Germany’s Small War in Afghanistan:
Military Learning amid Politico-Strategic Inertia
TIMO NOETZEL
In recent years the German politico-strategic debate about the war in Afghanistan has
been shaped by efforts to maintain a particular national German perspective on the
nature of the campaign. This particular view on the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) operation derives from a national security policy discourse that has
been strongly enforcing a narrative that Germany is contributing to a multinational
post-conﬂict stabilisation and reconstruction effort in Afghanistan.1
This particular German perspective on the war in Afghanistan is rooted in German
strategic history. During the 1990s, the character of the German armed forces
changed from a force designed for large-scale, conventional warfare at its own
borders into an armed reconstruction-assistant which was to form a constitutive
element of civilian-led stabilization efforts far abroad.2
These new tasks stood in
sharp contrast to the Cold War era, when out-of-area operations were not part of
the Bundeswehr’s legally codiﬁed operational spectrum and not reﬂected in its
structure, equipment or doctrine. Respective institutions and capabilities were built
up only slowly after the end of the Cold War.
The political framework for post-Cold War German strategic thinking, which was
marked above all by a strategic ‘culture of restraint’3
, seemed to be conﬁrmed by
various operational scenarios since the end of the Cold War:4
with the exception of
Germany’s participation in NATO air strikes in the Kosovo operation Allied Force
in 1999,5
involvement of German troops in combat operations had been avoided.
Deployed in Africa (Somalia and Congo), in the Balkans (Bosnia), and in the
context of the naval presence off the Lebanese coast, the German army usually
served as an impartial buffer to stabilize and provide humanitarian help.6
The
operational scheme and conduct was shaped towards deterrent military presence to
end atrocities, separate ﬁghting factions and facilitate political and humanitarian
solutions; it was supposed to be a blueprint of operations to come.
German operational conduct in Afghanistan, in particular the defensively-minded
interpretation of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) concept and German
difﬁculties to adapt to a growing insurgency, can only be fully understood against
the background of the Balkan experiences and the deriving German strategic and
operational paradigm of its forces being deployed in impartial supervisory roles.
Lessons learned of operations mentioned above stressed passive, deterrent presence
and de-escalation principles. However, they disregarded one distinctive feature of
every post-Cold War operation with German involvement: the absence of an
organized resistance against German troops was fundamental to the respective
operational posture. Up until well into the Afghanistan operation, German operational
Contemporary Security Policy, Vol.31, No.3 (December 2010), pp.486–508
ISSN 1352-3260 print/1743-8764 online
DOI: 10.1080/13523260.2010.521699 # 2010 Taylor & Francis
deployments could afford to be both de jure impartial and de facto supported by the
overwhelming part of the population in its areas of responsibility in the individual operational
theatre. In other words, German forces were only deployed after international
and domestic actors had started to address the underlying conﬂict politically. German
forces thus were considered ‘peacekeepers’ rather than ‘peacemakers’.7
The post-Cold
War rationale behind German participation in multinational military operations was
that military presence could be a stabilizing factor; that is, it was to have a political
impact by providing a secure environment for political processes of conﬂict resolution.
Accordingly, the scope of military operations involved above all the separation of
conﬂicting parties and the facilitation of reconstruction work in the stabilization
phase of military operations.8
The framework of deployments used to be built
around impartial military presences;9
German forces were to act as ‘buffers’
between conﬂicting parties. Military operations were to be focused on military
support and subsidiary aid, and operational rules explicitly were designed to
support the implementation of mandates. Civil and military instruments were to be
coordinated, but explicitly not integrated.10
However, due to operational theatre developments in Afghanistan, this politicostrategic
mindset regarding the German participation in military operations has
been slowly undermined.11
The impartiality principle, which has been at the core
of the post-Cold War German conduct of military operations, has been eroding in
operational practice in Afghanistan. For the ﬁrst time since the end of the Cold
War the Bundeswehr is not merely deployed as a peacekeeping force, but rather
acts as a party to the conﬂict. On a daily basis at an operational level German commanders
in Afghanistan face the challenge of integrating combat operations with
reconstruction efforts whilst at a tactical level simultaneously having to conduct
offensive operations.12
Thus, the operational spectrum has widened signiﬁcantly.
So far, military and political leaders at the politico-strategic level have accepted
these changes only reluctantly.
The recently initiated debate on whether Germany is engaged in a ‘war’ in Afghanistan
reﬂects both this reluctance and the existing constraints of German strategic
discourse. Until 2008, ‘stabilization operation’ (Stabilisierungseinsatz) was the dominant
term used to describe Germany’s role in Afghanistan. After being criticized for
minimizing a soldier’s sacriﬁce by announcing in case of fatalities that soldiers ‘lost
their lives’ during operations, then-Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung began to use
the term ‘fallen’ (gefallen), a wording reserved for soldiers who have died in
combat.13
It was up to Jung’s successor Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, who took
ofﬁce in the fall of 2009, to acknowledge ‘that in colloquial language one may actually
speak of war-like circumstances in parts of Afghanistan’.14
Finally, in February
2010, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, speaking explicitly as a representative of
the government as a whole, announced before the Bundestag that Germany now considered
the conﬂict in all of Afghanistan, and thus including the northern part of the
country, an ‘armed conﬂict in terms of international humanitarian law’.15
More than
eight years after the establishment of ISAF, the pertinent factions of the German
government had reluctantly come to agree that Germany was taking part in a war
in Afghanistan. This war, of course, is a quintessential ‘small war’16
.
