It wasn't long ago that Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) linked her political future with the evacuation mission at Kabul airport.
“When this mission is over, then I will consider very carefully for myself what responsibility I have borne, what responsibility I have fulfilled, and where maybe not - and what conclusions I have to personally draw from it,” she recently said in Picture TV.
"Whatever happens on site, I turn my head."
Now the minister seems to have drawn her conclusions. A week after the air force hastily ended its mission in Kabul, Kramp-Karrenbauer told the Saarbrücker Zeitung: “My political goal is to win my constituency in Saarland and to continue to represent the soldiers of the Bundeswehr as minister in Berlin . ”Because of the belated evacuation mission in Kabul after the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, the opposition recently called for the miniser to resign. The bottom line was that the mission went well. In eleven days, the Bundeswehr rescues more than 5,000 people from Afghanistan. It was possible to fly out all German diplomats, soldiers and police officers. Lots of local Afghan workersBut those who had placed themselves in the service of the Bundeswehr and other German organizations had to stay behind.
Before Kramp-Karrenbauer's statements about her future plans, Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet (CDU) presented his “future team” in Berlin on Friday, to which the minister from Saarland is not a member. Kramp-Karrenbauer said she was "glad that Peter Neumann, an expert on the terror scene," is one of the eight experts in Laschet's team. The terrorism researcher from London's King's College has internal and external security as his area of responsibility.
Laschet had presented the team on Friday in order to counteract the low in the poll a good three weeks before the general election. Kramp-Karrenbauer told the "Saarbrücker Zeitung" that she was "of the same opinion with Armin Laschet that we as a union must compete in the election campaign as a team". This is "important for reinforcing the programmatic statements of the CDU in the election campaign." Kramp-Karrenbauer had led the CDU for a good year before it was replaced by Laschet in January.