Foreign Policy Challenges

DW-WORLD.DE: Professor Weisskirchen, what do you think of the latest hostage video and 10-day ultimatum?

Gert Weisskirchen: This is a terrible sign that these criminals are ready to kill innocent people and they are claiming that they are criminals. This is not only a paradox, but also a crime in itself.

How seriously should it be taken?

Very seriously. It’s really dangerous. It shows that these people are ready to kill.

How do you think the German government will respond to the ultimatum?

First of all, it’s clear that the government is trying to save the lives of these innocent people, but we are not ready to fulfil their claims.

The Tornado reconnaissance jets will arrive in northern Afghanistan tomorrow. The German government has maintained that its involvement in Afghanistan is strictly a peacekeeping mission. In light of the Tornado mission and now the hostage-taking, do you think that Germany will be able to stay out of danger or is it being drawn into more than it bargained for?

The point is that we are ready to give what we can, for instance to save the people of Afghanistan, and we are ready to fulfill what they need, but we are working within a very restrictive mandate. That means that the parliament is eagerly monitoring what is happening on the ground and we are not ready to enlarge the mandate militarily.

How do you see the future of Germany’s involvement in Afghanistan? Will it become more dangerous for German troops?

No doubt the level of danger is increasing and that means we should be able to respond to this. But it’s clear on the other hand that we are not ready to enlarge the mandate, which means that we are only fulfilling a restricted role. And we would like to see much more readiness to create better conditions -- like working on public infrastructure, civil involvement and trying to give the Afghani people all the instruments they need in order to create peace in the country.

This week Kurt Beck proposed organizing a peace conference with moderate members of the Taliban. What do you think of this idea?

As we have seen in Musa Kala, there is a kind of paradoxical consequence to this idea. We have to think about in what way we can pick up this idea in order to involve people living on the ground and being that kind of authority in order to create local peace from below. That means that it would be good to try and find out in what way we can get those people on board who are ready to create a kind of peace Jerga, as they call it. This is a good way forward.