Reevaluating Afghanistan

As three wounded Bundeswehr soldiers were released from a German hospital on Monday, politicians were discussing how Saturday's suicide bomber attack in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz is likely to make getting parliamentary consensus on extending the military's mandate in Afghanistan more difficult.

Bernhard Gertz, the head of the German Federal Armed Forces Association, told the Mitteldeutschen Zeitung Germany would have to reevaluate the purpose the Bundeswehr's mission to Afghanistan and decide "if it is still responsible for soldiers to risk their lives for something whose outcome is questionable."

"If there is not a radical change in the overall strategy, we are in danger of failing in Afghanistan," he added. "Other than the fact that there have been elections, none of the major goals has been reached."

While saying the army's mandate needed to be looked at again, Gertz, however, did not call for the withdrawal of German troops out of Afghanistan.´

The German parliament is scheduled to vote on a whether to extend the army's mandate in the autumn. Some politicians have called for changes in the pair of mandates under which the Bundeswehr is deployed in Afghanistan after the weekend's attack.

"The discussion about this was tough enough already in the SPD," Rolf Muetzenich, a foreign policy expert in the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) told the Tagesspiegel am Sonntag newspaper. "A terrible attack like this will obviously have an influence when it comes to deciding on whether to extend the mandate."

Staying the course

The Social Democrats share power with Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Members of both parties said they will not pull out of Afghanistan because of the attacks.

"Even though this was a serious attack, we mustn't base our entire assessment of the situation on it," Walter Kolbow, the deputy head of the parliamentary party of the SPD told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. "It is justified to prolong the mandate (for German troops to stay in Afghanistan)."

German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung also said the attack would not alter Germany's peacekeeping obligations in Afghanistan.

"Nothing will change with the mission," he said in a television interview.

The Welt am Sonntag newspaper applauded the resolve, saying in an editorial that any other decision would "send out the wrong signal to terrorists worldwide, to Germany's allies in NATO and to the international community."

New strategy needed

While conservative politicians stand firmly behind the military involvement, many Germans disapprove of the military playing an active role abroad. Left-wing politicians renewed calls for a different strategy.

Greens party head Reinhard Bütikofer called for the German government to shift its focus to rebuilding the civilian infrastructures in Afghanistan.

"We've been of the opinion for some time that we must change the overall strategy," Bütikofer said in a television interview Monday.

Oskar Lafontaine, the former SPD chairman who now heads the Left Party said Germany should pull troops from Afghanistan and focus on providing development aid to help rebuild the country. Lafontaine's party has taken votes from the SPD in recent years, in part because of their opposition to German military involvement abroad.

Lafontaine went a step further, accusing the German Bundeswehr of engaging in terrorism activities in Afghanistan. Germany recently deployed Tornado jets to Afghanistan to carry out surveillance missions to aid US-led troops in hunting down Taliban fighters, but the government has refused to move troops into the south.

Defense Minister Jung called Lafontaine's comment "absurd."

Civilians casualties increasing

Yet there are signs that Jung is growing increasingly concerned about the situation there. Over the past month, Afghan officials reported 50 civilians killed in US air strikes in fighting in the western province in Herat, and another 21 in south central Helmand province. Last Monday, Jung said he had complained to NATO about the increasing civilian casualties.

"We must ensure that operations do not develop this way. It would not be a victory to set the (Afghan) people against us," Jung said, after talks between EU defense ministers in Brussels.

Germany has around 3,000 troops in Afghanistan, largely in the north of the country. The north of Afghanistan has seen relatively little of the violence linked to a Taliban-led insurgency plaguing the south and east, but the Taliban vowed last month to intensify attacks in the north.

Twenty-one have Germans have lost their lives in Afghanistan since 2002, including the soldiers killed Saturday.