US President Trump wants to deploy more U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and calls for the same from the NATO partners. From Germany, there is a cancellation comes first – more German soldiers in the Hindu Kush want to no one here.
There were only a few words had to say to the Chancellor in an Interview with the German publication German armed forces currently in Afghanistan, many soldiers are being read after the change of course of the US government, the German Chancellor’s words with: “We are ready to participate in the future in the international fight against terrorism.”
These words were printed before US President Donald Trump released his new Afghanistan marching route, and announced to the allies, NATO States, in a duty: More soldiers rather than less, more combat missions instead of reconstruction – and the expectation that, in addition to in the future, about 12,000 U.S. troops should be used more and more international troops.
“We will call on our allies and our NATO partners, to support the new strategy financially and with their own troops,” Trump said during his speech last night, “We are optimistic that they will do that as well.”
Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen to visit in Mazar-i-Sharif in December 2016
From Germany, there is a cancellation comes first. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen, today announce that the order and extent of the Bundeswehr troops in the mandate of the Bundestag is very clearly defined. “And that is exactly where he’s moving even more,” stressed von der Leyen.
The German foreign Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, emphasised in his statement: “It is good that the US commitment in Afghanistan.” However, the use for civilian reconstruction should not be allowed to subside, so Gabriel continued.
In Germany was and is the deployment in Afghanistan is unpopular
Currently, approximately 950 of the German soldiers in the NATO Mission Resolute Support (RS) in Afghanistan – thus, Germany is the second-largest number of troops in the country after the United States. The soldiers will train and advise the Afghan army and are not even in the fight.
Bundeswehr soldiers in Afghanistan
That was until 2016 otherwise. Since 2002, the Bundeswehr, was in the meantime more than 5000 German soldiers, especially in Northern Afghanistan, an active, 55 lost their lives in action. A variety of injured and traumatized soldiers. The had not experienced the German Public since the founding of the Bundeswehr in 1955, accordingly, were strong, and the resistance against the deployment in Afghanistan in Germany itself.
It is understandable, then, that the new Afghanistan strategy is the Trump Administration causes in Germany a few weeks before the election, no cheers. No politician wants to get with a demand for more troops in Afghanistan quote.
SPD: “no place To hide”
SPD foreign policy expert Rolf Mützenich
The Deputy Chairman of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag Rolf Mützenich, looks in an interview with DW for more German soldiers to the Hindukush is also no need to. “We don’t have to hide, as we see in the last few years in Afghanistan”, says the SPD foreign policy. Within the NATO, it was agreed that military operations could only work as a complement to the civil society efforts in Afghanistan. In December, the extension of the Mandate to stand for the current use and the way it currently is fomuliert, had it exactly right. That means no additional German soldiers. “And the need to convey the Federal government of the United States,” not calls for cap.
Similar is also to hear from the CDU: “Afghanistan still needs our support on the path to greater state stability,” says the defence policy spokesman of the Union, Henning Otte. However, the Afghan government needed to increase “the efforts again in order to assert the state’s monopoly of violence and the safety of the country itself.”
Green: Fatal for Afghanistan
Omid Nouripour, foreign policy spokesperson of the Alliance 90/the Greens
But then the question is: is there still the sense of, what is the USA doing? The foreign policy spokesman of the Greens group in the Bundestag, Omid Nouripour has big doubts.
“Trump’s speech is fatal to the situation in Afghanistan,” he says. In the past years, the numerous civilian victims in Afghanistan, one of the main had been obstacles for the creation of trust in the rule of law and for safety. “The separation of terrorist-fighting and state-building is devastating, and fails to recognize the core of the radicalisation in Afghanistan.”
After all, the universal opinion in the political Berlin, US President, Trump positioned himself at last to Afghanistan. What exactly this means for the German Afghanistan policy, the need to explain that the United States is now even closer. The simple demand for “more soldiers” will in any case be rejected, across all party boundaries.