Pressure Grows On Germany
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BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trapped between demands from NATO partners to send more troops to Afghanistan and strong domestic opposition to such a move.
The Afghanistan mission is controversial in a country where images of Germans fighting abroad still stir unease among many voters mindful of the horrors of World War Two.
But NATO partners have made clear they will not ease the pressure on Germany in the face of rising Taliban attacks in Afghanistan. The issue is set to be high on the agenda at a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Lithuania on Thursday.
“I think the German government has to give in at some point as the facts (on the Afghanistan situation) are overwhelming,” said Gerd Langguth, political scientist at University of Bonn.
“But a large part of the German population is very pacifist. And the question is whether on such an important foreign policy issue, you can act against the population.”
Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), partners in an uneasy “grand coalition,” are both reluctant to defy public opinion ahead of a national election next year, analysts say.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has written to Berlin pressing it to send soldiers to dangerous parts of southern Afghanistan. Canada has threatened to pull out its 2,500 troops early next year if NATO does not send in more troops.
However, Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung has said he does not envisage changes to the parliamentary mandate which allows Germany to send 3,500 troops to northern Afghanistan as part of the 40,000-strong NATO International Security Assistance Force.
“We’re not being choosy,” government spokesman Thomas Steg said on Tuesday. “We carry responsibility in the north. That’s where we want to act successfully.”
PRESSURE GROWS
Some politicians have started to say Germany has to assume greater responsibilities inside NATO.
Hans-Ulrich Klose, a senior figure in the centre-left Social Democrats has voiced support for German troops’ deployment to southern Afghanistan.
Several former army generals have echoed that call.
“There are no special roles. If one country shirks its duties, its influence will turn to zero,” former NATO Military Committee chief Klaus Naumann told top-selling Bild newspaper.
However, the two main political parties will be wary of the political fall-out from sending troops to the south.
“If one of the parties in the grand coalition says ‘We’ll do this’ then the other one will almost automatically say ‘We won’t’ and know they’ll get credit for it,” said Simon Green, deputy director of the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham in England.
“It’s a very symbolic issue.”
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