• English Site
• > Germany
• > Afghanistan

Mandate Debate

German Politicians Want Troops Out of Afghanistan

The German parliament isn't set to vote on extending the country's Afghanistan mission until this autumn. But the debate has already begun -- and some within Chancellor Merkel's coalition would like to see a partial withdrawal.

AP

German troops have been in Afghanistan since the beginning of the ISAF mission. But how much longer will they stay?

At issue this autumn will be whether Berlin should extend the mandate authorizing German soldiers to be stationed in Afghanistan. It is a debate that has become an annual ritual in the Bundestag since German troops were first sent into Afghanistan some five years ago.

But this year, it promises to be especially contentious -- particularly within the Social Democratic Party, Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partner.

Despite the SPD having been, under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the party in charge when German soldiers first set foot in Afghanistan, the party has since become decidedly ambivalent about the mission. And with a new survey indicating that 61 percent of Germans are in favor of bringing the troops home, the self-appointed "party of peace" is eager to give the impression that it is working toward an end to the engagement.

Hence this week's proposal. The SPD has voiced an interest in removing a "KSK" special forces unit from the command of the US-commanded Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Next Wednesday, the proposal, which foresees continuing German participation in the Security Assistance Force under the mandate of the United Nations (ISAF), is to be presented to a special session of the center-left party.

As SPD defense expert Hans-Peter Bartels told the daily Die Welt on Wednesday, such a move would make it easier for his party to re-approve the ISAF mandate. In any case, he said, the 100-soldier-strong KSK force "hasn't been needed in Afghanistan since 2005."

The response from the other side of the aisle was immediate. Bernd Siebert, the spokesman for defense issues for the center-right Christian Democrats, said that such a "partial withdrawal" would be "short-sighted," while the Christian Democrats' foreign policy spokesman Eckart von Klaeden told the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel that OEF is vital to combating terror in Afghanistan. Were it to be weakened, he said, German troops now with ISAF might have to become involved in "even more dangerous missions."

Still, with SPD skepticism of the Afghanistan mission on the rise, an extension of the mandate may become dependent on making concessions to those who would have Germany pull out of Afghanistan altogether. In that the KSK force has spent much of the last two years under ISAF command, despite being formally attached to OEF, formally removing them from the OEF mandate might be just the thing.

As recently as March, a third of SPD parliamentarians voted against sending Tornado reconnaissance jets to Afghanistan. Many were concerned the planes might be used to choose bombing targets that would ultimately result in civilian deaths. Indeed, Germans have upped the volume recently on their critique of the number of civilian casualties in southern Afghanistan, where US-led OEF troops and ISAF troops are engaged in a pitched battle against the Taliban. The German ISAF presence is confined to the relatively peaceful region of northern Afghanistan.

Yet despite German troops' being largely out of harm's way, growing German casualties have also fueled growing skepticism. Twenty-one German soldiers have died so far in Afghanistan, including three in a suicide bombing in Kunduz in late May. Additionally, there have been a number of recent warnings from the intelligence community indicating that Germany has become a possible target for Islamist terrorists due to the country's 3,150-soldier strong presence in Afghanistan.

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung is doing what he can to quiet the skeptics in Germany. In Washington this week for talks with US Secretary of Defense Bob Gates and President George W. Bush's Security Advisor Steve Hadley, Jung is making a plea for greater communication between OEF and ISAF in an effort to avoid the civilian casualties that have haunted the missions in recent months.

He also said that things aren't nearly as bad in Afghanistan as the press makes them out to be. He urged the media to report more on the mission's successes in development and in the fight against drugs. There is "no danger," Jung says, "that the situation in Afghanistan will spiral out of control."

But in Afghanistan the violence continues. In Kabul on Thursday, a suicide bomber attacked a convoy of security contractors, killing two and wounding three others.

cgh/ddp/afp/dpa

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•