Foreign Minister Maas: Crisis diplomacy on my own behalf too

After the disaster in Afghanistan, Foreign Minister Maas is trying to save what can be saved. During his four-day trip to the crisis region, a lot was about diplomacy – and also about his political future.

Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is back in Germany. A four-day trip to Turkey, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and Doha lies behind him. It was about Afghanistan, human fate, Germany – and also the political legacy of the Foreign Minister. His mission was also the crisis diplomacy of a loser in the war. The disaster in the Hindu Kush hits him too.

He receives poisoned praise for his trip from the green foreign politician Omid Nouripour. Every trip the Foreign Minister takes is good. “He should have done that long ago.”

Nouripour accuses the SPD man Maas of not being involved enough in his office. In fact, since taking office in March 2018, Maas has only visited Afghanistan twice. And after the Taliban’s rapid advance and the seizure of power, Maas only had to admit: “All of us – the federal government, the intelligence services, the international community – we misjudged the situation.” There is “nothing to gloss over.”

Wrong assessment of the situation

Where does the wrong assessment come from? Scientists and development workers on site had expected that the Taliban would advance with the withdrawal of NATO troops. Bundeswehr soldiers were also not surprised by the Taliban’s takeover of power. The Taliban simply waited until NATO left, said Robert Müller, a former paratrooper who fought in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005.

Foreign Minister Maas has also come under fire because his office apparently set the number of local staff who worked for Germany far too low, did not always take their family members into account and did not process visa applications promptly.

Unpleasant questions

After the defeat in the Hindu Kush, the Foreign Minister was asked further unpleasant questions: Why did Germany work with the government in Kabul, which was apparently corrupt and had no popular support? How much development aid has flowed into the dark channels of the Kabul elite? Why did Maas apparently not try to hold peace talks with the Taliban? The former SPD chairman Kurt Beck had already proposed the latter in 2007. US President Donald Trump did it in 2020.

The Afghanistan mission ends in disaster for the West, for the German government – and also for Maas. Shortly before the end of the legislative period, it damaged the Foreign Minister’s balance sheet. The green foreign politician Jürgen Trittin even accuses Maas of personal failure in rescuing Afghan local workers. Maas had “loaded a lot of guilt here”. And the deputy leader of the FDP parliamentary group and foreign politician Alexander Graf Lambsdorff says that Maas has failed “all along the line”.

Left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch calls for personal consequences: The mistakes of Maas and Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer are “inexcusable”. The consequences of the mistakes would have endangered human life. Kramp-Karrenbauer and Maas “should never again be part of a federal government.”

Maas is not to blame for everything. Especially not he alone. The fact that so few local staff were flown out was also due to the fact that the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior were on the brakes. The chaotic evacuation was also due to the fact that the US government did not inform its NATO allies of its intention to withdraw. The Bundeswehr and the Foreign Office were presented with a fait accompli.

Most serious, however, was the decision of the heads of government of the Western alliance to change the war aims in the course of the war. If the original aim was to fight international terror through al Qaeda, the mission turned into a questionable “nation-building” war. Western values ​​should be built and defended in Afghanistan. Foreign ministers Joschka Fischer (1998-2005) and Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2005-09) are also responsible for this turnaround.

So von Maas is only mediocre

Maas inherited the Afghan war from its predecessors. He was already lost when Maas took office. The fact that he was unable to set any accents in office was also due to the Chancellor, who always left a German foreign minister little leeway. While Angela Merkel determined world politics, von Maas may still remember the return campaign by German vacationers at the beginning of the corona pandemic. Other initiatives, such as his alliance for multilateralism with France, have hardly received any public attention.

So von Maas is only mediocre. And a foreign minister who ends his term with crisis diplomacy. That is hardly enough for a ministerial office in a new federal government, especially since he lost not only the war in Afghanistan but also the support in the SPD.