Twenty years of fighting terrorism and poverty have ultimately proved futile. The initially controversial military mission in Afghanistan, which began in 2001, failed on August 15, 2021. On that day, the Taliban insurgents came back to power after the hasty withdrawal of foreign forces led by the US.

In chaotic conditions the German Federal Army moved abroad Germans and Afghans who had worked for years in the military and civilian sectors. Unfortunately, not all Afghans were rescued immediately. Two years after then-Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that people would not be left to their fate, thousands of Afghans who worked for the Germans are waiting to arrive in Germany one day. No one knows their exact number. Interior Minister Nancy Fesser told the parliament’s human rights committee in June about the nearly 20,000 Afghans and their families who were transferred to Germany and were working before 2021 for the Bundeswehr and in development programs.

The fact that Berlin is still faced with rescuing Afghans who worked for Germany is demonstrated by witness statements to the German Parliament’s Afghanistan Commission of Inquiry. In late April, a senior official at the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) said a special task force was still processing applications from former Afghan workers in the army or development programs.

The Taliban are constantly curtailing human rights

Since the Taliban retook power, the Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development alone has issued around 15,000 so-called admission certificates to Afghans who previously worked for Germany. About 11,600 of them are already in Germany, a ministry spokesman told DW. Of the remaining 3,400, about 160 were already in a country neighboring Afghanistan.

Since the fall of Kabul, the Taliban have increasingly restricted human rights, which particularly affects women and girls. For this reason, the German government launched another aid program at the initiative of Foreign Minister Analena Burbock. The new program is expected to benefit mainly Afghan women and human rights workers, as well as people who could be targeted by the Taliban because of their religious identity or sexual orientation.

Despite the fact that thousands of Afghans have fled their country, humanitarian aid from Germany to Afghanistan continues. But since the Taliban returned to power, the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) says it has not hired its own local staff. At the same time, however, a representative emphasized in response to a question from DW: “In order to continue supporting the suffering Afghan population, we need Afghans living in the country itself.”

Local staff has been hired

The International Cooperation Agency (GIZ) has recruited local staff supporting German development policy. “Since August 2021, GIZ’s Afghan employees have been assigned mainly administrative, technical and logistical tasks, including the assessment of the security situation,” explains a GIZ spokesperson.

According to the federal Ministry of Development, civil society organizations are still active in Afghanistan employing local staff. The German government is closely monitoring the situation and the degree of danger: “Since the Taliban came to power, the newly recruited Afghan GIZ employees do not work in areas that are exposed and could potentially endanger their lives, the spokesman concludes of the German Society for International Cooperation.