It was 10 years ago that the United States, together with its NATO allies, marched into Afghanistan to put an end to Taliban rule and begin the hunt for al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden. A decade later, the terrorist leader is dead. But, says Harald Kujat, former general inspector of the German military, the mission has been a failure.
"The mission fulfilled the political aim of showing solidarity with the United States," Kujat told the German daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung. "But if you measure progress against the goal of stabilizing a country and a region, then the mission has failed."
Kujat said that it was ignored for too long that "the opponent was fighting a military battle and we needed to do the same." In reference to claims from German political leaders, among others, he said "the argument that it was a stabilization mission was maintained for too long." The result, he said, is that soldiers were not given what they needed in order to effectively fight the enemy.
Kujat is hardly the first to criticize the Afghanistan war. But his words carry weight in Germany. He was a leading planner of the German mission to Afghanistan and served as general inspector of the German military -- the Bundeswehr's highest-ranking soldier -- from 2000 to 2002. Part of his job included advising both the German government and the Defense Ministry on military matters.
Timeline for Withdrawal
The former Bundeswehr leader also took aim at Germany's plan to complete withdrawal of all of its 5,000 combat troops from Afghanistan by 2014, a timeline that was reiterated on Friday by Germany's special representative for Afghanistan, Michael Steiner.
"If we withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014," said Kujat, "then the Taliban will take over power again within just a few months."
Steiner declined to name a date for the beginning of Germany's withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel has said it aims at beginning the pullout by the end of 2011, conditions permitting. Steiner said that a plan would be presented by the end of the year.
The withdrawal of NATO forces from Afghanistan was a major topic at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday. NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen of Denmark said that, even after 2014, the alliance would focus heavily on training the Afghan military.
Kujat isn't the only heavyweight critic of the Afghanistan mission to have spoken out in recent days. Speaking in Washington at an event organized by the think tank Council on Foreign Relations, Stanley McChrystal, who led the Afghanistan troop increase ordered by President Barack Obama in 2009, said that the US had a "frighteningly simplistic" view of Afghanistan when the war began. He also said that the US and NATO were only "50 percent of the way" toward achieving the goals they had set for themselves.
Pressuring Pakistan
"We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough," McChrystal said. "Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years."
Obama on Thursday, increased pressure on neighboring Pakistan, saying that the Islamabad regime's connections with "unsavory characters" had put the country's relationship with the US at risk. Washington has long been urging Pakistan to cease supporting Islamist militant attacks inside Afghanistan, an effort which has been redoubled in the wake of the US killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan this spring.
Pakistan fired back on Friday. Salim Saifullah, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in Pakistan's Senate, told Reuters that "this is not helping either the US, Afghanistan or Pakistan. There will be pressure on the (Pakistani) government to get out of this war (on Islamist militancy)."
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Civilians on horse-drawn carts scurry past burning fuel tankers along the Khyber Pass, an important border crossing connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan and a major supply route for NATO forces. Ten years ago, the US began dropping bombs on targets in Afghanistan in a bid to oust the Taliban for harboring al-Qaida terrorists.
A Canadian soldier shakes hands with an Afghan boy near Kandahar in the summer of 2007. The anniversary of the war in Afghanistan comes amid growing concerns that the Taliban could regain control of the country once US and NATO troops withdraw. US President Barack Obama has said responsibility for Afghanistan's security should be handed over to Afghan forces in 2014.
Mere weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, residents of Kabul, seen here on Nov. 13, 2001, made their way to greet incoming fighters of the Northern Alliance. When the Afghan war began, it didn't take long for US forces to topple the Taliban government. But the deposed Islamist fighters have been waging increasingly aggressive attacks against NATO and Afghan security forces in recent months as responsibility for the country's security slowly changes hands.
Afghan women donning all-covering burqas wait for humanitarian aid in Kabul on Dec. 14, 2001, while a soldier uses a wooden stick to maintain order.
