Paris opens a technical channel with the Taliban on Afghan removals

France has opened a technical dialogue with the Taliban authorities to remove Afghan nationals who are in the country irregularly and who are judged a threat to public order. A diplomatic source said so on Wednesday. Paris has had no diplomatic relations with the Taliban since they took Kabul in August 2021, and the French embassy there remains closed. The source said the channel does not change France's position on Afghanistan, and that support for the Afghan population, in particular for Afghan women, continues.

The foreign ministry did not answer questions on whether Taliban representatives would be allowed into France to speed the paperwork. The diplomatic source gave no count. A second source familiar with the file told AFP the number who could be removed might be in the hundreds. Hundreds is the only scale on offer. It is not a list, and it is not a timetable.

Who the channel is for

The stated target is narrow: Afghan nationals in an irregular situation who pose a threat to public order. France has joined about twenty EU countries, among them Germany, Belgium and Sweden, in trying to speed the return of Afghans, specifically those convicted by courts. The diplomatic wording is wider than a conviction. A threat to public order can be a criminal sentence, or an administrative finding short of one. The source did not say which test France will use, or which court file qualifies.

Direct removal is the operational change. Since 2021, European states that wanted to send an Afghan back have often had no cooperating authority at the other end, and have used third countries or simply not flown. A technical dialogue is the phrase for talks that are meant to produce landing permission and identity checks without a recognition of the government in Kabul. The EU does not officially recognise the Taliban. The Taliban have treated any official contact as a step toward standing. Both descriptions can be true of the same meeting.

What Paris says is unchanged

The source's second sentence is the political cover. The dialogue does not call France's position into question. Support for Afghans, and for Afghan women, continues. That support has, since 2021, included asylum grants, evacuation lists from the first weeks, and aid routed outside Taliban ministries. A removal channel aimed at people Paris calls a threat sits next to that policy, and it will be read in Kabul as contact and in Paris as enforcement. The embassy staying closed is the symbol Paris is using to say the first reading is wrong.

Germany has already run deportation flights to Afghanistan under a similar logic, using intermediaries. France is later to a direct technical channel. The difference, if the second source is right about hundreds, is volume. A handful of convicted men on one flight is a police story. Hundreds is an immigration story, and it requires a receiving office that will take the papers. That office, on this account, is Taliban.

What is not in the file

No names, no first flight date, no agreement text. The foreign ministry has not confirmed a visit. The usable facts are the ones the diplomatic source put on the record on Wednesday: a technical dialogue has started, it is for direct removal of Afghans in an irregular situation who are judged a threat to public order, the embassy stays shut, and Paris says recognition is not on the table. The hundreds figure comes from a second source, not from the ministry.