They have interpreted for the military, worked as craftsmen and put them in touch with local society: one year after the German armed forces withdrew from Afghanistan, more than 10,000 former Afghan local workers are still living unprotected in the country on the Hindu Kush. This was pointed out by the chairman of the Potsdam-based local Afghan sponsorship network, Bundeswehr officer Marcus Grotian.
Together with the Evangelical Academy Berlin, the refugee organization Pro Asyl and the Bundeswehr Association, the association organized the first “Conference of Afghan Local Forces” on Saturday in the French Friedrichstadtkirche in Berlin.
“Germany is obliged to take in these people,” said the managing director of Pro Asyl, Günther Burkardt. “Because they were endangered by Germany’s actions.”
A lack of exit options from Afghanistan is just as much a problem as the question of who is actually the local employee. Employees of subcontractors who work for the Bundeswehr should also be included in the future, demanded the human rights commissioner of the federal government, Luise Amtsberg (Greens). “The concept of family should go beyond the German nuclear family,” said Amtsberg. “Even the 18-year-old daughter who still lives in the parents’ household should be allowed to come to Germany in the future, although she is legally considered to be of legal age.”
However, the disappointment among Afghans also became clear. “The hasty withdrawal of Western troops has given the Taliban power,” said former Afghan Deputy Peace Minister Alema Alema. “It has betrayed everyone who has worked for democracy and human rights in recent years.”
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And those who have made it to Germany often fail in the housing market and lack of places in integration courses, said Hamidullah Arman, who came in 2015 as a local worker and today advises compatriots in an integration project in Schöneberg. “People who worked as local staff for the Bundeswehr and entered Germany with a visa are then treated here in exactly the same way as people who came to Germany illegally as refugees,” criticized Arman.
Brandenburg, for example, took on 402 Afghan local workers in the first half of the year, according to a response from the state government to a request from state parliamentarian Andrea Johlige (left). However, there can be no question of family reunification: only one person has so far been allowed to come to Brandenburg in this way. The Eberswalder Grotian quarrels with his federal state. “In Brandenburg we had great difficulties even getting to the people in the reception facilities,” he said. Only a letter to the prime minister changed that.
With the withdrawal of troops from Mali, the topic of local forces remains relevant. “How are you going to make sure that the local forces there aren’t victims of terrorists after six months?” Grotian asked. “Are people aware that their 18-year-old sons and daughters are not allowed to go to Germany?”
