German defence minister praises German deployment to Afghanistan
A German Bundeswehr soldier fires a gun during a night-time
exercise in the district of Chahar Dara in northern Afghanistan.
“Kunduz, this is the place where the German army (Bundeswehr) fought for the first time and had to learn how to fight,” Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière declared last Sunday, as the German encampment in Kunduz was handed over to Afghan security forces.
His remark summed up the significance for the German ruling class of the ten-year Bundeswehr mission in the northern Afghan province. The German army and in particular the German public, which harbours a deep aversion to militarism following the horrors of two world wars, must re-accustom themselves to soldiers killing and being killed in the interests of German imperialism.
De Maizière referred to Kunduz as “a turning point—not only for the army, but also for German society… Kunduz has marked the Bundeswehr like no other place. A place which was built up and fought over, where tears were shed and comfort given, where soldiers killed and fell in battle,” he said.
General Jörg Vollmer, who commanded the German troops in northern Afghanistan since the beginning of this year, told Tagesschau that after eleven years, a different army was returning to Germany. “It was the first time that soldiers had to kill, but also experienced fallen comrades and the wounded.”
Another officer, who was twice deployed in Kunduz, boasted that the combat operations in Kunduz had rid the German armed forces of its reputation as an “army of quitters…The image of fat, cake-eating Germans who play football in the afternoon was gone after the first death in combat,” he told the Tagesschau. “In Kunduz, in almost every patrol I was in a situation of asking myself: do you have to shoot the motorcyclist over there just because he is sitting alone on his machine and could possibly be an assassin?”
The Bundeswehr mission in Kunduz began in fall 2003, under the Social Democrat (SPD) - Green coalition government, with the take over of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) from the United States. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) said at that time that the army would “secure construction efforts in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz” with a force of 250 soldiers. He claimed the intervention had a civilian character. German soldiers would protect construction workers, repair roads, schools and hospitals, and train police officers.