Al Jazeera, 27 My 2017
AAN’s Thomas Ruttig weighs in on the deportations of Afghans from Germany.
“The discussion is not about whether Afghanistan is a safe country which can receive deportees or not,” said Thomas Ruttig, a German researcher and cofounder of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. “It’s more or less purely about domestic politics here in Germany.”
According to Ruttig, between 2005 and 2015 Germany only deported Afghan asylum seekers under exceptional circumstances, because their home was considered too dangerous to return to.
“But without the situation in Afghanistan really changing for the better, the government scrapped that.”
“Afghanistan is still one of the most intense, violent conflicts in the world. It’s not that the government doesn’t have information and they don’t know about it. But it’s for domestic purposes that it’s presented in another way,” he said.
“Germany, and other countries, wanted to withdraw their soldiers [from Afghanistan] by the end of 2014 first and then 2016. It didn’t happen. It’s a clear indication that the time is not right for that, and deportations into that situation are really irresponsible.”
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This article was last updated on 9 Mar 2020
