The Bundeswehr’s risky evacuation mission at the airport in the Afghan capital Kabul can last until September 30th at the latest. This emerges from the submission for the cabinet resolution planned for this Wednesday, which is available to the Tagesspiegel.
“Within the framework of available capacities, the evacuation should also extend to personnel of the international community and other designated persons, including particularly vulnerable representatives of Afghan civil society,” said Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) and Foreign Minister in the cover letter Heiko Maas (SPD) emphasizes.
Up to 600 soldiers can be deployed. “The additional expenditures for the deployment of armed German armed forces will probably total around 40 million euros by September 30, 2021,” emphasized the ministers. “With the implosion of the Afghan government and the takeover of power by the Taliban, the local security structures in the capital Kabul collapsed. The situation is extremely confusing.”
The deployment takes place in accordance with the constitutional requirements for deployments of armed German armed forces abroad, “in particular on the basis of Article 87a paragraph 1 and 2 of the Basic Law”.
According to the cabinet, the Bundestag is to approve the new mandate retrospectively on August 25th. This is possible because the government sees “imminent danger”. The days before the evacuation, which started very late, and the months of several ministries getting caught up in the question of which local workers are allowed to go to Germany, how and when, also raised the question of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s (CDU) responsibility for this. And whether several days were not lost because of procedural issues.
Did the dispute over a new mandate delay the deployment?
The Tagesspiegel has a document in which lawyers from the Foreign Office drafted a statement on Friday (August 13) on “Parliamentary participation in the deployment of military forces to secure our measures in Kabul”. At this point in time, the Bundeswehr was ready for the evacuation mission. The most important point: The existing Afghanistan mandate approved by the Bundestag for the participation of armed German forces in the NATO-led “Resolute Support” mission is still valid until January 31, 2022 and is “a sufficient basis for such a deployment”. Merkel and Kramp-Karrenbauer insisted on working out a new mandate, and the rescue operation from Germany only started on Monday morning. The Chancellery denies that the mandate issue caused a delay.
Can the Taliban be urged for safe conduct?
The question of how the Afghans who are trapped in Kabul and hoping to leave the country can get to the military part of the airport that is secured by the US armed forces is becoming more and more central, as the Taliban are setting up more and more checkpoints.
Merkel will visit Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday. Can he possibly influence the Taliban so that they also give Afghan local forces safe conduct? “You have to talk to the Taliban at some point,” it says in German government circles. Markus Potzel, formerly Ambassador to Kabul himself and since 2017 the Federal Government’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is to sound out what is feasible in Doha, there are representatives of Qatar, US negotiators are there – and representatives of the Taliban.
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