Rescuing Afghan local workers: hesitated too long and hesitated

The federal government has wasted important time. Instead of helping the Afghan local staff in good time, the ministries got entangled in the thicket of bureaucracy. This hesitation will cost lives.

For local Afghan workers, women’s and human rights activists and for everyone who has committed to our western values ​​in Afghanistan, it is a matter of bare survival. For German politicians like Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and Defense Minister Anngret Kramp-Karrenbauer, it is only about political survival.

Both Maas and Kramp-Karrenbauer have made too many mistakes in the past few weeks. The bitter consequence could be that people will lose their lives because the German government did not prepare the departure of Afghan local staff in good time.

A phrase becomes a mantra

Welcome to the Taliban Realpolitik! The Defense Minister has known the letters from German soldiers worried about their Afghan comrades for weeks. She wanted to help. But she got entangled in the thicket of bureaucracy between Foreign Minister Maas and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who himself wanted to deport people to Afghanistan ten days ago.

At least one can surmise that the bureaucracy thicket that will now cost human lives was not entirely unintentional politically. Because, after all, is the federal election campaign. And the phrase “2015 must not repeat itself” is the mantra of the CDU and CSU and in parts also the SPD.

For many it is too late

Even if Afghanistan is not Syria, the fear of refugee images and the AfD is sitting on the back of the election campaigns for Armin Laschet, Markus Söder and Olaf Scholz. Because back in June the Bundestag debated the unbureaucratic admission of Afghan local staff.

An application by the Greens was rejected by the CDU, CSU, SPD and AfD at the time. According to the motto: just don’t have a refugee debate. That was a mistake, say even members of the Union. But now it is too late for many people. You will not be able to get on a rescue aircraft, even if the evacuation operation has started. They won’t make it from Kunduz or Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul, let alone the airport.

The government did not have an exit plan

The federal government has wasted important time. Apparently she had no exit plan. Although the German embassy in Kabul had warned of the danger to its staff for weeks – apparently without success. The embassy in Kabul was only vacated at the last minute; without US helicopters, Maas’ own employees would not have come to the airport.

Even if the remaining German citizens from Kabul are rescued, the rescue of all Afghans who professed our Western values ​​and helped us is no longer in our hands. People can die, also because German ministers hesitated and hesitated too long.