsibility
The left-wing top candidate Janine Wissler also sees Germany as having a special responsibility. “Germany shares responsibility for the drama in Afghanistan,” the party leader told the newspapers of the Essen Funke media group. “Now we have to act.” As the richest state in the European Union, the Federal Republic has to take in a large proportion of the refugees from Afghanistan.
AfD parliamentary group leader Alexander Gauland spoke in Deutschlandfunk to accept only those people who would actually have worked for the Bundeswehr, as well as their families. He admitted that there was no consistent AfD line on the issue. For example, co-parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel had even called for an asylum moratorium, i.e. a suspension of the right to asylum. “She fears – and we all fear that – that there will be a migration of peoples,” said Gauland. “On the other hand, I fear that the asylum law does not allow it to be revoked in kumulu.”
On Wednesday, the interior ministers and senators of the federal states spoke out in favor of a federal admission program for threatened and persecuted people from Afghanistan, according to Lower Saxony’s head of department Boris Pistorius (SPD). Interior Minister Michael Stübgen (CDU) said that for Brandenburg rbbto be able to take in Afghan refugees in the long term. He had “of course, on behalf of the entire state government, signaled our willingness to accept and we also know that we have the capacities.”
The Federal Ministry of the Interior distances itself from the estimate
The Federal Ministry of the Interior, meanwhile, distanced itself from the estimate that up to five million Afghan refugees could be expected due to the Taliban’s takeover. “That is not the assessment of the BMI,” said a ministry spokesman on Wednesday. According to information from the dpa news agency, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) himself said during a briefing to the Bundestag parliamentary group leaders on Monday that 300,000 to five million Afghans could flee – without it becoming clear where these numbers came from and what the aim of these people was should be.
According to dpa, the ministry is now talking about “hypotheses and assumptions” from other sources. When asked again, a spokeswoman emphasized that, due to the dynamic development, “no reliable forecast” on the scale of the migration is currently possible. In response to repeated inquiries, the ministry did not specify whether the numbers given by Seehofer refer to refugees who predominantly remain in the region. In the past, most Afghan refugees had found shelter in neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran instead of traveling to Europe.
In fact, the situation after the conquest of Afghanistan is unlikely to be comparable to that of 2015, as was recently the case ARD fact finder set out. In view of the vast distances, the closed borders and the situation in Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that hundreds of thousands of people will come to Europe at short notice.