In the German Afghanistan policy, two questions of honor arise, says Nikolaus Blome

Enlarge image

German soldier on duty near Kunduz (archive picture from 2011)

Photo: Maurizio Gambarini / picture alliance / dpa

In politics,

timing

is

all

almost everything, and if it fails, it tears the curtain: on the Wednesday of the week before last, the federal government decided that it would not want to push rejected Afghan asylum seekers back to their homeland until further notice, because that was too dangerous for those affected. This now also protects convicted criminals with whom the last German deportation flights were filled. On the following Saturday and Sunday, the same federal government decided that it was now time to save Afghan aid workers (“local staff”) from the Taliban's revenge on a larger scale. However, the Taliban were already in Kabul by then. Late arrivals can cost others their lives. The crocodile tears of Foreign Minister Maas, who now calls it a "damned duty" to rescue the local workers, do nothing to change that.

The bottom line is that this federal government has acted faster and more effectively to protect Afghan criminals who are not entitled to asylum in Germany than it did to protect Afghan aid workers, who may have saved the lives of many German soldiers or development workers over the years.

Or, and I admit, that is very emotional: an Afghan who has committed an »honor killing« in Germany can rely on the federal government and the German authorities.

An Afghan who has honored our country for the past 20 years cannot.

This government is now that far down, and I don't like to say that or say that lightly: The question of honor, and therefore of resignation, does not arise in Berlin.

It's an election campaign.

The comparison with "honor killing" is more topical than spontaneously outraged human rights groups will now think: The two Afghans who were arrested 14 days ago on suspicion of "honor killing" under an overwhelming burden of proof must fear a few things as things stand, but one thing not - to be deported to their home country. The question would be: What exactly is political persecution in Taliban Afghanistan that should be feared if one kills one's sister out of a Sharia-heavy "sense of honor"? In any case, the new rulers of Kabul want to stone adulteresses again and generally treat women like cattle. So could it be that the "honor killer" and the average Taliban actually tick similarly - so that one would not have much to fear from the other,could therefore be handed over in whose domain?

more on the subject

Afghanistan disaster: the whole story of an announced failure by SPIEGEL correspondent Christoph Reuter

In short: I think the blanket ban on deportation is wrong, but that is actually the smaller oversight compared to the government official, thousandfold betrayal of the Afghan local staff. Unless someone takes responsibility for this moral and political failure and resigns, then "responsibility" as a term is as dead as Afghanistan as a state. In this case, responsibility is exceptionally easy to measure - and measure: Since it became known in the spring that the Americans and the Bundeswehr were leaving the country, it was at least clear to the experts that the Taliban would ultimately take over the country and take Stone Age vengeance. From this point on, several ministries had great responsibility for "their" local staff. But which minister, which minister began to warn the helpers,to register, evacuate? And which ministry did not do it, and therefore has these very people, its people, on its conscience, if a miracle does not occur?

Before the start of the military operation in Kabul, the Ministry of Defense “got out” almost 2,000 helpers (and family members), as Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer says. The Foreign Ministry and the Development Aid Ministry, Messrs Maas and Müller, have so far owed their respective figures. You would have to explain why to a committee of inquiry. There is blood on their houses. Does that only upset me?

It was a little over ten years ago that Baron zu Guttenberg resigned as Federal Defense Minister because he cheated on his doctoral thesis. In the German Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch from the Left Party stated at the time that the nobility would have known earlier what to do in such moments (of being caught in a hopeless way). That was badly off the mark even on the downwardly open left-wing scale, but there was still a core of truth in it: In the past, somebody actually knew from time to time, even if it was the nobility, what you had to do at certain moments and therefore did.

Although there has been so much rubbish and murderous abuse with this term in Germany, I ask myself: Can a state lose its honor because its government doesn't know what to do?

I think so.

This is where we are now, and no one should think that honor - or, for whom it is too fat, to keep your word - is not a category of international politics.

Twenty years after September 11th, the western states lost this war because they no longer wanted to wage it.

Sometimes democracies may not be able to act differently, precisely because the majority determines.

But what did the 59 German soldiers die for when those who saved others from the same fate are now betrayed?