Last Saturday, three members of the German armed forces and seven local Afghans were killed by a Taliban suicide bomber at a bazaar in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. The attack, which also severely wounded several other German soldiers and scores of Afghan civilians, brought the number of total German losses in that country to 24.
German troops in Afghanistan. Courtesy of AFP/Shah Maria.
The bombing also shattered the long-standing misconception, both in the German public and among key NATO allies, that Bundeswehr troops in the North are primarily engaged in safe reconstruction work while American, Canadian, and British forces hunt Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists in the South.
This division of labor is, in fact, a fiction. Berlin has already dispatched Germany's secretive KSK special forces to support NATO combat missions in the South on more than 70 occasions. Also, security conditions in the North, like elsewhere in the country, have deteriorated in recent months. The situation on the ground is so dire that President Bush even felt compelled to invite NATO secretary-general Jaap De Hoop Scheffer to his Crawford ranch last weekend, vowing to "work with our NATO allies to convince them that they must share more of the burden and must all share the risks in meeting our goal."
Back in Germany, conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel was quick to condemn the attacks as "perfidious murder that fills us all with disgust" and reiterated the international community's commitment "to continue helping the people of Afghanistan build a good future for their country." Commentators from Germany's most influential newspapers also expressed strong support for the continuation of the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan, arguing that a precipitous withdrawal could have terrible consequences. According to the center-right mass-circulation tabloid Bild:
Terrible though these deaths are, it would be short-sighted and dangerous to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan because of this. For one thing, Germany can't leave the war on terror up to other nations and confine its own role to that of a morally superior preacher. Second, we can only depend on the support of our alliance partners if we too contribute to the fight against terror. A withdrawal of the German army would be a triumph for the Taliban. Worse: It would render the sacrifice brought by these soldiers and the others pointless.
Even before Saturday's deadly bombing, polls indicated that almost 50 percent of the German population was in favor of pulling Bundeswehr troops out of Afghanistan. Eager to ride the wave of public opinion, MPs from the populist Left Party as well as leftist members of the SPD party--which is part of Merkel's "Grand Coalition"--have now seized on the Kunduz attacks to call for a withdrawal of all German forces stationed there since 2001.
Oskar Lafontaine, the charismatic Left Party leader in the Bundestag, even charged that the German military was "indirectly involved in terrorist actions" because of the recent deployment of eight Tornado reconnaissance fighters in support of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. Speaking on Sabine Christiansen, Germany's most popular TV talk show, Lafontaine first defined terrorism as the unlawful use of force in pursuit of political objectives before drawing a direct comparison between Iraq and Afghanistan: "Under this definition, Bush, Blair, and others are terrorists because they have used force unlawfully on a large scale in Iraq and hundreds of thousands have died." The same was true of Afghanistan, the rhetorically brilliant Lafontaine added. Unfortunately, Germany's embattled conservative defense minister Franz-Josef Jung was not able to effectively counter Lafontaine's polemic during the televised panel discussion. And in an interview with Bild, Ottmar Schreiner, a left wing Bundestag SPD MP, made it clear that his doubts about the purpose of the mission had grown, and that he sees "no sustainable future prospects in the civilian area that would justify further military intervention." Therefore, he said, "the entire mission needs to be reviewed."
Right now, three separate Bundestag mandates--all of which need to be renewed by the parliament on a yearly basis--govern the rules of Germany's military engagement in Afghanistan. The first mandate, passed in response to the 9/11 attacks, is part of the American-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and covers select German land, air, and naval forces operating in the region. Politically, this mandate--set to expire in mid-November--is the most controversial, as it involves hunting down terrorists, interdicting ships, and other offensive operations. The second and third mandate--both set to expire in mid-October--are part of the UN-sponsored, NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) and concern the bulk of the more than 3,000 German ground troops operating in northern Afghanistan as well as the Tornado reconnaissance aircraft in the South. The Tornado mandate, first passed in March 2007, already proved to be very divisive as more than 60 left-wing SPD members defected and voted against the fighter deployment while their party leadership, along with the rest of the CDU/CSU MPs from the "Grand Coalition," voted in favor.
For the time being, a majority of Bundestag MPs--that is, virtually all conservative CDU/CSU lawmakers, many moderate SPD members, plus a few sensible Greens--still support the Afghanistan mission and are therefore likely to renew both the OEF and ISAF mandates this fall. However, there is a risk that mounting NATO casualties and the perception that no progress is being made in Afghanistan could turn public opinion in Germany--as well as other key allies such as Canada and France--decisively against the mission there. In that sense, Iraq and Afghanistan are indeed beginning to share some similarities.
