POLITICS-GERMANY: Germans Divided Over Involvement in Afghanistan

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Yojana Sharma

BERLIN, Mar 11 2002 (IPS) - With Germans deeply ambivalent over their country’s military involvement in Afghanistan, the deaths of two German soldiers in Kabul has led to renewed soul-searching.

The deaths took place just as the Afghan government and the United Nations indicated a desire to extend the role of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul.

Two German soldiers and three Danes were killed this week during a munitions defusing operation in Kabul. They were the first casualties from Germany or Denmark, in a week that also saw nine US service-men loose their lives in the latest offensive against Al Qaida forces in eastern Afghanistan.

The incident has shocked the German public and brought to the fore the risks of military involvement just days after UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, on a visit to Berlin, had called for international forces to stay in Afghanistan beyond June, the originally agreed six month term for the peace-keeping force.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who arrives in Berlin on March 13 for talks with the German government wants the international security force to expand its mandate to cover cities other than Kabul. He also wants the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, troops to stay beyond the six month period originally agreed at a meeting in Bonn last December when Afghanistan’s interim government was appointed.

This will require a renewed mandate for German troops from the German parliament, the Bundestag, which last November approved the current contingent of 3,900 troops after a knife-edge vote.

However the mood in Germany has sobered considerably in the light of the latest events with pacifist Green party members, who form the junior partner in the ruling coalition with chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats, particularly opposed to any greater involvement.

Aware of the disquiet within coalition ranks, Schroeder this week was quick to placate his coalition partners and the public. He emphasised that the soldiers did not die “in combat” but while carrying out a mission “with peaceful intentions”. “What happened was a tragic accident,” he said, adding “it had nothing to do with military conflict.”

The deaths of German servicemen came during a bad week for the defence ministry which only days earlier had to deal with accusations of withholding information from Bundestag members on troop deployments in Afghanistan.

It emerged this week that the elite German force KSK, numbering about 100 men, had been secretly operational in the combat zone in eastern Afghanistan despite previous government assurances that German troops would not be involved directly in conflict to root out Al Qaida supporters holed up in caves.

The publicly stated purpose of the allied mission, to which Germany has contributed 1100 troops, is to shore up the interim Afghan government led by Karzi and prevent the emergence of regional warlords who might threaten his power.

Washington had said on March 3 that troops from Germany, Denmark, France, Norway, Australia, and Canada were involved in the latest military offensive in eastern Afghanistan alongside the US without giving further details.

However, it was more than Schroeder wanted to reveal and the news caused uproar among parliamentarians.

Paul Breuer, opposition Christian Democrat said while parliamentarians appreciated the need for secrecy on operational details, it was not right that the defence committee of the Bundestag, the German parliament, had been informed only about the most basic details which he said the public was entitled to know.

“I expect the government to inform the Defense Committee about the results of such missions,” he said.

Amid growing criticism over the secrecy surrounding the deployments the government spokesperson, Uwe-Karsten Heye, admitted that the government’s information policy was “obviously in need of improvement”. He put this down to the fact that it was the “first time that postwar Germany found itself in such a situation”.

Heye was referring to Germany’s decades-long aversion to assert itself militarily as a result of its militaristic past.

Parliamentarians said that such secrecy did not inspire confidence that the government would keep them informed as required by the parliamentary mandate.

The hard-won parliamentary mandate for troops to be sent into Afghanistan will expire in June and Schroeder will be forced to ask parliament for a renewed mandate in a completely different climate of opinion following the current deaths.

At the same time, Germany appears to be becoming more embroiled in peacekeeping activities in Afghanistan.

According to the defence ministry announcement this week Germany is willing to take over “tactical leadership” of part of the UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan with Turkey likely to hold overall leadership of the force when Britain gives up its command in April. Talks will be held next week to finalise transfer of command to Turkey.

Germany had been mooted to take over command after the British leave in April but Schroeder said that because of Germany’s peacekeeping commitments in the Balkans it was not able to take on these duties.

Commentators said Schroeder was well aware that it could be a sensitive issue within the coalition. Instead the defence ministry has offered only to take on tactical command.

Matters have also not been helped by Washington’s desire to extend the war against terrorism to Iraq, causing more consternation in Germany.

In recent weeks discussion programmes on German television have featured sharp criticism of US foreign policy from both sides of the German political spectrum.

In an interview with the influential weekly newsmagazine “Der Spiegel”, German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, a Green party member, said the international coalition against terrorism was not a “blank cheque” to “invade some country”.