BERLIN (Reuters) – Ahmad, a 30-year-old Afghan who worked for the German military, is now in hiding in Kabul in fear of his life.
Like many other local staff who worked for Western governments and their armies, Ahmad was left behind when the International Security Assistance Force pulled out in August.
“I am sure, when the Taliban find out that I worked for ISAF, that will be the last day of my life,” he told Reuters over Skype.
Ahmad says his contact at the German Defence Ministry last called him in October. “‘We’ll get you out’, he told me,” Ahmad recalls, but then nothing happened.
Now, Ahmad is in touch with the Patenschaftsnetzwerk Afghanische Ortskraefte, a German private aid group trying to help people like him escape the country.
The group says it could evacuate thousands of former aid workers from Afghanistan if provided with public money.
Talks with government officials in Berlin on the issue have started, but are progressing slowly, said group leader Marcus Grotian, a German army officer who was himself stationed in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz in 2011.
He estimates some 12,000 people in Afghanistan could still be eligible to go to Germany because they worked for the German army during the international mission there, or fought for women’s and human rights in the now Taliban-held country.
The German government says it is doing everything possible to help former local staff leave Afghanistan.
“Are we satisfied with the speed we take people out of Afghanistan to a safe place? No, certainly not”, a Foreign Ministry spokesman in Berlin said. “We would prefer having brought all of them already here.”
Since the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, Germany has issued around 11,700 visa for locals, the spokesman said. But it is difficult to get them out as Germany has no embassy or consulate there at the moment.
So far, Grotian’s organisation has taken some 300 such people out of Afghanistan, providing them with the necessary documents and bringing them to Germany via Pakistan or Iran.
“We need to act,” he added, referring to reports of stonings and other human rights violations by the Taliban, especially aimed at people who cooperated with the international forces.
One person the group helped is Mohammadi, a 32-year-old engineer who worked as a translator in Afghanistan for the German military from 2010 until the end of the mission in 2021.
Last August, Mohammadi went to the besieged Kabul airport several times but could not get himself, his wife and their three children out of Afghanistan, he told Reuters.
“Finally, I got a contact at the Patenschaftnetzwerk, and they took us out,” Mohammadi said. He and his family arrived in Germany in October 2021. “I am very grateful,” he said.
(Editing by Paul Carrel and Alison Williams)
