Trapped in Limbo: Germany’s Political Uncertainty Endangers Thousands of At-Risk Afghans

Trapped in Limbo: Germany’s Political Uncertainty Endangers Thousands of At-Risk Afghans

 The hidden impact of Germany's early re-elections on the situation of Afghans at risk is mostly unknown to an international audience. About 8900 Afghans at risk have a German “approval” to enter the country through a humanitarian visa procedure such as Federal Admission Program, local staff procedure or bridging program. However, they have not reached to Germany. It is unclear how many of them are in third countries like Pakistan and how many of them have already died. Reports suggest that at least 46 people have died. Two of these were clearly killed due to their before mentioned risk situation, while the others are thought to have died of natural causes.(sources: https://taz.de/Antwort-auf-Anfrage-der-Linken/!6079824/ and  https://taz.de/!6081861/ ) Taliban also made headlines in 2024 with arresting and torturing Afghan-German citizen Jama Maqsudi because of him speaking up for women’s rights (https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/menschenrechtsaktivist-aus-bw-in-afghanistan-in-gefangenschaft-100.html). All this underlines the dangerous situation for everyone who believes in women’s rights and freedom.

With the new German government — and even its predecessor — approximately 17,000 cases that had passed a pre-selection round before July 2024 were never decided on, or the decisions were never sent to the applicants. 17,000 people whose cases had passed the pre-selection round before July 2024 were never given a decision (source: https://www.proasyl.de/pressemitteilung/appell-von-44-organisationen-letzte-hoffnung-nicht-zerstoeren-aufnahmeprogramm-afghanistan-retten/), or at least never received one. The situation is peculiar because it is based on the insecurity surrounding a government change. After all, humanitarian programmes for at-risk Afghans were always tied to the government period.

When the former ruling coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) took over in 2021, they promised to help not only those Afghans who had supported the German military, the embassy and the development organisation GIZ, but also human rights activists and other groups facing threats from the Taliban.

It took a while until their promises became reality with the creation of the Federal Admission Program (FAP or in German: Bundesaufnahmeprogramm, short form: BAP) in October 2022. Prior, an emergency program was in place with highly intransparent rules on where and how people could seek help and support. Especially NGOs who worked with people in Afghanistan pushed the government to create a better-structured program with clear rules; the FAP was the result.

Sadly, it did not make things more transparent. The so-called “application places”, consisting of more than 60 NGOs who were selected by the German Federal Ministry of Interior, were access points to the program but never made public. It was up to them whether they wanted to publish their email address. Most NGOs, some of which were small and lacked the capacity to manage hundreds of emails per day, chose to remain anonymous in order to avoid being overwhelmed with requests. Nevertheless, more than 40.000 cases were submitted into the system by the selected NGOs.

These cases were checked not only by an independent 'coordination office', but also by three federal ministries and the federal police. In March 2023, after not having fully started, the program was set on hold to implement an additional security measure; security interviews in Pakistan that were carried out for every person from the age of 16 on. They were treated as adults, even though German law states otherwise. Consequently, several families lost their approvals due to the "negative" interview results of their teenage sons or daughters.

Those teenagers and everyone else above the age of 18 were interviewed individually and asked a lot of personal questions. Their phones and social media profiles were checked, documents were approved, and sometimes even DNA tests were carried out to prove the applicants' relationships.ship of the applicants.

Despite all these efforts, it has to be pointed out that within the framework of this program only 3072 persons received approvals and only around a third of these people have safely reached Germany by now. The others are still waiting, most of them already being in Pakistan waiting to get checked, checked and checked again (more details: https://on-the-ground.info/federal-admission-program-afghanistan-evacuation-at-risk-afghans/258896/).

Additionally to the  people inside Pakistan, another 6000 people have not even entered Pakistan and about 17.000 applicants are still waiting whether their cases will be approved or not.

But with the new government in power, the discussion shifted from how to save Afghans at risk to whether all humanitarian programs should be cancelled. While Germany is closing legal entry routes for people seeking protection, it is tightening its border controls in a legally controversial manner. At the same time a new threat develops in the background. Pakistan has set a deadline (that was once already shifted further) and threatens to deport all those people in the German process back to Afghanistan, if Germany is not quickly giving them visas in order to let them actually travel to Germany.

The current political debate makes it very likely that a couple of thousand Afghans at risk who held approvals in their hands will never actually reach Germany. Instead, the new government plans to deport not only criminals back to Afghanistan - a country ruled by a terrorist organisation that Germany does not recognize as legitimate government.