Despite an announcement to this effect by Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the Union does not expect an increase in deportations to Afghanistan. “I really hope that it will happen, but I don’t believe it yet,” CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann told broadcaster NTV on Saturday. As a result of the knife attack in Mannheim on Thursday, Scholz had called in his government statement for criminals to be deported to Afghanistan and Syria as well.
However, the statement did not say “how it should work,” stressed Linnemann. He himself does not see any insurmountable hurdles. “If I were Scholz, I would get on a plane tomorrow, fly to Sweden and find out how they do it.” Sweden deported several criminals to Afghanistan last year, explained the CDU politician.
Like most countries, Germany does not have diplomatic relations with the radical Islamic Taliban, who rule Afghanistan. Deportations to the country have therefore been suspended since they came to power in 2021. “Nevertheless, there are channels through which you can talk to them,” Linnemann said. It just has to be politically desired.
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) also expressed doubts about Scholz’s statements on the deportations. These were “only due to the election campaign,” he told broadcaster WELT on Friday evening. “Nothing has happened so far.” Söder stressed: “It is very clear to me: Anyone who commits such an act must be deported.”
A week ago on Friday, a 25-year-old man from Afghanistan attacked members of the anti-Islam citizens’ movement Pax Europa with a knife on Mannheim’s market square. A police officer was seriously injured and later died.
Subsequently, calls for a resumption of deportations to Afghanistan came from the CDU/CSU and AfD, but also from the SPD and FDP. Federal Minister of the Interior Nancy Faeser (SPD) wants to examine this “as quickly as possible”. The Greens, however, have concerns.
Regarding the concrete implementation of the deportations to Afghanistan, Faeser told Deutschlandfunk on Saturday: “It is not about establishing new contacts with regimes there. We can use some of the existing ones.”
Above all, it is about bringing people back via Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries. “I think that could be a good way and we are working on it,” emphasised the SPD politician.