Remember those times someone has offered to "help" and you've
said no thanks. It's about gotten to that point with the
German military in Afghanistan.
My friend Josh Foust offers an unsparing critique of what the
largest European member of NATO brings to the security table:
On November 6, 2007, a group of Afghan militants exploded a
bomb at a sugar factory in Baghlan Province while visiting
members of the Afghan parliament and a local school were on a
tour. Nearly eighty people died, including dozens of children
and six parliamentarians, making it one of the deadliest
insurgent attacks of the war. Five months later, in March of
2008, the German KSK had located the man they believed
responsible for the attack. As they closed in to capture him,
his security forces spotted them and the man escaped. While the
KSK could have shot and killed the militant commander, they did
not-Germany's rules of engagement did not permit them to do so.
The incident in Baghlan, and Germany's inability to manage its
aftermath, is part of a years-long pattern of mismanagement and
confusing command decisions by the German Army in Northern
Afghanistan. Responsible for nine provinces, the German Army
has faced growing criticism of its refusal to participate in
combat over the last few years, and its latest action-calling
in an air strike in Kunduz that is reported to have killed
dozens or more civilians siphoning fuel from a hijacked
truck-has drawn sharp condemnation from the international
community.
Some of these incidents boggle the mind. In 2005, for example,
a local German unit refused for hours to assist an Alternative
Livelihoods crew that had been struck by an IED in Badakhstan
Province. Even though some of the men were bleeding out onto
the road, it was dusk and therefore deemed too dangerous to
mount a rescue operation. After much hectoring from the UN and
the U.S. they eventually reached the stricken men.
If NATO can't act as an effective back-up to the U.S. in
Afghanistan, it isn't clear what value the organization has for
America. The alliance certainly doesn't
advance U.S. interests in Europe, where Americans get to defend
Europeans, who prefer to fund their welfare states than their
militaries, against largely phantom threats.
