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Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (SPD)
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ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
It was clear that Heiko Maas' appearance on the Foreign Affairs Committee this Monday would not be a pleasant one. Since the hasty abandonment of the German embassy in Kabul and the late evacuation of Afghan local staff, the opposition has been pestering the minister and his foreign office with dozens of questions. The Greens and the FDP are calling for a parliamentary committee of inquiry into the events surrounding the withdrawal for the next legislative period. The special meeting of the Foreign Affairs Committee provided a foretaste of what Maas would expect in such a committee of inquiry.
The reason was a secret wire report from the German embassy in the USA, the content of which SPIEGEL made public shortly before the meeting. Accordingly, the German ambassador in Washington, Emily Haber, warned on August 6, one and a half weeks before the fall of the Afghan capital, even of a Saigon scenario. The pictures of a helicopter during the chaotic evacuation of the US embassy there in 1975 are still considered a nightmare in the USA.
The Afghan government could collapse faster than expected, warned Haber in her report to the Foreign Office and warned that the emergency plans for the German embassy in Kabul should be activated. Berlin should be prepared for the fact that if the situation worsened, the Americans would act alone and without consulting the Allies, according to the wire report, which was classified as secret because of its high-ranking sources. One of Haber's interlocutors in the USA was the head of the CIA himself.
According to the participants, Maas was not at all amused that the explosive content had become public. At the end of last week, the federal government had already rejected the request by FDP MP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann to make the cable report available for confidential inspection at the Bundestag's secret protection office. The Deputy FDP parliamentary group leader, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, asked the Foreign Minister on Monday how the report ended up with SPIEGEL.
The publication was not in the interest of the federal government, replied Maas, that it would cause "lasting damage." It was agreed with the Chancellery that the report would not be made available to the MPs in the secret protection office. At the same time, according to participants, the minister tried to downplay the explosiveness of the cable. It was one of many wire reports, just with a particularly gloomy tenor, said the Foreign Minister.
When he found out about the cable, Gregor Gysi wanted to know from Die Linke. He didn't remember that, answered Maas. However, his ministry did not leave the embassy staff in the "green zone" of Kabul for an irresponsible period. Evacuation plans have been in place all along. However, the situation changed decisively on August 13, when the embassy received indications that the United States was beginning to evacuate its representation.
The Deputy Head of Strategy and Operations in the Ministry of Defense, Major General Andreas Hoppe, caused additional irritation at the meeting.
The military reported that they had received the cable from the USA early on and analyzed it.
However, one came to "a different assessment" than the Foreign Office.
Hoppe did not explain what exactly he meant by that.
He will probably be questioned again on Wednesday in the Defense Committee.
The general only referred to the meeting of the Afghanistan crisis team on the Friday before the fall of Kabul.
Only there one came to the conclusion that the German embassy had to be evacuated.
Several MPs, including the committee chairman Norbert Röttgen from the CDU, reacted to Hoppe's statements with incomprehension, it is said.
"We were told on the afternoon of August 13 in the briefing of the stewards that Kabul would not fall quickly," criticized the FDP external expert Bijan Djir-Sarai. “Today it is said that the crisis team had already decided on the evacuation in the morning. The front and back don't go together. Today's meeting brought more questions than answers. "