Germans fear a new influx of refugees

A majority of those questioned in the poll from Die Welt, are not in favor of taking in Afghan refugees and distributing them within the EU either. Only 28 percent were in favor of this. On the other hand, 49 percent were of the opinion that the refugees in the neighboring Afghan states should receive financial aid from the EU. Ten percent were generally in favor of a different approach, and 13 percent did not provide any information.

Meanwhile, FDP General Secretary Volker Wissing called for all Afghan local staff to be included who had worked for Germany in the past two decades. “Germany must take in everyone who has helped Germany,” he told Bild-Live. At the same time, he called for clarification as to why the federal government had so far only evacuated a few local workers. Obviously, it was not properly prepared for the situation, he said.

It became known over the weekend that among the around 4000 Afghans evacuated from Germany so far, there were only around 100 local workers with 370 family members.

The federal government has so far flown in well over 10 000 refugees to Germany in recent years. As a response to a request from the AfD parliamentary group reported by Junge Freiheit, 2 453 people classified as “in need of protection” from Turkey and Greece were brought to Germany by plane this year by the end of July alone.

The costs “for traveling to and from Germany were borne by the German state,” the request said. Most of them were from Syria and Afghanistan. But refugees from the Congo and Somalia were also flown in.

Between 2017 and 2020, according to the federal government, Germany also received 9 451 people in need of protection to Germany by air. Here, too, travel expenses were borne by the federal government – and thus by the taxpayer. The entries were made via Turkey, Egypt, Kenya, Greece, Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan and via the evacuation mechanism of the United Nations Refugee Agency from Libya via Niger.

The lowest number was 1 467 flown in due to the Corona pandemic last year. The government was unable to provide precise information on the total costs in its response. Between 2010 and 2010 the costs amounted to around 47 million euros. This includes not only the travel costs for the flights, but also the costs for the initial reception, which ends at the latest after a 14-day stay in the Friedland transit camp.

The AfD member of the Bundestag, Stefan Brander, suspected that due to the numbers that are now rising again, the flow of migrants will “pick up speed again” after the Corona year 2020. “The fact that fewer people were flown in in the ‘lockdown year’ should be compensated for again in 2021, since 2 453 so-called ‘vulnerable people’ were flown to Germany in the months of January to July alone and were flown in completely at Germany’s expense,” he said.

The taxpayer must shoulder these very expensive costs. “This makes the escape into a luxury trip that the honest German citizen pays for.” That must be ended immediately, demanded Brandner.

The head of the Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Torsten Voss, meanwhile warned of an increasing terrorist threat in Germany after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan. “I am really concerned about the current developments in Afghanistan,” Voss told the taz.

There is now a danger that another terrorist haven will open up there, in which the terrorist network Al-Qaeda was reorganizing itself. The decisive factor was whether the Taliban would again set up an “Islamic emirate based on the old model” in the future. One must also observe whether, as in Syria, foreign volunteers were moving to Afghanistan as fighters.

“All of this could exacerbate the risk situation in Germany in the medium or long term,” warned Voss. The threat situation in this country is already high. “Because ISIS is currently reorganizing itself in cells around the world and trying to make its mark again with attacks. And because the danger from lone perpetrators persists.”

The terrorist attack on the airport in Kabul, which resulted in numerous deaths, also showed, according to the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, that the Islamic State (ISIS) and Taliban are hostile to each other and “that ISIS only allows its Islamist ideology”. An “offshoot” of ISIS had admitted to the bombing last week, he said.

While Germany wants to take at least 70 000 more Afghans, Japan has taken less that 20. Fifteen days after the fall of the Afghan capital, the Japanese have evacuated only fifteen people out of 500.

A Japanese and about fifteen Afghans, no more. The planes of the military mission sent by Japan to Afghanistan were certainly able to land in the middle of the week at Kabul international airport but landed on Friday in Pakistan with fewer than 20 individuals in all. The C-2 and the two C-130 planes dispatched had hoped to evacuate around 500 people (some Japanese nationals and especially Afghans who had worked for the Japanese organizations) who wanted to leave the country. But the latter were unable to get to the airport and Tokyo simply ignored them.

The embassy there was closed on August 15, and Japanese diplomats were exfiltrated to Qatar by British aircraft.