Soldiers from the German Bundeswehr have been stationed on the Hindu Kush since 2001. Seen here on July 1, 2008, a Quick Reaction Force takes part in a drill near the northern city of Masar-i-Sharif.
German Bundeswehr soldiers return fire after coming under mortar attack from insurgents on Dec. 14, 2009, while rebuilding a bridge that was destroyed on the outskirts of Kunduz.
Fighters from the Northern Alliance are seen returning from their front line positions after a battle in northern Afghanistan. The NATO-backed forces have played a crucial role in undercutting the Taliban's stranglehold on the country.
A skirmish in Helmand province. A US marine shouts as he tries to protect an Afghan man and his child during a skirmish with Taliban fighters near the town of Marjah in Helmand province on Feb. 13, 2010.
Close call for Sgt. William Bee, a US Marine taking fire from Taliban fighters near Garmsir in Helmand province on May 18, 2008. As of Oct. 4, 2011, the number of US military deaths in Afghanistan stood at 1,682, according to an Associated Press count.
An Afghan man is detained by US forces in Helmand province after a battle with Taliban insurgents. During the US' tenure in Afghanistan, America's image abroad has been tainted by the maintenance of so-called "black sites" -- secret interrogation centers scattered across the country, run by the CIA.
A man cleans a portrait of the popular mujahedeen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud on the ninth anniversary of the fighter's assassination on Sept. 8, 2010.
At Arlington National Cemetary near Washington D.C., a woman cries as she hugs a US Marine on May 27, 2010, near the grave of her 19-year-old son.
A woman covered in a burqa walks past riot police outside a stadium in Kabul on Feb. 23, 2007.
From their clifftop perch, Afghan soldiers keep an eye out for the enemy in the valley below on Sept. 22, 2005. In the background are the sandstone cliffs that once housed the Buddhas of Bamiyan -- monumental statues destroyed by the Taliban in March 2001.
An Afghan police officer stands guard in front of the destroyed King's Palace in Kabul on Aug. 29, 2005.
Northern Alliance fighters watch bombs rain down on Tora Bora on Dec. 16, 2001. The mountains housed a labyrinthine network of caves and it was long speculated that Osama bin Laden used the caves to evade capture.
Afghan children peek out the window of their shelter in the former Soviet Embassy in western Kabul on Nov. 27, 2001. In the 1980s, US-backed mujahedeen fighters in Afghanistan pushed out their Soviet occupiers in a bloody conflict that left rival militias vying for power. The civil war that ensued would eventually pave the way for the Taliban's rise to power.
As US Marines fill sand bags around their light mortar position on Dec. 1, 2001, a flimsy cardboard sign warns of nearby enemies.
Former US President George W. Bush and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai wave from a golf cart at the American presidential retreat, Camp David on Aug. 5, 2007. Months after the US invasion began, Karzai was sworn in as the head of the interim government in a power-sharing agreement.
Even in times of war, life goes on. In this photo taken June 1, 2010, Afghan soccer players gather in front of the destroyed Darulaman Palace in Kabul.
Opium oozes from poppy plants in a field in Farah province on May 5, 2009. A major source of revenue for the Taliban, the American military has set its sights on reducing the trafficking of the drug. But many poor farmers rely on the profits it generates for survival.
The late al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden (left) sits next to Ayman al-Zawahri in this undated file photo. The US invasion of Afghanistan was retaliation against the country's Taliban rulers for harboring the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
Taliban insurgents read the Koran in a military jail in Kabul on Nov. 26, 2001.
A curious crowd watches a helicopter belonging to the Afghan National Army Air Corps as it carries President Hamid Karzai during an election rally in Gardez, south of Kabul, on Aug. 4, 2009.
A US soldier takes a knee during a memorial ceremony for a fallen comerade on Feb. 8, 2010.
Taliban militants carry their weapons through the snow in an undisclosed location on Jan. 16, 2009.