Roqia Saee thought she would be safe when she arrived in Germany with her two children in 2023, having fled her homeland a wanted woman.
Born in the central Afghan city of Bamyan in 1995, six years before the Taliban blew up its 1,400-year-old Buddha statues, she grew up hearing about atrocities perpetrated by the insurgents. When the group returned to power five years ago, she was arrested and treated brutally after leading a series of protests, before escaping through Pakistan to Europe.
Now, she has concerns the Taliban are making inroads to acceptance in Europe, which could spell trouble for people like her.
The deal
When the Taliban regained power in August 2021, most European countries, including Germany, vacated their embassies. Chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, described the takeover as “bitter, dramatic and awful” as footage of panicked evacuations in Kabul was broadcast.
However, the German government is quietly building ties as it looks to curtail migration and accelerate the return of Afghans to their homeland.
Afghan refugee
The deal: the Taliban accept repatriates on condition the Afghan administration sends it own diplomats to Germany. The German government has already publicly acknowledged accrediting two Taliban diplomats. The Taliban have welcomed the move, viewing the openings as a diplomatic victory that cements their international status.
To hear Germany is co-operating with the Taliban is triggering for Ms Saee. Fears are now rife among the diaspora that the Taliban could use their data against them, or their families in Afghanistan. “It's a nightmare,” Ms Saee said. “It has made me relive my trauma. Where will I go if Germany does this to me and sends me to the Taliban? It's because of the Taliban that I'm in Germany.”
Fears of nightmare
Ms Saee is from the Hazara minority in Afghanistan, a predominantly Shiite Muslim in a country dominated by Sunnis. During the Taliban's first spell in power, their forces killed thousands of Hazaras in Mazar-i-Sharif in what Human Rights Watch described as “one of the single worst examples of killings of civilians in Afghanistan's 20-year war”.
After 2001, conditions improved under the Islamic Republic administration – Hazaras gained legal recognition and access to government – but deadly attacks by the Taliban and ISIS continued.
These escalated in earnest when the Taliban returned. Ms Saee was among those who took to the streets in protest over one deadly attack. Guards responded by beating women.
She avoided jail on that occasion but was later imprisoned. During her first four days in detention, she was beaten and hosed with water. “Every time they tortured me, I told them that what I was doing was for our right to access school and work,” she said.
She was arrested a second time after marching with a banner reading “Open the school for women”. Ms Saee was stripped naked and filmed, she said. The Taliban threatened to broadcast the video if she again took part in public demonstrations.
In mid-2023, she fled by bus to Pakistan with her children, obtained asylum in Spain four months later, then moved to Germany having learnt the Afghan embassy in Spain was sharing consular data with Kabul.
Unlike Spain, a number of other Afghan embassies in Europe, including in Switzerland and Austria, refuse to this day to co-operate with the Taliban. They have been blacklisted by Kabul.
Technical talks
Engagement with the Taliban has been fruitful, Germany says, while also arguing talks remain strictly technical and do not constitute diplomatic recognition of the Taliban.
Last month, Germany deported an Afghan with no criminal record for the first time, after he had exhausted his asylum claims. He was repatriated alongside 30 Afghan criminals in the third such group deportation. The first, in August 2024, included 28 convicted Afghan. In July 2025, another 81 were sent back.
The second flight coincided with the arrival of two Taliban diplomats on German soil. Media reports indicate Sayed Mostafa Hashemi and Nabrasul Haq Aziz had taken on the jobs of second secretaries in the Afghan embassy in Berlin and the Afghan consulate in Bonn, respectively. The National has asked the embassy and consulate for comment but neither have responded. “We need to strike direct agreements with Afghanistan to facilitate returns,” German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said at the time.
In a written response to The National, a source at the German government said Berlin had never cut diplomatic ties with Afghanistan and had an interest in Afghan missions remaining operational in the country.
This appears to refer to the embassy in Kabul being evacuated in 2021, rather than closed. Today, Berlin has a liaison officer for Afghanistan at its embassy in Doha, Qatar, which handles communication with the Taliban.
“The federal government decided in its coalition agreement to carry out repatriations to Afghanistan,” the source said. “In this context, the federal government approved the entry of two new staff members for the consular sections of Afghan missions in Germany in 2025.”
In another step towards increased co-operation with the Taliban, the German government recently said up to four more Taliban officials would be allowed to operate in its soil.
The contradiction in policy has been highlighted by Bonn Green MP Katrin Uhlig: “The German government, for good reason, does not officially recognise the Taliban, yet at the same time de facto co-operation is taking place,” she said in May. “This contradiction can no longer be explained away with supposedly purely ‘technical contacts’.”
Murky agreement
This high level of diplomatic co-operation between a European country and the Taliban remains unprecedented. Yet the deal remains murky.
Thomas Ruttig, an Afghan expert and former diplomat posted in Kabul, told The National he does not know whether an agreement was ever committed in writing, with some German newspapers describing it merely as a “handshake deal”.
What is known is that Germany had used charter planes to send Afghans to their home country before the Taliban takeover and is now looking to repeat this process with three flights a month. They have yet to start.
Thousands could be affected among the 450,000 Afghans living in Germany. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees told The National that currently 15,343 Afghans are required to leave.
The developments have been fuelled by anti-migration internal politics and attacks involving Afghans in Germany. The latest such incident came last month when an Afghan citizen – who had entered Germany as an unaccompanied minor refugee in 2015 – stabbed a 22-year-old student to death in Trier, western Germany, near the Luxembourg border.
Over the past decade, migration has become a “centrepiece” of German politics, Mr Ruttig said. “The change in its policy on Afghanistan and on migration in general by the current German government is clearly a result of the growth of the xenophobic far right,” he said.
Afghans in Europe are “sandwiched between two very difficult situations”, said Omar Sadr, non-resident fellow at Princeton University's Afghanistan Policy Lab. They are stuck between a Taliban regime that persecutes them and host countries seeking to bring migrant numbers down.
Repatriates from Europe are viewed with more suspicion than those from Iran or Pakistan, according to Mr Sadr. “They are perceived as someone who has lived in a hostile culture,” he said.
The consequence is that many from the Afghan diaspora, such as Ms Saee, now avoid the consulates and embassies, causing bureaucratic hurdles. When the municipality where Ms Saee lives asked for her late husband's death certificate – he was killed in a 2020 Taliban attack at an army checkpoint – it directed her to the Afghan embassy.
She refused. At the forefront of her mind were threats issued by the Taliban to hunt down critics abroad, such as those made in 2023 by former Interior Ministry spokesman Saeed Khosty, who said such people should be killed “one by one, with a knife”.
She resolved the issue by having contacts in Afghanistan send the document instead. But her passport will eventually expire. “Maybe inside the embassy nothing would happen to me,” she said. “But what about outside? I could be followed.”
Grey zone
The German government says it is unaware of such concerns. In a response to a parliamentary question, it said last month “that it has no knowledge of potential security risks for Afghan nationals living in Germany arising from the activities of the consulate or possible access to personal data by Taliban-affiliated entities”.
The Afghan consulates and embassies in Germany continue to operate in a grey zone. They fly the flag of the previous government – not the Taliban – and the German government says it has not been notified of any change in the embassy or consulates' lead. Yet German broadcaster Channel 1 reported earlier this year that the figure appointed by Taliban has taken over the embassy, with the charge d'affaires, appointed by the previous government, working under him.
Ms Saee's fears are shared by many Afghans in Germany. In a statement issued in June, the Federal Association of Afghan Diaspora Organisations in Germany called for all political and administrative decisions to give top priority “to the safety of Afghans living in Germany, particularly refugees”. Access to consular services “should be ensured through solutions that are compatible with Germany’s fundamental democratic values”, it added.
Edris Joya, the association's chairman, told The National he hears from fellow Afghans sharing concerns about access consular services every day. He said he fears “the German model may increase the interest of other countries and governments”.
Pan-European efforts
That may well be the case. In June, Taliban representatives travelled for the first time to Brussels to meet representatives of the European Commission and 15 EU countries. A few months earlier, 20 countries, including non-EU Norway, had written to the Commission – the bloc's executive arm – asking to accelerate the return of Afghans.
The letter highlighted a return rate of only 2 per cent of Afghans asked to leave EU territory in 2024. “The organisation of voluntary and forced return to Afghanistan is a shared European challenge that requires a coherent and collective response,” it said.
EU Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said by holding the meeting his institution was simply implementing a request lodged by European governments.
After the meeting held in Brussels, Taliban spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi said he had spoken to European officials about “restarting broad-range consular services for Afghans in the EU zone, including the need for trust-building measures, consular presence and dignified return process”.
The talks were a follow-up to a previous meeting in Afghanistan in January.
The visit drew international condemnation. “I am shaken and deeply disturbed by this,” Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani Nobel Prize laureate who was shot by the Pakistani Taliban for attending school at the age of 15, said on X. “Europe must not legitimise a regime responsible for one of the worst human rights crises in the world.”
European countries that were not signatories to the letter, such as France, also appear to be working bilaterally with Afghanistan.
“We initiated contacts at a technical level to facilitate the removal to Afghanistan of Afghan nationals who were in the country illegally and posed a security risk on French soil,” a representative for the French Foreign Minister said in response to a question from The National. The Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry declined to provide the number of Afghans deported from France.
Norway's Foreign Ministry confirmed by email it had made four returns to Afghanistan since 2021 but declined to specify on what grounds.
In late 2024, Norway announced it would downgrade relations with Kabul and would not accept a new ambassador.
Yet the following year, a new first secretary was appointed at the Afghan embassy in Oslo. Its website shows it is “now accepting applications for national passports for Afghan citizens residing in Norway”, a signal that the Taliban recognise documents it issues. Media reports indicate consular services resumed after the arrival of the new first secretary, Najeebullah Sherkhan.
Generally, European governments are “very non-transparent” when discussing the forced return of Afghans, Mr Ruttig said. “That also shows that they know that there is headwind against that in civil society in our countries,” he said.
More protests expected
The Afghan diaspora is pushing back, with protests to be organised in the coming weeks in German cities and across western states with high numbers of Afghans, such as Canada.
But crowds in Germany are getting thinner, leaving little hope that pressure will mount on the German government to reverse course. “Less and less people are participating in protests because they're scared,” Mr Joya said.
Ms Saee lay squarely the blame on the German government, saying its behaviour was irresponsible. “They're playing with human lives,” she said.
