The mistakes that led to the wave of refugees in 2015 must not be repeated in the case of people fleeing the Taliban from Afghanistan, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday in Berlin.

In his briefing, the prime minister emphasized that the international community should provide support to countries neighboring Afghanistan, especially Pakistan, so that if people flee Afghanistan from the Taliban, they can provide for those in need of help.

He indicated: it is possible that an extraordinary EU summit will be convened, one of the main topics of which could be the support of the countries in the region that host Afghan refugees.

These people must be given a safe haven and the international community must not repeat the mistake of not providing enough money to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the World Food Program (WFP), which has resulted in "immigrants from Jordan, Lebanon and directly People also left for Europe from Syria".

In the case of Afghanistan, we need to move faster and support the neighboring countries faster

said the German chancellor. He said he agreed with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas' statement that the situation in Afghanistan had been misjudged. The entire international community expected that it would be possible to continue international development work in the Asian country even after the withdrawal of foreign soldiers.

Thus, even at the end of July, it seemed that only the local helpers of the army (Bundeswehr) and their family members - 2,500 people - had to be evacuated from the country.

1,900 of them are already in Germany and probably hundreds more in a safe third country. However, in a situation that has changed due to the "breathtaking" speed of the Taliban offensive, the Afghan employees of German aid organizations and other non-governmental organizations must also be evacuated together with their families. This means thousands more people. This is why the Bundeswehr launched the air rescue operation, explained Angela Merkel.

He confirmed the press report that a transport plane of the Air Force (Luftwaffe) had already arrived in the Kabul area, but had not received permission to land.

We hope that the first A 400M can land soon

said Angela Merkel. He underlined that everything is being done on the German side for the success of the operation. At the same time, "control is not in our hands", the outcome of the action depends on the development of conditions in Kabul. Angela Merkel said of the rise to power of the radical Islamist Taliban that it was a "bitter, dramatic and terrible" situation, especially for those living in Afghanistan. At the same time, the development is bitter for Germany and all the allies that have been active in Afghanistan for almost twenty years.

He explained that Afghanistan, at least at the moment, is not the homeland of Islamist terror, but that this is only the result of the efforts of the last almost two decades.

As he said, the fallen and the soldiers who returned home from deployments with physical and mental wounds should never be forgotten, but it should be acknowledged that nothing else has been achieved in Afghanistan other than the elimination of the threat of terrorism. This needs to be processed, lessons learned, and in similar cases, perhaps "the goals need to be narrower", said the German chancellor in response to a journalist's question about the country's transformation, democratization and social and economic modernization efforts.

After the United States, Germany participated in the operations in Afghanistan with the second largest number of personnel

which were launched by NATO, that is, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Resolute Support (RS) operation, due to the terrorist attacks on American soil on September 11, 2001. It happened that there were more than five thousand German soldiers in the Asian country at the same time. 12.5 billion euros (4,400 billion forints) were spent on the operations. The German government spent 435 million euros per year on development and aid programs in Afghanistan in the recent period.

MTI

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