Maas and the Afghanistan debacle: The counted minister

False expectations, ignored warnings and a lack of a situation report on Afghanistan: Foreign Minister Maas is held jointly responsible for the mistakes in the Hindu Kush.

Not so long ago, Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was happy to fly to Mazar-i-Sharif, to the Afghan headquarters of the Bundeswehr. The pictures there were always a guarantee of media attention and good poll numbers. There he met with artists and women’s rights activists and flew to Kabul for talks with the Afghan government.

“Complete failure of the federal government”

But now Maas is faced with a mess in foreign policy. The chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Röttgen from the CDU, said that not only had a lot gone wrong in Afghanistan, there was a human drama. The Greens foreign politician Omid Nouripour does not hold Maas solely responsible: “Heiko Maas is in charge, but we have here a complete failure of the federal government. They just looked the other way.”

FDP Vice Wolfgang Kubicki called for the resignation of the Chancellor, the Federal Defense Minister and the Federal Foreign Minister. “You are responsible for the biggest foreign policy disaster since the Federal Republic of Germany came into being,” said Kubicki.

Wrong information or wrong conclusions?

Maas had already apologized for the Afghanistan debacle on Monday. Since then, however, he has repeatedly repeated in interviews that he was not the only one who misjudged the situation. “That is the misjudgment that the entire western community, the federal government, myself, our services, but also many Afghans had. They thought Kabul would last longer.”

The Federal Intelligence Service apparently assumed last Friday that Kabul could fall to the Taliban in September at the earliest. If the Afghan soldiers had fought them, this scenario might have been realistic.

The Afghan soldiers were in the majority. Only apparently the Afghan government rejected a civil war and was not prepared to hold Kabul for any longer. According to the “New York Times”, American secret services gave early warning of a rapid collapse in Afghanistan. There was an exchange between the secret services, Maas assured on ZDF.

Evacuation of the German embassy too late?

There was also an open communication channel between the USA and the Taliban during the entire period of the conquest of the provincial capitals by the Taliban. We sat together in the peace negotiations in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The Federal Government has only now sent the Afghanistan Special Representative Markus Potzel there.

The Foreign Office had long been coordinating an evacuation plan for the German embassy with the USA – so such a scenario was not considered impossible.

Warnings from the embassy

After research by the ARD capital studios The German Embassy has been warning the Foreign Office for weeks that its own employees are at risk. However, the Federal Foreign Office did not approve the evacuation until Sunday. Two days after the British and Americans started evacuating. Maas said on ZDF that the evacuation was the same as in other countries.

In fact, however, legal questions about the Bundestag mandate are said to have slowed down the rescue operation. In the Foreign Affairs Committee, many members of the Bundestag expected an explanation for this and were bitterly disappointed. FDP foreign politician Bijan Djir-Sarai said that Maas was unable to explain how the misjudgment came about that Kabul would not fall into the hands of the Taliban.

Visa issuance for Afghan local staff delayed?

Maas justified the late evacuation of the German embassy with the fact that the staff had to be on site in order to be able to issue visas to Afghan local staff. “I would make that decision again at any time,” said Maas.

In the past few weeks, the Foreign Office has repeatedly said that the Afghan authorities are delaying the issuing of visas because they insisted that everyone who wants to leave the country has Afghan papers. Like the Taliban now, the Afghan government apparently did not want the local armed forces and thus well-trained specialists to leave the country.

Three ministries responsible

The federal government had decided to take on a maximum of 2,500 local Afghan workers. This number now looks scornful. The Federal Ministry of Defense and the Federal Ministry of the Interior are responsible for this.

Even if, according to German intelligence reports, the Taliban had only taken Kabul later, one should have been aware that journalists, women’s rights activists and all Afghans who have worked for German organizations would then no longer be able to live safely under the Taliban. This knowledge should have come from the Federal Foreign Office.

Afghanistan report delayed for political reasons?

Instead, there had been no new situation report from the Federal Foreign Office on the security situation in Afghanistan since May. The withdrawal of western troops at the beginning of July should have been reason enough on its own. Has a new management report been deliberately delayed? The Federal Foreign Minister has long been in favor of deporting criminals to Afghanistan – even when the chairman of his own party, Norbert Walter-Borjans, spoke out against it. A new situation report would also have influenced the asylum decisions of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees. The ministry is subordinate to Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer.

Federal Foreign Minister Maas is not solely responsible for the chaotic evacuations, for the misjudgment of the political situation in Afghanistan or for the treatment of the Afghan local staff. But he is certainly partly responsible.