dissenting voices on afghanistan

With a parliamentary debate and decision about the extension of the mandate for German troops coming up in October, the situation in Afghanistan and the German role there are being debated in the German public. The CDU-SPD coalition government plans to increase German troops in Afghanistan by 1,000 to 4,500. But a worsening security situation and shock about German soldiers killing Afghan civilians recently have made the mission controversial again. The newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine thinks the issue will definitely play a role in the election next year, and it says Chancellor Merkel's CDU is nervous that the SPD might try to attract voters with an anti-war campaign (just as Gerhard Schröder won the 2002 elections by opposing the Iraq war). For the time being, only the Left Party is clearly against the war, with the Greens split on the issue and support of the war in the SPD waning. But even the conservative CDU has its share of dissidents: The party's defence expert Willy Wimmer, a former secretary in the defence ministry, is calling for a unilateral withdrawal of German troops saying, "this is not our war." Wimmer has over the years become very critical of the United States and complains that there is no German foreign policy worth the name on many issues; instead, he claims, Germany tends to blindly follow the US. 

The German media, too, are being criticized. Former ZDF star reporter Ulrich Tilgner quit the public television channel in February after reporting for years from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. In a recent interview with the newspaper Tagesspiegel, he repeats previous criticism of the ZDF, suggesting that it is not critical enough of the German government on Afghanistan. In contrast, he is very positive about his new working environment at Swiss television where there is "more readiness to acknowledge mistakes in Western policies" and "editorial teams tend not to be dominated by colleagues with only limited knowledge, as has become common in Germany." Martin Gerner, a journalist who has been working regularly as a trainer and consultant in Afghanistan since 2004, in an article for the journal message, points out that too many German reporters in Afghanistan are traveling with the German troops, the Bundeswehr, which influences their coverage. He thinks there are many taboos in the German media: There is hardly any reporting about the difficult psychological situation the soldiers face, nor about the parallel worlds foreigners and locals inhabit in Kabul, highlighted by signboards such as "No Afghans in this restaurant".

But Gerner also thinks that withdrawing German troops would be wrong. In a recent commentary, he writes:

A premature withdrawal would leave behind a power vacuum that would be filled by the Taliban, criminals and former warlords. It would be the opposite of the "sustainability" that donor countries like to use as a catch phrase. Sending thousands of reinforcements, as is currently being discussed, would be just as wrong. The Soviet Army didn't manage to get the country under control with 200,000 soldiers. So the 1,000 additional German troops envisaged in Berlin's new Afghanistan mandate don't make much sense. What's needed is a strategy from the West that emphasizes politics over military. It's a fallacy to believe that, under the current circumstances, the military can pave the way for civilian reconstruction in all areas.