According to a “Spiegel” report, the Federal Ministry of the Interior is negotiating with Uzbekistan about deporting Afghans from Germany without direct agreements with the Taliban.
For this purpose, a delegation from the office of Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) travelled to the Uzbek capital Tashkent in the last week of May, the news magazine reported on Sunday.
The delegation suggested to the Uzbek government that they bring Afghan deportation candidates to Tashkent. From there they would be transported to Kabul by the private airline “KamAir”. According to dpa information, the most recent idea was to hire a charter company based in Romania for the flight from Germany to Uzbekistan.
When asked by the AFP news agency, the Interior Ministry declined to comment on the report.
According to the article, the Uzbek government did hold out the prospect of being able to help with deportations. However, before a deal on the deportations can be reached, it wants to sign a formal migration agreement with Germany that will regulate the entry of Uzbek skilled workers into Germany.
Joachim Stamp (FDP), the Federal Government’s Special Representative for Migration Agreements, will travel to Uzbekistan next week for talks on such an agreement.
As a consequence of the fatal knife attack in Mannheim, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that the deportation of serious criminals to Afghanistan and Syria would again be possible.
“Such criminals should be deported – even if they come from Syria and Afghanistan,” said the SPD politician in the Bundestag. And: “Serious criminals and terrorist threats have no place here.” The Federal Ministry of the Interior is working on the practical implementation and is already in talks with Afghanistan’s neighboring countries, he said. Germany had completely stopped deportations to Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban took power in the summer of 2021.
The “Spiegel” further reported that the Federal Foreign Office (AA) – which is accompanying the talks through the German ambassador Tilo Klinner – continues to view the deportations of Afghans critically, even if they are to take place via a neighboring country.
The background to this is fear that those deported are threatened with reprisals. The Foreign Office’s confidential “Report on the situation in Afghanistan relevant to asylum and deportation” from July 2023 states that the Taliban are pursuing “a policy of massive and systematic curtailment of fundamental rights” and that “a climate of intimidation and impunity” prevails in Afghanistan.
The situation is described as critical. “Citizens are at risk of being arbitrarily threatened, punished, mistreated and even killed by Taliban forces for even minor offenses,” Spiegel quotes from the confidential report. The Taliban have reintroduced the death penalty and “in several cases have put the bodies of alleged criminals on display.” There are credible reports of torture from prisons, and arrests and killings of journalists have also been documented.
The paper also warns against the repatriation of criminals from Germany. There is a risk that returnees who have committed crimes abroad could become victims of arbitrary acts of revenge by the Taliban. “A new conviction by the Taliban-controlled judicial system cannot be ruled out if the case becomes known to the authorities,” the situation report states.
