Deaths Rekindle German Debate on Afghanistan

BERLIN (April 15) -- Less than two weeks after a Good Friday attack left three German soldiers dead in Afghanistan, a fresh assault today has killed four soldiers and left five wounded, fueling a harsh debate over Germany's role in the NATO mission.

The attack, which makes this the deadliest month for the German deployment since 2003, took place near the northern city of Baghlan, according to the German Defense Ministry. The German troops were standing near their armored vehicle close to the Pol-i-Khomri camp when Taliban fighters launched a rocket attack on the convoy, a joint patrol involving German, Belgian and Afghan forces.

NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, has been trying to regain full control over the area, considered a Taliban stronghold.

The attack came a day after German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg paid an unannounced visit to German troops in Mazar-e-Sharif in northern Afghanistan before traveling to Uzbekistan. After hearing the news there of the deaths, Guttenberg said he would return today to Afghanistan "to be with our troops." The deaths bring the total number of German troops killed in Afghanistan to 43.

Public opposition to the ISAF mission in Afghanistan is growing across Europe. In the upcoming elections in the U.K., Afghanistan and the involvement of British troops there has become a key campaign issue.

But in Germany, the debate is overshadowed by the memory of the Nazi era and the burden of Germany's responsibility for World War II. For decades after the war, Germans were convinced that their military would never again go into battle. Then, a decade ago, when NATO intervened in the Balkans to protect Kosovo Albanians from Serb attacks, German troops flew reconnaissance missions and served as peacekeepers, marking their first involvement in a combat situation since 1945.

Under the previous center-left government of Social Democrats and the formerly pacifist and anti-NATO Greens, German troops deployed with NATO to Afghanistan in 2002. Germany now has about 4,300 troops stationed in northern Afghanistan, providing the third-largest contingent after the U.S. and Britain.

But as the German military took on greater responsibility within NATO, public opposition to foreign military operations has grown. According to polls by the agency Emnid, 34 percent of Germans wanted their troops out of Afghanistan in 2005. By last September that opposition had grown to 55 percent, and this month to 62 percent.

At the same time, 70 percent of Germans say the government doesn't do enough to support those troops. Before today's attacks, Guttenberg told troops the government would supply them with additional heavy artillery, including two armored howitzers that can fire shells over a distance of 40 kilometers, "TOW" anti-tank missiles and "Marder" armored personnel carriers.

But for many observers, such additional support has come too late. "As it is, we have a catch-up force whose character, rotation principle, equipment and rules of engagement are determined by the political game in Berlin, not the military situation in Kunduz and Baghlan," wrote Stefan Cornelius in today's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, a German newspaper.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her regrets over the deaths, but said she saw "no reasonable alternative" to Germany's involvement in Afghanistan.

German casualties in Afghanistan have been rising as fighting in northern Afghanistan escalates. And as the fighting increases, the debate in Germany is changing. On the one hand, opposition to the war is increasing. The peace movement and Die Linke, an amalgam of former East German communists and far-left Westerners, is stepping up protest to Germany's deployment in Afghanistan.

For years, German politicians refused to admit that the country's troops were actually engaged in combat in Afghanistan. No more. "It is war in Afghanistan," said Jan van Aken, a Die Linke member of Parliament. "In the interests of the Afghan population and the German troops, the army should withdraw from Afghanistan immediately."

But there is another side to the battle on the Heimatfront, or home front. As television images of German troops coming home in black, red and gold flag-draped caskets become more common, empathy for the German troops is also rising.

Germany's mass-circulation tabloid Bild Zeitung has jumped on the new trend. A recent article with a photograph slide show ran with a picture of the correspondent in full combat gear and the title "I flew home with the dead German soldiers."

It is hard to imagine even Bild allowing itself such public sentimentality in relation to German troops just a few years ago.