Overview

• Interior Ministry officials will travel to Kabul in October to negotiate returning Afghan criminal and violent offenders, with the goal of using regular flights.
• Dobrindt frames the contacts as technical arrangements that do not imply recognition, while Greens, the Left, and NGOs condemn engagement with the Taliban and SPD figures urge caution.
• Germany has conducted two collective returns to Afghanistan since 2021, including 28 men in August 2024 and 81 men in July 2025 via Qatar’s mediation.
• Parallel to the Afghanistan talks, Dobrindt seeks a deportation agreement with Syria this year and has told BAMF to partially resume suspended Syrian asylum case processing.
• Technical-level discussions took place in Doha earlier this month, but the government now plans direct negotiations in Kabul to institutionalize regular returns.