Reinhard Erös

About Reinhard Erös

Reinhard Erös is regarded as one of the most experienced German experts in crisis regions, with over two dozen deployments for the UN and international aid organizations in places such as East Timor, Rwanda, Cambodia, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kosovo, Bosnia, Guinea-Bissau, and Afghanistan.

Erös has known Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than twenty-five years. As early as 1986, during the Soviet occupation of the country, he took a five-year unpaid leave from the Bundeswehr to help the people of Afghanistan as a doctor. Dr. Erös led a relief organization and treated thousands of sick and injured people in “illegality,” hidden in caves near Tora Bora, among other places. The family, with their four young children, lived in the border town of Peshawar. Osama Bin Laden was then a neighbor of the Erös family. At the end of 1990, the family returned to Germany.

With the end of the Taliban regime, Reinhard and his family founded the “Children’s Aid Afghanistan” foundation and returned to Afghanistan in 2001.

Exclusively funded by private donations, Erös has been building over two dozen modern peace schools since September 11, 2001, as a counterpoint to the primitive Koran schools of the Islamists. He operates a mother-child clinic, orphanages, vocational schools, future workshops, and computer schools in the particularly dangerous eastern provinces, far outside of Kabul. Since 2012, a university (including a journalism faculty for women) has been established in the former Taliban stronghold of Laghman, along with a Christian-Muslim community school in the Pashtun region of western Pakistan. All projects are planned and implemented in close consultation with village elders and religious leaders, without military protection.

After his early retirement from the Bundeswehr at the end of 2001, Erös lives and works half of the year in the mountainous regions of eastern Afghanistan.

His expertise on the Taliban and Islamism in Afghanistan and Pakistan has made him a sought-after interview partner in national and international media since September 11, 2001.

In over 2,500 lectures to approximately 300,000 listeners worldwide, including more than 700 at universities and schools, Erös has reported since 2001 on the tragedy of the country and the possibilities for peaceful reconstruction.

He trains NATO officers and police leaders for their deployment in Afghanistan. Since autumn 2003, Erös has been advising top politicians of the Bundestag parties.