Germany has suspended deportations of migrants to Afghanistan due to the tense security situation as Taliban insurgents make sweeping gains in the Mideast country.
Interior Minister Horst Seehofer ordered the suspension “for the time being,” spokesman Steve Alter said Wednesday.
Alter said earlier Wednesday that almost 30,000 Afghans in Germany are currently required to leave the country.
The ministry “continues to be of the view that there are people in Germany who need to leave the country, as soon as possible,” Alter told reporters.
Last week, six other European Union member countries argued that the forced deportation of migrants back to Afghanistan must continue despite the government in Kabul suspending such “non-voluntary returns” for three months.
In a letter dated Aug. 5, the interior ministers of Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands urged the EU’s executive branch to “intensify talks” with the Afghan government to ensure that the deportations of refugees would continue.
“Stopping returns sends the wrong signal and is likely to motivate even more Afghan citizens to leave their home for the EU,” the ministers wrote to the European Commission.
The commission confirmed Tuesday that it had received the letter and would reply when ready. Asked whether Afghanistan was a safe place to forcibly send people, spokesman Adalbert Jahnz said: “It is up to each (EU) member state to make an individual assessment of whether a return is possible.”
Emboldened by the Biden administration’s decision to pull American troops out of Afghanistan and end NATO’s troop training mission in Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents have captured five out of the country’s 34 provincial capitals in less than a week.
Afghan security forces, which have been backed, trained and financed with billions of dollars in a 20-year-long Western military effort that included many EU countries, appear unable to cope with the offensive.