The evacuation plans were in the drawer and the difficult situation was well known: nevertheless, German politics was apparently caught off guard by the advance of the Taliban in the summer of 2021. A former embassy envoy casts a bad light on the federal government.
Long before the withdrawal of the German armed forces, German diplomats saw the situation in Afghanistan in some cases as bleaker than was portrayed in political Berlin at the time. A former envoy at the embassy in Kabul said when questioned as a witness in the Bundestag’s Afghanistan investigative committee that the embassy had requested a crisis advisory team from Berlin at the end of 2020 to discuss security issues because of the foreseeable withdrawal of foreign troops. This team, which also included members of the Bundeswehr, came in March 2021.
Since the international troops were an integral part of the embassy’s security concept, “we just had very fundamental concerns and thoughts about how we could replace these skills,” he replied to a question from FDP MP Ann-Veruschka Jurisch. Evacuation plans for the embassy staff were already in the drawer by the end of their work in the Afghan capital – two months before the Islamist Taliban took power in mid-August 2021. A decision on an evacuation had not been made at the time.
In principle, the Doha agreement between the United States and the Taliban was “a contract at the expense of third parties,” the diplomat continued. The fact that the Afghan government had no role was one of the agreement’s many structural weaknesses. The then Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said on March 4, 2020, when the Bundestag was deliberating on the extension of the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan: “Even if many questions are still open, I think it can be said that the agreement from Doha is a milestone.”
The then Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, and his entourage had long been too optimistic, the former envoy said. His impression at the time was “that they were a little removed from reality”.
The committee of inquiry is to clarify the events and decisions surrounding the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr and the evacuation mission in August 2021. He considers a period beginning on February 29, 2020. On this day the Doha Agreement was signed. In return for the withdrawal of US troops, the Islamists committed themselves, among other things, to peace talks and participation in an inclusive government, which did not come about. The end of the investigation should be September 30, 2021.
The Bundeswehr left Afghanistan in June 2021. In August, when the Taliban took Kabul – with virtually no resistance – Germany took part in an international military evacuation operation. Dramatic scenes took place at Kabul Airport when many people wanted to leave the country.
