The hurdles to fleeing Afghanistan are high, sometimes even increasing.

Nevertheless, the Federal Foreign Office and other German agencies have now succeeded in bringing around two-thirds of the people to Germany who have been promised a stay in Germany as former local staff or because of other special risks.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock took stock of her “Afghanistan Action Plan”, which is intended on the one hand to enable those at risk to leave the country and on the other hand to bring humanitarian aid to the country ruled by the Taliban.

Johannes Leithauser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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On Thursday, the Bundestag decided, with the votes of the coalition factions and the opposition Union parties, to set up a parliamentary committee of inquiry to explain the circumstances of the failure of the western military mission in Afghanistan and to investigate the cause of misjudgments before and during the withdrawal of the western armed forces.

During the high phase of the evacuation mission, the federal government was sometimes heavily criticized for the fact that the pace of its efforts was too slow.

SPD MP Ralf Stegner is to chair the investigative committee;

SPD deputy Michael Müller is scheduled to chair a commission of inquiry on Afghanistan which, with the help of experts, is to assess the effect of the Afghanistan mission on a larger scale.

Baerbock welcomed the fact that the committee of inquiry is starting its work.

It is important to “analyze together” with the Union parties what mistakes have been made.

In addition, an investigation could confirm "the common credo" that "this effort was not in vain".

With the presence of NATO and western stabilization efforts, “generations of children could have gone to school”;

For two decades a "civil society could grow".

Regarding the current situation, the foreign minister said the Taliban were "working systematically not to let people out of the country".

Nevertheless, it was possible to bring more than 21,000 Afghans to Germany.

Three quarters of the local staff and family members who worked in Afghanistan for the Bundeswehr or other German aid organizations are safe, as are half of the recognized “those in particular need of protection”.

There are still high hurdles because many of those affected do not have their own passports and that the Taliban have increasingly restricted women's freedom of movement in recent months.

Baerbock reported on the agreement reached with the Pakistani government two weeks ago during her visit to Islamabad, which now opens up the possibility for many Afghans to cross the border and thus, for the first time, legally to come to Germany.

The Society for International Cooperation has received an additional 32 million euros to secure the exit routes of Afghans who have received a German residence permit.

Politically active women and journalists in particular should be accepted quickly from the group of people in need of special protection;

To this end, the Foreign Office and the Federal Ministry of the Interior have agreed on a bridging program in order to be able to give 1,800 admissions in advance.

Federal government walks “the fine line of helping”

On Thursday, the minister also provided information on the first humanitarian aid following the severe earthquake in the Hindu Kush.

Germany provides medical aid, which gets to the place with its own team via the Johanniter aid organization;

further assistance would be granted through partner organisations.

Baerbock said it remains the case that economic aid could only flow to the Taliban if "minimum conditions were met".

The federal government walks "the fine line of helping without supporting the Taliban".

The lives of many Afghans have "deteriorated dramatically" in recent months.

However, the possibilities to alleviate the suffering are limited.

The investigative committee on the German mission in Afghanistan, which will now be constituted after the decision by the Bundestag to appoint it, should primarily focus on the period of the last two years, from the conclusion of the "peace agreement" between the Taliban and the United States in Doha at the end of February 2020 to the end of the airlift from Kabul at the end of September 2021. First, he should get an overview of which German authorities were involved in the mission in Afghanistan.

Secondly, he should determine what information the authorities and above all the German secret services were able to obtain about the situation in the country and how they assessed this situation.

It is also about how the German authorities acted at the time of the collapse of the Afghan government,

Even before the appointment, the ranks of the government faction said that the committee of inquiry was not primarily concerned with who bore the political responsibility for the hasty withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rather, lessons should be learned from the events.

Above all, the conclusions from the failed attempts to establish and maintain a stable, peaceful government in Afghanistan will also largely determine the report of the Enquete Commission.

The SPD has appointed Hamburg peace researcher Ursula Schröder and André Wüstner, chairman of the Bundeswehr Association, as experts for the commission.