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Photos of throngs making an attempt to flee Kabul are shameful for Western nations, Germany’s president mentioned on Tuesday (17 August), as determined individuals clamoured on the airport after the Taliban takeover, write Sabine Siebold, Kirsti Knolle, Madeline Chambers, Andreas Rinke in Rostock, Emma Thomasson, Maria Sheahan, Paul Carrel, Hans-edzard Busemann and Christian Kraemer.
“We’re experiencing a human tragedy for which we share accountability,” mentioned President Frank-Walter Steinmeier after the Western-backed authorities in Kabul collapsed and its foreign-trained safety forces melted away. Learn extra.
Germany, which had the second largest navy contingent in Afghanistan after america, needs to airlift 1000’s of German-Afghan twin nationals in addition to rights activists, attorneys and individuals who labored with international forces.
“The photographs of despair at Kabul airport disgrace the political West,” Steinmeier, whose publish is basically ceremonial, mentioned in a press release on the German presidential palace.
“All of the extra now we’ve got to face by these to whom we’re indebted for his or her work and help.”
A primary German navy airplane to land in Kabul for the reason that Taliban took energy evacuated solely seven individuals as a result of airport chaos after flying troopers in on Monday.
However a second one took off from Kabul airport early on Tuesday afternoon with greater than 120 individuals on board, together with Germans, Afghans and folks from different international locations, Overseas Minister Heiko Maas tweeted.
Extra evacuations had been to comply with, with Germany deploying 600 troopers for the aim.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (pictured) has warned that Afghans fleeing to neighbouring international locations may make their solution to Europe, in a repeat of the 2015 migrant disaster, if they don’t obtain enough humanitarian help. Learn extra
She needs refugees firstly assured security in international locations neighbouring Afghanistan, with the European Union to later take into account if it might probably take individuals in.
“Reaching a typical place throughout the EU shouldn’t be simple. It’s a weak point of the EU that we’ve got not created a typical asylum coverage,” she informed a information convention.
Germany opened its borders six years in the past to greater than 1 million migrants, a lot of them Syrians, fleeing struggle and poverty: a transfer that gained Merkel plaudits overseas however which eroded her political capital at dwelling.
She plans to face down after a 26 September federal election.
Armin Laschet, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) chairman operating to succeed her as chancellor, known as for future navy interventions overseas to have a transparent objective, timeline and exit technique.
“The lesson of the final 20 years is that the objective of regime change, to intervene militarily to finish a dictatorship with a purpose to construct a democracy, has nearly universally failed,” he mentioned in Rostock in northern Germany.
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