The federal government has acknowledged that dozens of former local workers and other vulnerable people who were yet to be evacuated from Afghanistan have now died. This emerges from the response of the federal government to a request from the left-wing member of the Bundestag Clara Bünger, which is available to the German Press Agency. First, the “Spiegel” had reported about it.
Different numbers of deaths of people who had been accepted were known in the ministries, including six at the Federal Foreign Office and 25 at the Ministry of Defence. Of these 25 former local workers, 12 died “of natural causes” or had an accident, and six died violent deaths. However, there is no indication in any of them that they were killed because of their work for the German contingent. In other cases, the cause of death was unclear, it said.
Tens of thousands pledges made
Overall, in the past 15 months, the Federal Government has promised more than 36,000 admissions for former local Afghan workers and other Afghans who are particularly at risk, including their entitled family members. More than two-thirds of the people who have received a commitment for Germany have now been able to leave Afghanistan – mostly via Pakistan. One of the problems with those who remained is that the Taliban require a passport, which not everyone who wants to leave the country has.
The left MP Bünger calls the balance sheet a “disaster”. The old government failed miserably in getting people at risk out of Afghanistan in time, she told Der Spiegel. “And the new government hasn’t even managed to secure at least those who have been accepted.”
The Bundeswehr withdrew from Afghanistan at the end of June 2021 after almost 20 years. The Taliban took power in the capital Kabul in mid-August 2021 without much resistance from the Afghan armed forces. Since July, a committee of inquiry of the Bundestag has also been dealing with the events at that time. It is also about the fate of the local forces who are still waiting to leave for Germany.
