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Bundeswehr soldiers in Kunduz (archive recording)
Photo: Tim Röhn / imago images
The radical Islamic Taliban took Kabul over the weekend.
Apparently surprising for the West.
Now the federal government is trying to get embassy staff and Afghan aid workers out of the country and to safety at the last minute.
In a recent survey by the opinion research institute Civey for SPIEGEL, a large majority of Germans consider the policy to have failed: Around 76 percent answered yes to the question of whether Germany's Afghanistan policy had failed.
The poll started last Friday, before the Taliban captured Kabul.
For the devastating testimony, the supporters of all parties are, for once, almost unanimous.
The Union's sympathizers rate the German policy on Afghanistan as the best.
The Greens foreign politician Omid Nouripour also accused the federal government of failure on Monday. No emergency plans were made and therefore thousands of people are now in mortal danger, he says in the ARD morning magazine. The federal government had had time for years to forge a plan for this moment, and it failed to materialize.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) expects a growing number of refugees after the Taliban came to power. "Many people will try to leave the country," said Merkel at the meeting of the CDU party committees. SPIEGEL learned this from participants. According to Merkel, the German government will work closely with Afghanistan's neighboring countries: "We should do everything we can to help the countries support the refugees," she said. "The subject will keep us busy for a long time."
The Ministry of the Interior is also preparing for an increasing number of refugees from Afghanistan.
"We must certainly assume that the local people will move and that the situation on the ground will lead to migration," said a ministry spokeswoman.
She did not give details on the expected number of refugees.
When asked whether Germany would be adequately prepared if there were a significant increase in asylum applications from Afghanistan, around 89 percent of Germans in the SPIEGEL survey answered "No".
Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet called for the refugees in the region around Afghanistan to be looked after.
The EU must "work to ensure that aid has priority there," Laschet wrote on Twitter.
"Most people will flee to neighboring countries," he believes.
The international community must therefore "support the neighboring countries and help to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe" (read a comment here).
as / Reuters / dpa / AFP