🇦🇫 🇪🇺 🚷 The Taliban Are Using Europe’s Fear of Migrants to Their Advantage

At a meeting in Brussels in late June, more than 20 European officials met with five Taliban representatives to discuss deportations, breaking a taboo against holding talks with the group in the European Union.

The Europeans never mentioned human rights abuses committed by the Taliban, according to three participants and three other officials briefed on the meeting.

But the Taliban see sustained engagement on deportations as a gateway to acceptance of their rule, five years after sweeping back to power. Some European diplomats acknowledge this is correct.

Germany has been leading the charge to expel Afghans, as its government, led by a center-right chancellor, struggles to follow through on promises to deport migrants with criminal records aggressively. Its pace of deportations has drawn fire from a surging far-right party, the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which leads national polls and has promised to deport millions of migrants.

More than 500,000 Afghans live in Germany, the vast majority legally. Twenty percent of asylum seekers in the country are Afghans.

The pact with the Taliban “creates a reliable basis for direct and permanent deportations to Afghanistan,” Alexander Dobrindt, the German interior minister, said in a statement.

France, which has long been one of the most reluctant among E.U. countries to engage the Taliban, is considering a similar path, according to four European and Afghan diplomats involved in the negotiations.

Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban ambassador to Qatar, said he tells European diplomats that they should engage more openly with the Taliban and provide economic assistance to Afghanistan.

If they don’t, he said, the number of Afghans migrating to Europe will only increase. “If there is unemployment and an economic crisis in Afghanistan, Afghans will go like a flood to Europe.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/world/asia/europe-taliban-deportations-migrants.html

https://archive.ph/4i6Fa