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  Shrinking Solidarity in Afghanistan?: Debate Flares Anew about German Military Mission

Shrinking Solidarity in Afghanistan? Debate Flares Anew about German Military Mission

By Ralf Beste, Konstantin von Hammerstein and Alexander Szandar

Part 2: An overlap of authority

ISAF's commander is Dan McNeill, a US four-star general who has about 37,000 troops under his command. The United States provides the largest contingent, with 15,000 troops, followed by the British (5,200) and the Germans (3,000). To improve coordination of the various missions, the NATO partners agreed that a deputy of McNeill's in Kabul would guide the combat missions of the ISAF and OEF units.

But this agreement hasn't panned out so well. David Rodriguez, a two-star general, has been in command of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan since April. Rodriguez also heads ISAF's Regional Command (East), creating a confusing overlap of authority. As commander of ISAF, Rodriguez reports to NATO General McNeill. But as head of OEF, he often leaves his fellow US officers in the dark, because his orders come from US Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida.

But the teams associated with these two operations are not the only outfits constantly stepping on each other's toes in Afghanistan. They're joined by a dangerously confusing array of other units:

• US Special Forces, though officially assigned to OEF commander Rodriguez, generally receive orders directly from the Pentagon.

• Special units of the CIA, of whose existence even officers at NATO and the Bundeswehr are unaware, at least officially. Military officials have no illusions when it comes to the role these units play. For them the CIA forces are simply "murder commandos," because they are in Afghanistan specifically to hunt down al-Qaida members.

• Officers of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) who, together with militarily trained Afghan helpers, destroy poppy fields and are "causing trouble" with drug mafia for the reconstruction teams, in the view of former British commander David Richards.

Unlike German politicians and Bundeswehr troops in Afghanistan, senior military leaders take a positive view of the cooperation between ISAF and OEF. "Without the support of the OEF troops," warns one NATO general, "ISAF might as well pack its bags." American units have rushed to ISAF's aid often enough. Without the anti-terrorism forces in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, says a high-ranking officer at the Ministry of Defense in Berlin, Taliban fighters could march into Kabul practically unchallenged.

This is why Defense Minister Franz-Josef Jung is so opposed to a strict partition of the forces into a "good ISAF" and a "bad OEF." The regular OEF troops are not the ones who create problems for ISAF, say NATO military officials. "The Special Forces are the real problem," says one German general.

Reconsidering Anti-Terrorism

It has been Special Forces missions in particular that have been responsible for large numbers of casualties within the civilian population. "We can no longer accept civilian casualties and the factors that cause them," an angry President Hamid Karzai recently said in Kabul, "the patience of our people is coming to an end."

Less than two weeks after Karzai made these remarks, dozens more civilians were killed when US Special Forces, finding themselves in a tight spot, called (again) for air support.

The incident also set the German defense minister against the Americans. US troops would have to be more careful when it came to the civilian population, Jung demanded. "We are liberators, not occupiers," he said.

At the urging of the Germans, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer presented US President George W. Bush with the civilian-casualties problem, but Bush sidestepped. He said that although he grieved with the Afghan families who "are losing innocent family members," the casualties are the result of the Taliban's tactic of often surrounding themselves with "innocent civilians." Bush was quick to add that the NATO allies should shoulder a greater share of the "burdens and risks."

There has been little support for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, at least in Germany. The SPD and Christian Democrat (CDU) coalition government is at least willing to increase development aid beyond the currently planned budget of €100 million; Berlin is also willing to consider sending more police and military training personnel for the Afghan army. But sending more troops is off the table. Germany's cooperation with the United States -- at least as part of OEF -- seems to have neared its end.

"We must take a close look at whether this mission is still serving its purpose," says Walter Kolbow, Deputy Chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, echoing the sentiments of his fellow SPD members. Even military experts within the SPD, who are normally loyal to the government, want to see the Bundestag withdraw its authorization of the German Special Forces mission.

It could be the price the CDU will pay to convince the Social Democrats to lend their support to extending the remainder of Germany's Afghanistan mandate this fall. The Chancellor and CDU legislators have already indicated that they might accommodate the SPD on this issue.

"Militarily speaking," doing away with the 100 German Special Forces troops would be of "little significance," says British General Richards. But the German withdrawal would have a significant political impact, as it would take Germany yet another step away from the "unlimited solidarity" former Chancellor Schröder promised the United States for its fight against terrorism in the fall of 2001.

Schröder had a staunch ally in Germany at the time: then-opposition leader Angela Merkel. In a telegram to the US president, Merkel also promised him her "solidarity." "The CDU," she wrote at the time, "is firmly behind the United States in the fight against international terrorism."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan