After Merz became chancellor, however, the German government effectively suspended the program and stopped the flights, a decision that stranded the Afghans \u2014\u00a0among them women\u2019s rights activists and LGBTQ+ people\u00a0\u2014 in Pakistan.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese people are praying for the German government to not stop the program,\u201d said Baresh from her new home in a western German town not far from the Rhine River. \u201cThere is no other option for them. They can\u2019t go back.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the Taliban\u2019s reconquest of Afghanistan<\/a>, Western countries initially provided escape routes to vulnerable Afghans, particularly those who had assisted their militaries during the two-decade-long war that began after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Germany was the third-largest destination for resettled Afghans after the U.S. and Canada. But anti-immigration sentiment across the West, including in America and Germany, has brought about what activists and experts say is a premature end to those resettlement programs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a double hit, both to resettlement programs globally and to this specific population in Pakistan,\u201d said Susan Fratzke, \u00a0<\/strong>a\u00a0senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.<\/p>\n Under pressure from the far right<\/p>\n Germany is not the only country closing the door to Afghans seeking refuge. Earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order<\/a> suspending refugee admissions to the U.S., leaving thousands of Afghan nationals<\/a> awaiting resettlement in Pakistan. This month, Trump issued a proclamation<\/a> blocking Afghan nationals from traveling to the U.S.; his administration also terminated temporary protected status for Afghans.<\/p>\n Germany is taking a somewhat similar course. Under increasing political pressure due to the rise of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) \u2014\u00a0now the country\u2019s largest opposition party \u2014 Merz has vowed to sharply cut the number of asylum-seekers allowed to enter the country. In the lead-up to Germany\u2019s Feb. 23 snap election, a spate of knife attacks partly blamed on Afghan migrants<\/a> also increased pressure on Merz to take a harder course on Afghan resettlement, particularly as AfD politicians called for the mass deportation of Afghans<\/a> and other migrants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Merz became chancellor, however, the German government effectively suspended the program and stopped the flights, a decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2881,32911,2000,299,1105,1945,1824,4582,5763,6657,2597,9899,811,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-180016","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-afghanistan","9":"tag-afghanistan-war","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-far-right","13":"tag-friedrich-merz","14":"tag-germany","15":"tag-human-rights","16":"tag-lgbtq","17":"tag-migration","18":"tag-military","19":"tag-ngos","20":"tag-security","21":"tag-united-states"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114673849766315334","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}