It will no doubt bemuse and surprise Americans to know that Germany has finally admitted the obvious: that its soldiers in Afghanistan are in the midst of a civil war, and not simply a reconstruction/training mission. Although one shouldn’t judge Berlin too harshly, since it wasn’t long ago that we in the United States had a government that denied the same in Iraq.
For Germany’s Frankfurter Rundschau, columnist Andreas Schwarzkopf writes in part:
It has come! Finally, yet casually, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle made an important admission. Afghanistan is in the grip of civil war – or, in the words of Germany’s highest ranking diplomat: a “non-international armed conflict exists.” This position, previously held by Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has serious consequences.
The leading beneficiaries of this new assessment are the soldiers of the Bundeswehr. Firstly, because they can now openly admit to often engaging in battle; they no longer have to explain why they haven’t drilled more wells or built additional schools. They will no longer face criticism if they speak of war.
This new ‘re-classification,’ however, brings a complication, which Schwarzkopf explains:
Strictly speaking, police officers can’t be deployed in war zones. Therefore, these officers can no longer be allowed to train Afghan police – who are nevertheless essential to the rebuilding of the country and the withdrawal options of allied forces.
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