Realpolitik It is a German word, and sometimes there is no country that practices it with less complexes than this one. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has opened deals with the Taliban in exchange for Afghanistan accepting the repatriation of immigrants from that country with serious crimes in Germany.
An exercise in political pragmatism, the realpolitik What leads to dialogue with the least recommendable governments? Or a contempt for the victims, mainly women, of a regime against which Germany and its allies fought for two decades?
The Christian Democrat Merz, at the head of a government coalition with the Social Democrats, has been trying to speed up the deportations of Afghan migrants since he came to power six months ago. To do this, it needs the collaboration of the Taliban, who conquered Kabul in 2021 in the midst of the rout of international forces.
The agreement between Berlin and Kabul, which could be concluded in the coming weeks, would allow Merz to showcase the effectiveness of its policy to deport undocumented foreign criminals. And this, at a politically delicate moment, with the thriving far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) increasingly popular, with a tough line on immigrants.
The Taliban regime, which today only Russia formally recognizes, obtains something valuable in exchange: the legitimacy that maintains a dialogue with a central country in the European Union.
The German case raises a dilemma that other countries will face in the near future: What to do, four years after the fall of Kabul, with the Taliban? Is an escape from diplomatic ostracism inevitable in the long run?
Germany already expelled 28 Afghans in August 2024, when the social democrat Olaf Scholz governed at the head of a coalition with environmentalists and liberals. In July 2025, with Merz in the foreign ministry, he repeated the operation, with 81 Afghans returned to their country.
In both cases the expulsions were organized with the mediation of Qatar. Now Berlin wants to prepare them directly with the Taliban, a regime that Germany does not officially recognize, although it maintains minimal diplomatic relations with the Afghan State.
Berlin has sent senior German officials to Kabul in recent weeks to negotiate the logistics of future deportations. He has also accepted the sending, by the Taliban, of two diplomats to Germany. The embassy and consulates in this country continued to function as of 2021 with personnel who worked for the former Government.
“It is not about compensation, but about finally being in a position to be able to return people with serious crimes to their country,” the German Minister of the Interior, Alexander Dobrindt, defended himself in the local media. The objective is an agreement to proceed with expulsions, no longer occasionally, as until now, but “regularly.” “We have made progress (in the talks), but there is still no date (for the flights to begin). Our interest is to go quickly,” he stated.
The news, a few days ago, that the Taliban planned to raise the flag at the Afghan Embassy in Berlin triggered alarms among Afghans residing in Germany and also among veterans of the war in that country. It would be the clearest symbol of change. The new regime, as revealed by the German public broadcaster ARD, wants to replace the old black, red and green flag with the Taliban one, which is white and with the Islamic inscription: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet.”
“For 20 years, Parliament and the federal government sent us to the Hindu Kush (mountain range) to fight the Taliban,” Bundeswehr veteran Wolf Gregis, author of the book, complains on social media The Battle of Good Friday. German soldiers under Taliban fire. “Too many of our comrades lost their lives, their health or their happiness there. We are not going to accept that the Taliban now celebrate their victory here.”
“It’s not just about the flag,” says Patoni Teichmann, Afghan human rights activist and director of the European Integration Organization, in an email. “What it is about is that here, in Germany, representatives of an organization that is considered terrorist on an international level, that oppresses women, that systematically uses violence and that carries out a policy of apartheid of gender.”
Teichmann points out the risk that, if the consulates fall under the control of diplomats of the new regime, they will have access to data on “thousands of Afghan women” living in Europe.
Another risk, in his opinion, is that others imitate Germany. “If a country that appears on the world stage as a moral voice for human rights begins to silently normalize the Taliban, other Western countries could take this line,” he warns. “It would be a dangerous precedent, granting international legitimacy to the Taliban without them changing their behavior, without allowing women to return to school and without releasing political prisoners.”
About 400,000 Afghans live in Germany, and it is the nationality with the highest number of asylum seekers in this country, after Syria. Fears of uncontrolled immigration contributed to the success of the AfD in the last general elections, last February, which became the second largest parliamentary force.
The idea of Merz and his coalition partners is that, to contain the extreme right, they must respond to these concerns of a part of society and put order in the immigration system. The government agreement signed by Christian Democrats and Social Democrats contained this promise: “We will expel them to Afghanistan and Syria, starting with criminals and dangerous people.”
These days, at the Afghan Embassy in Grunewald, a neighborhood of mansions and forests in west Berlin, the old black, red and green flag still flies. There is not a soul in the streets. A car stops. The driver comes out and starts a conversation with the journalist. When asked if he will soon fly the Taliban flag, he dismisses it with a smile: “False information.”
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