German Troops in Afghanistan
Discussing politics in August?! A waste of time, you might think.
Well, the Germans will vote a new government into office on 27 September 2009. I should be lucky to find some foreign policy life in Berlin’s hottest month of the year. Since 2002 it is known that questions of war – or “robust missions”, as they are preferably called by German politicians –, so that questions of war and peace can make or break an election victory. Against all initial polls, then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder made it to his second term in office when campaigning against a support of the U.S. led invasion into Iraq.
In 2006, Germany took over the Regional Command North in the framework of NATO’s ISAF mission. About 4.500 German soldiers are on duty in northern Afghanistan. After the United States and the United Kingdom, the German Bundeswehr (Federal Defense Force) contingent with its headquarters in Mazar-e Sharif is the third largest national contingent within ISAF.
With Afghans going to the polls last week, what is Germany’s Afghanistan debate about?
On 22 July 2009, the German troops got involved in fighting of “unprecedented scope in northern Afghanistan”, according to a press statement by General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr.
Poor Debate So Far
In contrast to the developments on the ground, the debate on Afghanistan has been poor until very recently. With the exception of Die Linke, the Left Party, that is demanding an immediate withdrawal, there was a consensus in Parliament not to discuss the issue during the election campaign. But since the party failed with its Afghanistan case at the Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court) in 2007, die Linke’s criticism of the government lacks clout. The other opposition parties, the Liberals and the Greens, both with good chances to make it into the next government, kept quiet for quite a while.
Being treated so nicely by the opposition, Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democratic challenger and Foreign Minister of her Grant Coalition, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, have not felt much pressure to defend their Afghanistan policy. The majority of Germans normally is against military engagement, but normal Germans are on holidays at the moment. So no demands from the electorate either.
Generally speaking, the debate concentrates on big statements and big picture arguments rather than on in-depth analyses and assessments of the situation on the ground. Sending soldiers out to fight wars is new to the Federal Republic of Germany. The politicial culture of the country is still formed by the idea of Germany being a civil power. Development aid rather than warfare. Embedded journalism is something new to Germans, compared to what we are used to from CNN, the BBC or al Jazeera.
Debate Accelerating, But Lack of Substance
But since last week, the Afghanistan mission has made its way into the election campaign. I would not go as far as the Spiegel did though. Its widely read Spiegel online platform, known for getting the news out first rather than for always providing big substance, declared on 19 August that the German debate on Afghanistan was “about to escalate”: The about-to-retire head of the Social Democrats in the Bundestag and former Minister of Defence, Peter Struck, criticized Angela Merkel’s lack of support for the troops. Well, then.
To be fair, there has been some movement. Yet, the substance of the debate has not improved significantly so far.
Judy Dempsey reported in the IHT on 20 August about the Liberals coming up with demands for a removal of troops from Afghanistan.
Chancellor Merkel’s challenger, Foreign Minister Steinmeier, called for a withdrawal plan from Afghanistan today.
“The Mission is a Desaster”
“The mission is a desaster”, former Conservative Minister of Defence Volker Rühe told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel in its 17 August edition, a statement that was picked up by the powerful national tabloid Bild Zeitung. With his comment, Rühe publicly challenged his party colleague and current Minister of Defence, Franz-Josef Jung of Angela Merkel’s conservative party (Christlich Demokratische Union). Rühe wants German troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan within the next two years. Minister of Defence Jung reacted by making clear that the purpose of the German mission was to enable Afghanistan to look after its own security. Here, “we are certainly looking at a time framework between five to ten years”, Jung replied in Bild.
Rühe’s position was supported by an old companion. Ulrich Weisser, the former head of the policy planning unit of the Bundeswehr, is looking at an end of the NATO mission in Afghanistan until 2011 in a piece for the leftish daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau on 17 August:
“The question if and when the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan will end plays a surprisingly minor role in the German election campaign. But it is obvious that the political parties and the government eventually have to give an answer to this question. The majority of Germans is skeptical and critical about the military engagement of Germany in Afghanistan. There is no sufficient acceptance.”
“This Discussion is Dangerous”
A rather extreme position on this issue has been brought forward by Ruprecht Polenz, the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag and a member of the conservative party:
“This discussion is dangerous. If the Taliban learn that there is a big discussion being kicked off in Germany, they will carry out even more attacks on the Bundeswehr.”
Bundeswehr a Security Risk to Humanitarian Aid?
In a guest article for the Bild Zeitung on 16 August 2009, Wolfgang Jamann, Head of Board of the German NGO Welthungerhilfe, accuses the government of committing “a fall of man” in Afghanistan. According to Jamann, the Bundeswehr’s strategy of co-operating with development aid institutions on the ground (“civil-military co-operation”) undermines the humanitarian aid work of politically neutral NGOs and constitutes a threat to their security. With his criticism Jaman also made it to the top of the evening news on public television.
The claim to keep armed forces separate as much as possible from NGOs is not new. But it is a particular sensitive issue for the German government’s rationale about the mission in Afghanistan. The government’s line shared by the Green and Liberal opposition parties is that Germany’s engagement is a mission for peace and, by nature, a civil-military mission. Ministers often underline the Bundeswehr’s contribution to reconstruction and development in the country rather than pointing at details of the armed combat. This political consensus, which has guaranteed the silent acceptance of the German public for the Afghanistan mission so far, could increasingly be challenged.
“Warriors of Good” – We Germans Do Not Fight Wars
In his new book Wir Gutkrieger: Warum die Bundeswehr im Ausland scheitern wird (‘Warriors of Good’: Why the German Defense Force will Fail Abroad), political analyst Eric Chauvistré explains the German mindset on military engagement and criticizes what he believes is a poor level of knowledge in the German political elite on the Bundeswehr’s missions abroad:
“The political debate on the Afghanistan mission is based on the following military policy rationale: We Germans do not fight wars. And even if we do, they are someone else’s wars, or at least wars for a very good cause. This standpoint is certainly worthy of discussion, and one might even come to the conclusion that in some cases fighting a war is necessary and commendable. But nothing of the sort is happening.”
An excerpt of the book was published in the summer issue of the global edition of Internationale Politik, the foreign policy journal of the German Council on Foreign Relations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik).