Debates over whether the German government should be allowed to work together with the Taliban to deport criminal offenders from Afghanistan have been brewing since May 31, when an Afghan man allegedly fatally stabbed a police officer in the German city of Mannheim. 

But a new report published in the German magazine Spiegel suggests that the German government has been seriously discussing the deportation of Afghans since even before the attack. The German government has banned deportations to Afghanistan since the Taliban took power in Kabul in August 2021. 

According to the report, published on Sunday (June 16), a delegation from Germany’s interior ministry visited Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, in late May to discuss a solution that would allow the government to deport Afghans without negotiating with the Taliban. 

Spiegel reports that the delegation proposed sending Afghans to Tashkent, from where they would take flights to Kabul via the KamAir airline. Spiegel has not disclosed its delegation sources, and the interior ministry did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment. 

Before making a deal on deportations to Afghanistan, the government of Uzbekistan wants to sign a migration agreement with Germany to regulate the entry of Uzbek skilled workers to the country, Spiegel reports, adding that the German special representative for migration agreements will travel to the central Asian country next week.

That meeting in Uzbekistan will come on the back of a Conference of Interior Ministers meeting to be held this week in Potsdam, Germany, where members will discuss asylum policy. 

Taliban negotiations 

Meanwhile, politicians in Germany, including Chancellor Olaf Scholz, are calling for negotiations with the Taliban to deport Afghans living in Germany who have been convicted of crimes. 

"I am outraged when someone who has sought protection here then commits the most serious crimes," Scholz told lawmakers in the German Bundestag in early June, DW reported. "Such offenders should be deported — even if they come from Syria or Afghanistan," he said. "Criminals and terrorist threats have no place here."

Scholz’s statements came in response to a fatal knife attack on a German police officer in Mannheim that is suspected to have been carried out by a 25-year-old Afghan man who has been living in Germany for a decade. He entered the country as an unaccompanied minor and, although his asylum application was rejected, later received a "Duldung" (tolerated status) to remain in Germany after he came of age.

The man is suspected to have stabbed five people, including the police officer, at an anti-Islam rally. 

Politicians have also recently called for the deportation of Syrians who have been convicted of crimes. Germany has not deported Syrians for years due to the Syrian Civil War.

"It has long been known that there is no longer a war in the heart of Syria," Brandenburg's interior minister Michael Stübgen, a CDU politician, told German press agency dpa at a meeting in Potsdam. "There is nothing to prevent us, like Sweden, from starting to return serious criminals and intensive offenders there."

The legality of deportations to specific countries (like Syria or Afghanistan) is ultimately determined by the courts and Germany’s federal office for migration and refugees.

With dpa and epd