KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has announced plans to negotiate a direct agreement with the Taliban authorities in Afghanistan to facilitate the deportation of Afghan nationals convicted of crimes in Germany.
In an interview with Focus magazine published Wednesday evening, Dobrindt said that relying on third-party intermediaries to coordinate deportations is not a sustainable approach.
“My idea is that we make agreements directly with Afghanistan to enable repatriations,” he said. “We still need third parties to conduct talks with Afghanistan. This cannot remain a permanent solution.”
Germany resumed deportations of Afghan nationals in August 2023, targeting individuals with criminal convictions. These operations, suspended since the Taliban takeover in August 2021, were initially carried out with the help of unnamed regional partners.
Despite resuming deportations, Berlin does not officially recognize the Taliban regime and has no formal diplomatic relations with Kabul.
As reported by Reuters, Dobrindt, a senior member of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said that Berlin must take a more direct approach.
Merz’s conservative bloc has made tough migration policies a central part of its platform, pledging to deport criminals to Afghanistan and Syria, and halt special admission programs for Afghan nationals who worked with German agencies during the NATO mission.
Migration has become a defining political issue in Germany, particularly following a rise in far-right sentiment and a series of violent incidents involving asylum seekers. According to Germany’s federal migration office, Syrians and Afghans make up the largest groups of asylum applicants this year, with 76,765 Syrians and 34,149 Afghans applying for asylum in 2024.
