Berlin and the Taliban

Is Germany ready for counterinsurgency? This morning Bild, the German version of The Sun, published a long interview with Stanley McChrystal.

First the context.

The war has come to Berlin in recent weeks. The much-awaited Afghanistan conference in London at the end of January is inching closer. One week later, Munich will host the annual Wehrkunde conference. Afghanistan will, of course, be on top of the list. German politicians of all stripes have staked high expectations on the London conference in particular.

The big question in the debate is, essentially, quality or quantity? More boots on the ground or a better strategy? Sounds familiar? Some Germans would have liked to see more consultations during Obama’s drawn-out strategy review (and Holbrooke, Obama’s top diplomat on the issue, wasn’t always diplomatic). Then Guido Westerwelle, the new foreign minister, in a clumsy maneuver, threatened that he would not come to London if it would degenerate into a “Truppenstellerkonferenz,” a conference where only the number of troops will be discussed, not strategy. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the minister of defence, is equally under pressure for allegedly covering up information after the Kunduz airstrike — an event that has absorbed an outlandish amount of public attention in Germany. Tomorrow, a much-hyped parliamentary commission will start looking into the highly politicized incident. So Guttenberg also doesn’t have much time to strategize. And Merkel? Silence.

Bottom line: Berlin doesn’t want to talk numbers, but doesn’t offer much substance instead.

Now comes McChrystal.

In the interview he outlines many of the core ideas of population-centric counterinsurgency. All of it very much in line with the established body of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice. So not much new there (at least for readers of this blog).

Then Bild points out to him that Bundeswehr officers have complained that they “lost contact” with the population in Kunduz. McChrystal replies that this is precisely in the interest of insurgents, who want to separate the security forces from the population. If that happens, he said,

Dann mögen die Sicherheitskräfte noch vor Ort sein – aber sie sind irrelevant. Wenn die Aufständischen das schaffen, haben sie ihre Mission erfüllt. [Then the security forces might still be there - but they are irrelevant. If the insurgents achieve this, then they accomplished their mission.]

He’s right, of course. Probably no other NATO army is fighting under a similarly restrictive set of legal regulations and even media attention. So let’s translate McChrystal’s statement into plain English: Berlin is running the risk of making its troop contributions in Afghanistan “irrelevant.”

But let’s keep this in perspective. Perhaps both is moot: to expect bright strategic contributions from Berlin when Washington and perhaps even the man himself seem to be somewhat desperate if not clueless about how to achieve success in Afghanistan. And to expect more risk-taking against this dim backdrop.

Tagged as: Afghanistan, Berlin, Counterinsurgency, Germany, Guttenberg, McChrystal, Taliban, Westerwelle