30 More Afghan Refugees Deported from Germany to Kabul

Despite Afghanistan’s unstable and insecure situation, the German government has once again deported a group of Afghan refugees to their country. The deportation of asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected has faced considerable criticism and protests.

An aircraft carrying 30 deported refugees from Germany landed at Kabul airport early Thursday, April 25 (Ordibehesht 5 in the Persian calendar).

According to the newspaper “Die Welt,” citing Kabul airport officials, the aircraft landed at 7:10 a.m. local time at the airport.

The mass deportation of Afghan refugees from Germany, whose asylum applications were rejected, began in December 2016 and has been repeated 22 times previously.

With the addition of those returned to Kabul on Thursday, the number of deported Afghan refugees over the past two years and several months has reached 563 people.

In one instance of mass deportation of Afghan refugees in July of last year, one of the 69 people returned to Kabul committed suicide shortly after being handed over to Afghan authorities.

This incident and the continued unstable and insecure situation in Afghanistan have drawn extensive criticism of Germany’s mass deportation of Afghan refugees from human rights organizations and some German opposition parties.

Germany lists one of the prerequisites for returning asylum seekers as the assessment that the security situation in their home countries or countries of origin is “safe.” Critics argue that all evidence indicates that security is not guaranteed in Afghanistan and that crisis and conflict continue in the country.

Ongoing Clashes and Civilian Casualties

In Afghanistan, clashes and fighting between government forces and the extremist Islamist Taliban group and terrorist members of ISIS continue daily, with few days passing without civilian casualties.

In the latest example of these clashes, last week Afghanistan’s Ministry of Communications was the target of a terrorist attack for which ISIS claimed responsibility. At least 14 people were killed in the attack.

According to a United Nations report, in the first quarter of the current calendar year, 581 civilians were killed and 1,192 injured in clashes in Afghanistan. However, the number of casualties in this quarter decreased by 23 percent compared to the same period last year.

It appears that the reduction in civilian casualties in the first quarter of the current calendar year does not necessarily mean a decrease throughout the year. The Taliban announced the beginning of its “spring offensive” in Afghanistan roughly two weeks ago.

The Taliban paramilitary, particularly with the end of winter, regularly attack checkpoints and inspection stations of government forces, and only in the first half of April, 250 members of Afghanistan’s security and police forces were killed in various parts of the country.

New Round of Taliban-US Talks

Parallel to the continuation of crisis and military clashes in Afghanistan, efforts are also underway to end the situation through political negotiations. In recent months, several rounds of direct talks between US government representatives and senior Taliban officials have been held, with one of the goals being negotiations between the extremist Islamists and the central government.

According to the newspaper “Die Welt,” one of the Taliban spokespersons announced that a new round of talks between representatives of the group and the United States will take place in Doha, the capital of Qatar, “in the coming days or weeks.”

Representatives of the two sides were supposed to begin preliminary talks in Doha on Saturday and Sunday of last week, and the Afghan government intended to send a delegation of 250 people for this purpose to Qatar. Apparently, the Taliban, including due to the large size of the Afghan government delegation, refrained from negotiating with them.

One of the Taliban group’s demands in negotiations with US officials is the withdrawal of American soldiers from Afghanistan, which is reportedly something the US President has previously planned. According to reports, Donald Trump intends to return some of the American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan to the country by the end of spring 2019. The United States currently has approximately 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, and it is estimated that 5,000 to 7,000 of them will return to their country within several months.

Source: DW