30 more Afghan refugees returned to Kabul from Germany
Despite the insecure and unstable situation in Afghanistan, the German government has once again deported a group of Afghan refugees to their country. The deportation of a group of refugees whose asylum applications were rejected has been met with widespread criticism and protests.
A plane carrying 30 refugees deported from Germany landed at Kabul Airport on the morning of Thursday, April 25.
The newspaper "Die Welt" reported, citing Kabul airport officials, that the plane landed at the airport at 7:10 a.m. local time.
The mass deportation of Afghan refugees from Germany whose asylum applications were not approved began in December 2016 and has been repeated 22 times.
Including those who were returned to Kabul on Thursday, the number of Afghan refugees deported in the past two years and several months reaches 563.
In one case of a mass deportation of Afghan refugees in July last year, one of the 69 people who were 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 led to the mass deportation of Afghan refugees from Germany facing widespread criticism from human rights organizations and some German opposition parties.
Germany has made it a precondition for returning asylum seekers that their countries of origin or birth be assessed as “safe.” Critics say all evidence suggests that security in Afghanistan is not guaranteed and that the country is in crisis and conflict.
Continuing conflict and civilian casualties
In Afghanistan, clashes and battles between government forces and extremist Islamists from the Taliban group and the Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists continue on a daily basis, and there is rarely a day when civilians do not fall victim to these clashes.
In the most recent example of these conflicts, last week the Afghan Ministry of Communications was the target of a terrorist attack claimed by ISIS, which killed at least 14 people.
According to a United Nations report, 581 civilians were killed and 1,192 injured in clashes in Afghanistan in the first quarter of this year. At the same time, the number of casualties in these three months has decreased by 23 percent compared to the same period last year.
It seems that the decrease in the number of civilian casualties in the first quarter of this year does not necessarily mean a decrease in their number throughout the year. About two weeks ago, the Taliban group announced the start of its “spring offensive” in Afghanistan.
Taliban militants, especially with the end of the winter season, regularly attack government forces' checkpoints and checkpoints, and in the first half of April alone, 250 members of the Afghan security and law enforcement forces were killed in various regions of the country.
New round of talks between the Taliban and the US
As the crisis and military conflicts in Afghanistan continue, efforts are underway to end the situation through political dialogue. In recent months, several rounds of direct negotiations have been held between US government representatives and senior Taliban officials, one of the goals of which is to hold talks between the extremist Islamists and the central government.
According to the newspaper "Die Welt", a Taliban spokesman announced that a new round of talks between representatives of the group and the United States will take place "in the coming days or weeks" in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
Representatives of the two sides were supposed to begin preliminary talks in Doha last Saturday and Sunday, and the Afghan government planned to send a 250-member delegation to Qatar for this purpose. Apparently, the Taliban have refused to negotiate with them, partly because of the large size of the Afghan government delegation.
One of the Taliban's demands in talks with American officials is the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, which the US president is said to have planned in advance. According to reports, Donald Trump plans to bring some of the American troops stationed in Afghanistan home by the end of spring 2019. The United States currently has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, and it is believed that 5,000 to 7,000 of them will return to their country in the next few months.
Source: DW
