Almost 12,000 Afghans still waiting to leave the country

Almost 12,000 Afghans who have been promised admission from Germany are still waiting to be flown out. This is according to a response from the German government to a question from the Left Party. According to the report, 11,864 people were on the list of those who are still to be taken from Afghanistan or a neighboring country if they have managed to flee there. That is about a third of those who have received a promise of admission from Germany since the Taliban took power last August.

According to the report, since August 2021 there has been a promise of admission for about 33,000 people from Afghanistan, and about 21,000 of them have been brought to Germany since then. Among them are about 3600 local forces with their families, a total of almost 16 800 people. In addition, almost 1,300 people have been admitted with relatives who are considered to be particularly at risk after the Taliban took power because they have campaigned for human rights, democracy and Western values.

Until June 10, there had been about 1,000 evacuations within about a month, said Clara Bünger, spokeswoman on refugee policy for the Left Party in the Bundestag, referring to figures requested from the federal government at the time. Between the end of February and the beginning of May, about 6200 people had been brought to Germany. The pace of the federal government in the evacuations is decreasing.

Bünger said that in all likelihood, one year after the Taliban took power, the German government would not have implemented its promise of protection to bring all Afghans at particular risk to safety. She also criticized that there are still too many rejections for more people in Afghanistan who want to come to Germany. Bünger referred to a family that had made its houses available as shelters for local forces at risk last year. Since the hiding places had been exposed, these people were now on the run themselves, he said. But their requests for admission had been rejected, she said.

The left-wing politician also criticized the fact that the Federal Ministry of the Interior has so far not given the green light for planned state admission programs. These decisions have been put on hold so far because decisions on the planned federal program to take in Afghans are still pending, the ministry explained in its answer to Bünger's question.