German troops are fighting the first pitched battles witnessed by the Bundeswehr since 1945 in the face of a growing Taleban insurgency in the north of Afghanistan.
Security has deteriorated in areas such as Badghis province in the northwest, Kunduz, Baghlan and some parts of Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.
In April there was heavy fighting in Kunduz province during Operation Towheed, in which seven German soldiers were killed. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defence Minister, gave a warning last week of "new and greater risks" that German forces must bear. Recent opinion polls have put German public opposition to the country's 5,000-strong Afghan deployment at 62 per cent.
A spokesman for the German forces in Kunduz told The Times this weekend: "It was intensive fighting in April. The situation is not stable and not secure. It has been deteriorating for more than a year." ...
More at The Times.
What is This Thing Called War? - The Economist.
Slowly and painfully Germany's leaders and voters are coming to terms with being at war in Afghanistan.
German troops have been fighting in Afghanistan for eight years. But Germans have been slow to accept this. "Stabilisation deployment" was how the politicians described Germany's role in the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which it is the third-largest contributor of troops. This was meant to convey the impression that the soldiers were helping Afghans build schools and dig wells rather than killing or being killed. Thus did ministers seek to reconcile Germany's duties as an ally with its instinctive pacifism, born of the horrors of the second world war.
The euphemism now lies buried beneath the rubble of reality. On April 15th the Taliban killed four and wounded five German soldiers who were escorting two Afghan battalions south of Kunduz in northern Afghanistan, the main area of German operations. Three soldiers were killed on patrol two weeks earlier. In September a German commander called an airstrike near Kunduz that killed and wounded as many as 142 people, some of them civilians. This was the bloodiest action involving the German army since 1945. German war deaths now stand at 43...
More at The Economist.
Comments
If any readers are interested in fairly complete - and well sourced - coverage on Afghanistan/ISAF and Germany, the English language version of Spiegel should be a must read. Link to their most recent article on Afghanistan.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,692760,00.html
If any readers are interested in fairly complete - and well sourced - coverage on Afghanistan/ISAF and Germany, the English language version of Spiegel should be a must read. Link to their most recent article on Afghanistan.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,692760,00.html
The Economist had some <a href="http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1595446…; on Germany's gradual change of political will to allow a more active ROE. The articles could be read in concert.