Afghanistan: Merkel honors soldiers for dangerous operations – politics

The soldiers are now standing at attention on the roll call square in the barracks. Then comes the order: “To report to the Chancellor: The eyes – left!” It’s Wednesday, just after 3 p.m. Angela Merkel visits the 31st paratrooper regiment in Seedorf in Lower Saxony.

The Chancellor paces off the formation. It passes soldiers who took more than 5,300 refugees out of Kabul in eleven days in August when the Taliban took control. It was the largest evacuation operation in the history of the Bundeswehr, a very dangerous mission. Today is the day to express gratitude to the soldiers. Merkel, whose chancellorship is about to end, wanted to be there.

She’s been here before. To be precise, very close by, in a small church in Selsingen. The village is only a few kilometers away. It was 2010, one of the bloodiest for the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. In a battle on Good Friday, three paratroopers from Seedorf were killed and several were wounded, some seriously.

Merkel was then in Selsingen to bow to the coffins.

Afghanistan has shaped a whole generation of soldiers

At the funeral service, the Chancellor admitted that the mission “is more difficult than we thought”. But she was defending the mission at the time. And she said the Bundeswehr would “not stay longer than necessary for a day” in Afghanistan.

That was more than eleven years ago.

Merkel’s appearance in Seedorf today, in 2021, is a cautious one. She doesn’t speak. Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) will hold the speech. Merkel, however, awarded nine soldiers who were deployed in the rescue operation with the mission medal on behalf of them. She talks to the soldiers, not to them. Merkel honors her commitment with her presence.

Nobody would have suspected that the operation in the last few meters of their chancellorship would again assume such a drama as in August. Oberleutnant H., Feldjäger, stood at the gates at the airport in Kabul. He had to decide who comes and who doesn’t. He was on duty every eleven days. He says that he can still hear the noise of the battle in his ears. He always had the feeling that his life was in danger.

This time all soldiers returned alive. Defense Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer says: “Thank God there were no German casualties.” And she says: “The deployment of the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan is now a thing of the past.”

The Afghanistan mission also changed Angela Merkel

The Chancellor took over the operation from the red-green government in 2005. In the first few years of her chancellorship, he was not a priority for her. Merkel was alien to the military. She did not fly to Kabul until two years after her election. The situation in Afghanistan worsened from year to year. In 2010, in the church in Selsingen, she took part in a memorial service for fallen soldiers for the first time. The mission had also changed Merkel.

The Bundeswehr mission to stabilize the country has ended after almost 20 years in the Hindu Kush. The evacuation mission too, after eleven days. But the Taliban are now ruling again in Afghanistan, just as they were before the Germans were involved there. Nevertheless, Kramp-Karrenbauer says: “The mission in Afghanistan was the right one.”

The day in Seedorf only ends one chapter of the Afghanistan engagement. It’s about the performance of the Bundeswehr in the evacuation operation. But Afghanistan has shaped a whole generation of soldiers. Later that day, about 100 recruits take their vows.

The final conclusion has not yet been drawn, Minister Kramp-Karrenbauer wants to do that at a panel of experts in October. Then there will also be a big tattoo in front of the Reichstag building, the highest military ceremony. Only then does this mission come to an official end.

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