OP-ED: Germany: The Taliban’s closest co-operation partner in the EU

Image: Nabi Amini

By Wiebke Judith

Five years after the Islamist Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, the German government is their closest partner for co-operation in the EU. Germany’s main goal: increasing deportations regardless of human rights risks. More than 200 Afghan men have been returned to Kabul from Germany in the last twelve months. While the deportations were initially limited to criminals, this criterion has been lifted. The next targets seem to be Afghans returned to Germany from other EU member states under the provisions of the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation (AMMR).

It is a tragic anniversary. On 15 August 2021, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Pictures of desperate people clinging to airplanes at Kabul airport were seen all over the world. There has been worldwide outrage on the regime’s laws that exclude women from public life and girls from education after their sixth school year. In July 2025, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against top Taliban leaders for the crime against humanity of persecution on gender grounds while in February 2026, the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner called Afghanistan a “graveyard for human rights”. The situation in the country is unmistakenly dire. No country except Russia has recognised the Taliban as the official government and they are widely regarded as an international pariah.

However, five years since their power grab, there has been a dangerous development of increased contact and co-operation with the Islamists by European countries driven by one goal: the forcible returns of Afghans. At the forefront of this trend is Germany.

Quid pro quo: Deportations for diplomats

At the core of Germany’s co-operation with the Taliban lies a dubious quid pro quo: If the German government wants to deport people to Afghanistan, the Taliban want their diplomats in Germany.

Whereas the first two deportation flights to Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover – conducted in August 2024 and July 2025 respectively – were organised with the help of Qatar, the German government is now undertaking flights directly to Afghanistan, presumably in co-operation with the Taliban. Officially, the German government insists that these are merely examples of “technical co-operation” with no impact on the overall German position towards the Taliban.

Many in Germany beg to differ. For the past year, Afghans living in Germany who have to go to their country’s representations are confronted with two Taliban diplomats working in Berlin and Bonn. They are understandably worried both for their own safety in Germany as well as for that of their families back in Afghanistan.

Germany allowed the first Taliban officials in the EU to enter the country in the summer of 2025. This came shortly after the first deportation flight departed under the then newly elected government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz. A former government employee later confirmed that this was, in fact, part of a deal. It is now standard practice in Germany that Afghans who are due to be deported are brought to the Taliban who question them before green-lighting the return. In at least one case, an affected person told PRO ASYL that, following their interview in Germany, the Taliban also visited their family in Afghanistan and questioned them.

It is currently expected that up to six more Taliban officials will come to Germany. This development has come about after the regime suspended returns to Kabul for a few weeks in May in order to put pressure on the German government. According to media reports, the Taliban have agreed to accept up to three return flights per month in return for the German government’s acquiescence.

Recognition rate for Afghan men plummets

The increased efforts for returns to Afghanistan come at a time when a growing number of Afghan men are at risk of deportation from Germany due to the major fall in their asylum recognition rate in the past 18 months. In the first three years after the Taliban took power, the recognition rate for Afghan asylum applicants was almost 100%. However, there has been a notable shift in the decisions for single young Afghan men since 2025 and their recognition rate for the first four months of the year was just 11%. This means that eight out of nine Afghan men aged between 18 and 40 are currently being rejected.

This surprising statistic is somewhat obscured in the overall recognition rate for Afghan asylum applicants as there are also a significant number of subsequent asylum applications from Afghan women. Since the Court of Justice of the EU’s judgment C-608/22, C-609/22 in October 2024, all Afghan women have been recognised as refugees and, until the entry into application of the EU Pact legislation in June 2026, their husbands and sons also received full refugee protection in accordance with the now amended German rule on family asylum.

In a recent policy paper, PRO ASYL analysed 50 negative asylum decisions relating to Afghan men. It found significant issues with the decisions. The Taliban are assumed to act rationally and predictably in their persecution, thereby overlooking the arbitrary nature of their rule. Moreover, asylum decisions all too often fail to take into account that people in Afghanistan risk becoming victims of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment even for minor offences. If grounds for asylum are not recognised, the dire humanitarian situation and the associated risk of extreme deprivation should at least justify a national prohibition of deportation. However, the German Asylum Authority frequently relies on generalised assumptions regarding family support or employment prospects that bear little resemblance to the realities on the ground in Afghanistan.

More deportations likely as criterion of having a criminal record is removed

To date, the German government has publicly justified returns to Afghanistan on the grounds that only people who have committed crimes or who are a threat to public security were being deported. This was often accompanied by leaked information on truly heinous crimes that had been committed by Afghan nationals. However there have already been cases of deportations based on minor offences.

As expected, the situation regarding deportations has changed. The coalition agreement did note that returns to Afghanistan would ‘start’ with criminals rather than being limited to them. In July 2026, news emerged that the Federal Police had lifted the criteria of criminal offence or threat and that, from now on, all Afghan men who have an enforceable deportation order and who are healthy can be returned. For the first time since the Taliban took power, an Afghan man with no criminal record was on the deportation flight that left Germany for Afghanistan at the end of July 2026.

After his negative asylum decision in Germany, the person involved had tried to go to Austria – presumably to find safety from deportation there. However, in a cruel twist of fate, it was probably this decision that led to him being placed on the deportation flight. It seems that there is a new practice in Germany: If an Afghan man is returned to Germany under the AMMR rules, the Federal Police will place him in deportation detention as soon as he has been handed over to them with a view to deporting him to Afghanistan. According to information received by PRO ASYL, all of the at least five Afghan men without criminal records who are currently in deportation detention have been returned to Germany from other EU member states. To be clear: a Dublin return of an Afghan man to Germany now has a high likelihood of resulting in his deportation to Afghanistan. Considering the blatant and widespread human rights violations in the Taliban-ruled country, this should be considered as chain refoulement.

Germany should change its policy

It is high time that the German government comes to its senses and stops catering to an extremist group. While a case can often be made for a certain pragmatism in politics, a clear red line should be the normalisation of a regime that flogs and publicly executes people, bans women from public life and generally suppresses its own people in an unprecedented manner. Afghan people clearly need protection and this must be recognised again in German asylum procedures.

The recent Taliban visit to Brussels highlights that Germany may be leading the way in co-operating with the Taliban. However, it is clear that more governments are hoping to follow. When domestic policies override all human rights concerns within governments, the last hope will always be the impartial judiciary.

Wiebke Judith is Legal Policy Spokesperson at ECRE member organisation PRO ASYL.

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