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Taliban fighters next to fully veiled women in the streets of Kabul
Photo: Ebrahim Noroozi/AP
It was August 16, 2021, the evening after the fall of Kabul, when a Bundeswehr captain from Eberswalde took away some of the Germans' illusions.
"I don't think that's realistic," Marcus Grotian replied to the "heute journal" when asked about the announced evacuation of thousands of local workers left behind in Afghanistan.
And: "The safe houses became death traps."
The interview resonated strongly in the discussion in Germany, but it changed nothing.
Nine months later, 20,315 local workers and their families are said to have been evacuated from Afghanistan.
Despite concrete commitments, almost 11,000 were still waiting for the Federal Republic to accept them.
That comes from the answer of the Federal Ministry of the Interior to a request from the Left MP Clara Bünger, which is available to SPIEGEL.
This means that 65 percent of the promised rescues have now taken place.
However, the fact that the rest is still pending shows how difficult it is for the federal government to fulfill promises made by the grand coalition that was voted out.
And this despite the fact that the traffic light coalition had promised to help even more people than initially planned.
Non-governmental organizations criticize that not even all those seeking protection were recorded.
In fact, the names of the members of the M family, for example, are still missing from the evacuation lists. This is widely ramified and belongs to the upper Afghan middle class.
They would probably continue to lead an undisturbed life today if the family had not decided at the beginning of August 2021 to make five houses in and around Kabul available as so-called safe houses for threatened local workers for several weeks.
The story of the M. family shows how supporters of the Germans are still denied help - and how the current federal government shirks its responsibilities, despite promises that sound different.
Sabur M., who coordinated the help for his relatives, estimates that 400 to 500 Afghans have found refuge in the houses of the M. family.
Most of those seeking protection had worked for the Germans, they were cooks, translators, long-time employees.
After the security situation had become more and more dangerous for months, many feared for their lives last summer at the latest.
The Germans could offer little protection.
Family M. yes.
They took in up to a hundred people per building – the original plan was for 30. In some cases, the Germans even sent their former employees into private hiding places themselves.
Among those admitted was a KSK interpreter, about whose case SPIEGEL reported at the time.
Safe houses as a death trap
The former local staff and their families were placed in the safe houses via the "sponsorship network" headed by Marcus Grotian.
An association that has been supporting local workers for years.
As a soldier in the Hindu Kush, Grotian himself experienced how important the Afghans were for the Germans over the years.
To this day, he says, he is ashamed of the German way of dealing with the Afghans.
He is particularly concerned with the fate of Sabur M. and his family.
Because after they had supported the helpers of the Germans, many family members of Sabur M. had to go into hiding themselves.
A day before Kabul fell to the Taliban, the hosts and Grotian's sponsorship network decided to disband the overcrowded sanctuaries.
In the meantime, the safe houses may once again have become a death trap – for their former operators.
Shortly after the Taliban invaded, Sabur M.'s cousin was called in for questioning.
To this day he does not want to talk about details.
Only this much: He had to admit to having operated at least one safe house.
He was released only with the explanation that he had known nothing about the previous activities of his guests and the guarantee of an influential man.
"At the time I thought he wouldn't survive," says Sabur M. today.
Shortly after the interrogation, the family went into hiding.
Since then, Sabur M's relatives have been waiting for rescue.
He himself was born and raised in Germany, but after the Taliban took power, he too was only able to return via detours.
His cousin in Kabul and the others were even less fortunate.
Some fled to Iran until the money ran out.
Others went into hiding with relatives.
"The biggest mistake of my life was that I persuaded my family to help the Germans," says Sabur M. today.
Like many Afghans who are still waiting to leave the country, the members of the M. family were unlucky not to be on any official evacuation list.
The lists included vulnerable local workers and family members, human rights activists and NGO workers.
How and with what reliability these lists were created in the summer of 2021 is still a political issue today.
Above all, it is clear that they were closed again early – to the chagrin of many, who as a result have little chance of rescue.
The Greens pledged to tackle this problem in the traffic light government.
Paragraphs 22 and 23 of the Residence Act make it possible to issue a residence permit on instructions from authorities such as the Federal Ministry of the Interior.
This requires an assessment that shows that the protection is necessary “to safeguard the political interests of the Federal Republic of Germany” or for urgent humanitarian reasons.
In an express agreement with the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said in a government survey at the end of April that the possibilities of the Residence Act would be used more in the future and "especially those in need of protection, women, human rights defenders who were not on the old list, should now be taken out".
A long-demanded admission program specifically for refugees from Afghanistan is also planned for this purpose.
The funds for this, at least 25 million euros, were released this week by the budget committee.
In the future, it should be possible to take in 5,000 people per year, 20,000 in total.
In fact, it seems that the authorities are already working harder to issue new acceptances.
In the last week, 770 Afghans were admitted, according to the Federal Ministry of the Interior in response to a request from Left Party MP Clara Bünger, which SPIEGEL has seen.
If things continued at this pace, the annual quota would be exhausted in just over a month and a half.
Bünger therefore calls the planned number “ridiculous”.
She calls for faster support: “Tens of thousands need help, and they need it now, not in three or five years.”
It is not entirely clear who is being helped
Even who is being helped and how is apparently still not fully clear.
When Bünger asked, the Ministry of the Interior said that the visas issued under Section 22 had so far been "not systematically" collected, although they are supposed to play a more important role in the future.
Most recently, teachers and journalists were named as particularly vulnerable groups.
In the government survey at the end of April, however, "those in need of protection" were mentioned in general.
However, no institution seems to feel responsible for the M. family, who hid the local staff from the Germans for weeks.
When Bünger asked, the Federal Ministry of the Interior initially answered soberly that there were no plans to admit him for urgent humanitarian reasons.
The Baerbock-led State Department recently used the same reasoning when it responded to another "urgent request" from MPs on May 10.
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Former local workers demonstrate in front of a safe house belonging to the M. family for their rescue
Photo: private / DER SPIEGEL
Inclusion under paragraph 22 is still only possible in "very special individual cases".
The admission of several hundred threatened helpers from the Germans does not seem to be enough for this - according to the letter.
Sabur M. had already drawn up a list of around 90 names for the evacuation of his relatives from the safe houses and sent them to Germany several times.
After no help, he reduced it to 71 people to improve the chances of admission.
The document is available to SPIEGEL.
All young women who are already married were eliminated.
According to Taliban logic, they belong to other families and are, presumably, at least better protected.
"I can't describe how difficult it was for me," says Sabur M.
For the federal government, however, the family is apparently not worthy of protection in any constellation.
"As far as is apparent from the information you have given us," reads the response from Baerbock's ministry, "your request does not relate to a case that allows recording...".
For Marcus Grotian from the sponsorship network, it is proof that there is still not enough willingness to help threatened Afghans.
"The worst thing for me is that these people trusted us," he says.
“Here, for humanitarian reasons, people put themselves at risk to help our employees.
They first had to step in because the federal government reacted either too late or not at all.«
The left-wing MP Bünger calls for the case of the M. family to be reassessed: "If Annalena Baerbock wants to retain any credibility, she must ensure that this decision is revised and that the family is allowed to be admitted to Germany."
For Sabur M., however, the question of whether his relatives are not threatened only sounds like mockery.
It was unclear to him what else had to happen in order to prove a hazard.
The rule of law, the separation of executive and judiciary, has long been abolished in Afghanistan.
The danger is omnipresent for his relatives who have gone into hiding, it lurks at every checkpoint and during every raid.
Or to put it more simply: "The Taliban don't send out a warning before they shoot you down."
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