Austria is stepping up the pace of deporting criminals from Syria and Afghanistan. “We will continue to push this issue forward at the Council of Interior Ministers. The best solution would be a European solution to this issue,” Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) told WELT. It is about finding legal options to return terrorists and criminals to their homeland. “It is not easy, but it is necessary,” Karner stressed.
After an Afghan man fatally attacked a police officer in Mannheim with a knife, Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) announced that he wanted to make it possible to deport serious criminals to Afghanistan and Syria again. Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) is currently examining this. Since the Taliban regained power in Kabul in August 2021, a deportation ban for Afghans has been in place in Germany.
Karner said of the traffic light coalition’s plans: “I welcome the German government’s initiative to deport criminals and terrorists to Afghanistan. I started the discussion two years ago.” Opportunities must be created to be able to deport people back to Syria and Afghanistan. “That’s why it’s good that there is finally some movement on the issue and that we have a strong partner in Germany,” said Karner.
The Islamist Taliban ruling in Afghanistan are open to cooperation in light of the renewed debate in Germany about the deportation of Afghan criminals and threats. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan calls on the German authorities to settle the matter within the framework of the usual consular relations and an appropriate mechanism on the basis of a bilateral agreement,” the spokesman for the Taliban Foreign Ministry, Abdul Kahar Balchi, recently announced on Platform X.
The Foreign Office, however, warns against cooperation with the Islamists. “How do you want to work with an Islamic terror regime with which we have no relations at all?” asked Foreign Minister Annalena Baebock (Greens). Like other European partners, Germany does not have an embassy on the ground that could accompany repatriations. “Last but not least, we owe it to the victims that the perpetrators pay for their sentence in prison and that murderers are not released in Afghanistan,” explained the minister.
“The Taliban will want to be paid for any repatriations at least through international recognition,” stressed a spokesman for the Foreign Office in Berlin. “And it is a fact that the German government, like every other country in the world, does not recognize the Taliban’s de facto government in Afghanistan and does not work with it,” he added. There is only sporadic contact in individual cases “at a technical level.”
And the warnings about cooperation with the Islamists in the Hindu Kush, who are internationally isolated, are not only coming from the Foreign Office. The Taliban could benefit from deportations by using them as an opportunity to cooperate with a Western state, says Afghanistan expert Thomas Ruttig. Representatives of the Green Party also oppose deportations of Afghans and cooperation with the Taliban, or are skeptical about the plan.
The German government is also currently considering a detour via Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries such as Pakistan. However, the Taliban are clearly ruling out this possibility. Extraditions to third countries are a violation of existing conventions, the spokesman for the Afghan Foreign Ministry emphasised in his statement.
So far, no country has officially recognized the Taliban government. Western states demand, among other things, that human rights and, above all, women’s rights be respected in the country in order to gain recognition. Other states, especially neighboring countries, have nevertheless advocated a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the Islamists.
