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Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD) votes in the Bundestag on the evacuation mission of the Bundeswehr
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
The Bundeswehr's evacuation mission in Afghanistan has been underway since mid-August.
It has now been subsequently confirmed in the Bundestag.
The MPs approved the limited term until September 30th on Wednesday with a large majority.
The federal government had submitted an application for this.
539 MPs approved the motion, nine voted "no".
There were 90 abstentions.
Most of the left abstained from voting.
Previously, members of the opposition in the Bundestag had drawn a devastating conclusion of Germany's Afghanistan policy.
The "failed Afghanistan mission" is the "blackest point" in the 16-year-old chancellorship of Angela Merkel (CDU), said left parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch.
Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock spoke of a "foreign policy disaster".
FDP leader Christian Linder accused the federal government of “irresponsibility and inability to act”.
The AfD parliamentary group leader Alexander Gauland accused the government of sacrificing the lives of German soldiers for a doomed mission.
Baerbock accuses the coalition of deliberately ignoring alarm signals
Green leader Baerbock accused the German government of deliberately ignoring the alarm signals that the radical Islamic Taliban had come to power in Afghanistan.
You have made the country stable "because you wanted to deport further to Afghanistan," said Baerbock to the government.
"In the last few weeks you have made a political decision that motives for domestic policy are valued higher than our responsibility for foreign policy."
Now it becomes clear "what a foreign policy disaster you as the Federal Government have led not only the Bundeswehr into, but also the people in Afghanistan who have relied on our help," said Baerbock.
The government's failure to rescue the local staff in good time meant that they were now "trapped".
Bartsch also complained that the government had let down its local helpers in Afghanistan.
The local helpers should have been brought out before the Bundeswehr withdrew - this would have been "the logical order," said Bartsch.
Bartsch assigned the political responsibility for the failed mission to Chancellor Merkel.
FDP parliamentary group leader Lindner also blamed the federal government for failure.
"The past few days and weeks have increased the impression of disorganized irresponsibility," he said.
The current situation is "a catastrophe", but it "does not come out of nowhere".
Hundreds more people could have been evacuated if the government had acted in time.
The Federal Foreign Office assumes that there is still a "high four-digit or low five-digit number" of vulnerable people in Kabul who are fundamentally eligible for evacuation.
Nevertheless, the Bundeswehr airlift to Kabul will end in a few days with the United States withdrawn.
mfh / AFP / dpa
