Enlarge image
Taliban fighters in the Afghan city of Farah
Photo: Mohammad Asif Khan / AP
SPIEGEL:
Mr. Nouripour, at the weekend the Taliban took over the former Bundeswehr location in Kunduz and are setting up there.
Were you surprised?
Nouripour:
Unfortunately not.
The Taliban have been gaining influence every day for weeks and are advancing without significant resistance from the Afghan security forces.
Unfortunately, given the history of the province and the composition of the population, it was foreseeable that Kunduz would soon be there, and yet it is a sign of how little the Afghan government has to counter the Taliban.
SPIEGEL:
You have many contacts in Afghanistan and you can communicate in the local language.
Do you hear something from Kunduz?
How is the situation there?
Nouripour:
Kunduz City is currently not completely in Taliban hands.
But there is tremendous fear on the spot, and there is hardly any trust in the security forces.
Especially since the Taliban have been able to temporarily conquer Kunduz three times in recent years.
The current situation in Taloqan, another former Bundeswehr location, appears to be even worse.
And in other cities everyone is wondering whether what happened in Kunduz is not possible for them too.
Many want the international forces back, but their help is not to be expected.
SPIEGEL:
Who is responsible for the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Taliban?
Nouripour:
The chain of mistakes is almost endless. The international community has deployed the military in Afghanistan for 20 years and has invested billions in development aid. Even so, not enough statehood could be built up. The old and corrupt warlords were often preferred to civil society. The country's economy was never put on its own. The support of some regional actors for the Taliban was never seriously addressed. The distance between the noble speeches at international conferences and reality can hardly be measured any longer. This is one of the reasons why it is incidentally incomprehensible why the federal government has refused to evaluate the operation independently for years.
SPIEGEL:
That is probably why there was hardly any NATO partner who wanted to continue the unsuccessful mission.
Nouripour: It
is understandable that the heads of government were not very enthusiastic.
How can you sell such a failure to your own voters?
But it was the then US President Donald Trump who hammered in the final nail in the coffin for the future of Afghanistan.
By negotiating directly with the Taliban, he sealed the death of the authority of the Afghan government, which sat on the fringes like a schoolchild.
It was like a stimulus program for the return of the Taliban.
They knew that without the US nobody would stay in Afghanistan anymore.
more on the subject
Escape from the Taliban: Why the Federal Government has to help the Afghans A comment by Maximilian Popp
SPIEGEL:
In the end, however, it was the new US President Joe Biden who carried out the turbo withdrawal from Afghanistan in the spring - and not Donald Trump.
Was that a mistake?
Nouripour:
That was the issue of a death certificate for the Afghan government.
And it confirms once again that the people in Afghanistan are, in a way, just the pawns of our domestic politics.
The USA and its allies, including us Germans, are not withdrawing because of the situation in Afghanistan, but because our publics are tired of Afghanistan.
SPIEGEL:
Is it actually still a withdrawal or an escape because you have realized that you have failed?
Nouripour:
I would call it a withdrawal from exhaustion.
The Taliban won with their strategy of patience.
You never bet on defeating the NATO troops militarily.
They waited until our patience was used up.
With the calculation they won.
SPIEGEL:
After 20 years of war in Afghanistan, all NATO countries were actually very tired of the mission.
Was there still an alternative to the quick trigger?
Nouripour: It
was clear that the Bundeswehr and its partner armies would not stay forever.
The fact that the withdrawal would take place without conditions, without safeguards, without a logistical bridgehead for aid to the Afghan security forces, is devastating.
SPIEGEL:
The leading Union foreign politician Norbert Röttgen is calling for a new military operation to stop the Taliban's advance.
Is that an option?
Nouripour:
That train left a long time ago.
The US is clearly saying that the Afghans are now on their own, and without the US there will be no military action.
It is still interesting that those who are now calling for the Bundeswehr to return to the Hindu Kush were unusually quiet or even welcomed the US withdrawal announcements.
There is a double standard here.
more on the subject
A returnees from Afghanistan reports: I was at war for GermanyA guest contribution by Marcel Bohnert
SPIEGEL:
What could Germany still do to improve the situation?
Nouripour:
I would breathe a sigh of relief if the federal government stopped paying naive lip service.
Talks with the Taliban can make sense, but they shouldn't be believed.
Without exception, they have broken all the promises they made in the last negotiations.
Talks with the Afghan government at ministerial level are currently more urgent.
SPIEGEL: In
parallel to the deterioration in the security situation, Interior Minister Seehofer wanted to continue deporting criminals to Afghanistan.
Today he rowed back and is suspending the deportations for the time being.
What do you think is the reason?
Nouripour:
I found Interior Minister Seehofer's attitude to be shabby in recent months. If he finds the security situation good enough for deportations, then he could have got on the plane to Kabul himself, preferably with Armin Laschet and Franziska Giffey. The latter even recently demanded deportations to Syria. In the end, the current role backwards is only a bridge over the federal elections, as the public criticism became too great in view of the dramatic situation. After that, the Union will come back around the corner with the demand for deportations.
SPIEGEL:
Your candidate for chancellor Annalena Baerbock has repeatedly spoken out against such deportations in public.
At the same time there were Afghans from Baden-Württemberg, where the Greens rule, on the last plane.
Which line is valid now?
Nouripour:
We Greens are in favor of stopping deportations to Afghanistan at all levels, but we are not involved in the federal government, which sets the course on the issue.
In the end you can see that the Federal Minister of the Interior decides.
And he has been too caught up in his cynicism in the past few months.