More than 12,000 Afghan migrants to Germany are to be sent back to their home country because large parts of Afghanistan are considered safe, according to a German government document reviewed by a German newspaper yesterday.

The document - an explanation by the government to a question posed by the hard-left Die Linke (The Left) party - states that about 5 per cent of the 247,000 Afghans who had reached Germany by the end of September will likely be sent home because their safety can be guaranteed in Afghanistan's larger cities. That would amount to 12,539 Afghans.

The information was released in Thursday's edition of the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung. The government statement says it expects some of the migrants will return of their own accord. However, it noted that some of the removals might be by force.

The question of forcibly repatriating people to Afghanistan is controversial, since there are many questions about how safe the country is, given regular Taliban attacks. Just last week, four people died when Taliban forces attacked the German consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif.

So far this year, 27 Afghans have been deported after their asylum applications were rejected. In 2015, there were nine.

Asylum-seeker accommodation has frequently been the target of arson attacks and hate crime in Germany, as right-wing extremists lash out at Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to allow 890,000 refugees and migrants into the country last year. Germany expects to receive fewer than 300,000 migrants this year, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) said last week.

Merkel, whose long-stellar approval ratings have taken a dive amid the refugee crisis, came under fresh fire over her pro-immigration policy stance. Merkel is suffering from low popularity, cutting a lonely figure in her struggle for resisting pressure to change her refugee policy. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has capitalized on widespread discontent about the arrival of the large number of migrants, which it argues resulted from Merkel's promise of sanctuary to Syrian refugees. The right-wing populist AfD party clinched almost 21 percent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

In a bid to deal with lowering support for the conservative government, the German government will toughen its stance over refugees through preparing a new draft legislation that will make it harder for migrants denied asylum to stay in Germany.