German interior minister seeks direct migrant deportation deal with Taliban

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BERLIN (Reuters) -German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt wants to negotiate a direct agreement with the Taliban on receiving Afghan migrants deported from Germany, he told Focus magazine in an interview.

In August, Germany resumed flying convicted criminals of Afghan nationality to their home country, after pausing deportations following the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, with the support of what Berlin said were “key regional partners”.

Germany does not recognise the Taliban government as legitimate and has no official diplomatic ties with it.

“My idea is that we make agreements directly with Afghanistan to enable repatriations,” Dobrindt said in the interview published online on Wednesday evening.

“We still need third parties to conduct talks with Afghanistan. This cannot remain a permanent solution,” added the politician from the conservative CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU.

Merz had pledged to deport people to Afghanistan and Syria, as well as halt refugee admission programmes for German agencies’ former local staff in Afghanistan and suspend family reunification as part of the conservatives’ election platform.

Migration was a pivotal issue in February’s national elections following the rise of the far right and several high-profile attacks by migrants.

In the interview, Dobrindt said Germany was also in contact with Syria – where an Islamist government has taken power following the fall of veteran leader Bashar al-Assad last December – on reaching an agreement on deporting criminals of Syrian nationality.

Syrians and Afghans are the two largest groups of asylum seekers in Germany, with 76,765 Syrians and 34,149 Afghans applying for the status in 2024, according to federal migration office figures.

(Writing by Miranda Murray; Editing by Saad Sayeed)