After a hiatus of almost a year, Germany has organised a second deportation flight to Afghanistan.
On the morning of July 18, a Qatar Airways jet took off from Leipzig and headed for Kabul. It was only the second such flight since the radical Islamist Taliban regime took over the Asian country in August 2021.
The German interior ministry said all of the 81 deported were Afghan men who had committed crimes in Germany and were required to leave the country.
The resumption of deportations of criminals was agreed upon by the new government of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Deportations to Afghanistan were expressly included in the coalition agreement.
German interior minister Alexander Dobrindt hailed the flight as another step towards a change of migration policy: “We managed to organise another deportation flight for criminals to Afghanistan.
“There is no right to stay in the country for serious offenders”, Dobrindt said, promising further similar future action.
Thorsten Frei, chief of staff of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, made a similar promise, telling German tabloid Bild that there would be “regular deportation flights to Afghanistan and Syria”.
The deportation was made possible through co-operation with the Emirate of Qatar. Qatar, a sponsor of various Islamist terrorist groups, acted as a mediator with the Taliban regime, as it had already done for the first German deportation flight to Afghanistan in August 2024.
The German Government was also aiming for a bilateral agreement with the Taliban regime to make the direct organisation of deportations possible.
Germany, though, has still not recognised the Taliban as the rightful rulers of Afghanistan and would not do so in the foreseeable future, according to foreign minister Johann Wadephul.
There were reportedly enough passengers to fill the seats of future deportation flights. According to government data, as of end of May, there were 11,000 Afghan citizens in Germany who were legally required to leave the country. Altogether, there are currently 446,000 Afghans living in Germany.
The first deportation flight took off on 30 August, 2024, with just 28 criminals onboard. They included a man who raped an 11-year old girl in a park in Neustrelitz in the State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 2022. Also on board was a man who took part in the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl in Illerkirchberg in Baden-Württemberg in 2019.
That flight had been widely decried as a cheap political stunt designed to showcase a tougher stance on immigration by the then-ruling SPD ahead of the September 2024 elections in the States of Thuringia and Saxony, where the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) recorded top results.
The deportation made further negative headlines when it became known that the SPD-led interior ministry had provided the deported criminals with generous cash stipends.