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 487
However, the state of German strategic and operational thinking does not yet
match this newfound clarity in political language. In the context of the Afghanistan
operation, static politico-strategic assumptions about the role of the German army as
an impartial stabilization force have had the effect of alienating German strategic
thinking from operational realities on the ground. During the early stages of the
Afghan operation, a framework of operational thinking that was built on operational
experiences in the Balkans suited both political and strategic needs. On the one hand,
it ensured domestic support for a role conception of the Bundeswehr that would not
regularly take part in ongoing conﬂicts. On the other hand, it was also adequate to
meet the immediate needs on the ground: initially, Germany had pledged to
support the diplomatic Bonn process and decided to participate in ISAF for this
purpose. At ﬁrst restricted to Kabul and surrounding areas, Germany then pledged
to go beyond the capital and take lead responsibility for northern Afghanistan.
It took over one PRT in Kunduz, and erected another one in Feyzabad, as well as
the Forward Support Base (FSB) in Mazar-e Sharif.
The choice of Regional Command North (RC North) as the area of German
responsibility epitomizes Germany’s ambiguity in its Afghanistan policy. While
the expansion of the German engagement reﬂected an honest commitment to
assume more responsibility, the north had been by far the most stable region of the
country, which would allow Germany to keep a relatively low proﬁle. German political
leaders wanted to contribute more at the international stage, yet without the
risk of a large number of casualties and without making too many headlines at home.
Once in charge in RC North, the Bundeswehr then implemented its habitual
Balkan-centric framework for operations, with the PRTs developing into veritable
garrisons, while operating troops had to rely on sporadic ‘presence patrols’ to
provide protection for political and civilian actors. In hindsight, however, over time
relatively passive operational conduct allowed the insurgency in the North to take
roots in northern Afghanistan, especially in the Pashtun pockets around Kunduz,
until insurgents began to take control of the population in a range of critical districts
within RC North. This facilitated the outbreak of the northern insurgency in 2007.
It is the argument in this article that in the context of ISAF since 2007 and in
direct reaction to the emergence of the northern insurgency the Balkan-centric framework
guiding German strategic and operational thought has slowly been undermined.
As a result, institutional learning processes have begun to affect both the institutional
and operational army. Protractedly, but in direct reaction to pressure on the ground at
institutional, doctrinal, and operative levels, changes have been implemented, and
commanders returning from Afghanistan have been pressing political and military
elites to adapt the army to the challenges of unconventional warfare. Efforts are
being made to rewrite doctrine and to increase institutional and force capability for
counterinsurgency operations.
Thus, German counterinsurgency doctrine is generated from the bottom up, while
an overarching framework for reform to be implemented from top-down is lacking.
Under these circumstances, structural change remains a very long-winded process.
However, at least operational challenges have provided the ground for conceptual
debate within the German defence establishment about the military conﬂicts
488 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
Germany needs to prepare for.17
Nonetheless, in the politico-strategic debate within
the political and defence establishment Afghanistan is still seen as an exception or an
aberration when it comes to the question for which kind of conﬂicts the armed forces
need to be prepared in the future.18
Or, as Klaus Naumann put it, Berlin ‘so far has not
come to terms with the transition from being a territorial defence force towards
becoming a security provider’19
as the key tasks for the Bundeswehr of the future.
The argument of this article is developed in four steps. First, the German army’s
Afghanistan engagement will be contextualized through a review of the German political
discourse, decision-making processes, and the resulting politico-strategic narrative
regarding the Afghanistan operation. Then, the strategic and operational impact
of these aspects on the conduct of the war in Afghanistan will be analysed. Two
dimensions of constraint that result from a Balkan-centric operational framework
are identiﬁed in this context: a lack of effective civil-military co-operation, and a
defensive operational mindset that is shaping German operational conduct. In a
third step, the article assesses the deteriorating security situation in northern Afghanistan
and military efforts to counter this development in two case studies. The ﬁrst is
Operation Harekate Yolo II in autumn 2007, which was the ﬁrst army-led large-scale
operational effort to counter the Afghan insurgency. The second is based around the
deterioration of the security situation in the Kunduz region of northern Afghanistan.
By analyzing how operational experiences drive bottom-up innovation within
the institutional army, the third part develops the core argument, ﬁrst by analysing
the levels of doctrine, force structure and institutions and second in the case of the
ongoing operation in Kunduz province. In a ﬁnal step, the article discusses the
potential for institutional learning and innovation under these circumstances.
The Politico-Strategic Dynamics of the Afghan Operation
Over the last few years consensus amongst the politico-strategic elite on the Bundeswehr’s
engagement in Afghanistan has remained fragile, and debate has been shaped
by evident avoidance mechanisms.20
Public support for the ISAF operation has
declined signiﬁcantly. In May 2010, only 22 per cent of Germans supported a
future German participation in ISAF; 65 per cent were opposed. Moreover, only
15 per cent said they believed the Bundeswehr engagement in Afghanistan contributed
to German security; 69 per cent said it did not.21
Obviously, lawmakers and politicians
are aware of the German public’s uneasiness. As a result, political debate
about the conﬂict remains nervous and inﬂexible. In addition, for the last eight
years the dominant viewpoint in Berlin has been that the Afghanistan conﬂict constitutes
an exception and that this operational scenario should not be seen as a representative
model for future conﬂict engagements.22
For these reasons, institutional
learning processes regarding the Afghanistan operation have been protracted at
best and deﬁnitely not driven from the top down, that is, not due to strategic decisions
made by policy-makers and the political establishment of the ministry of defence or
other pertinent institutions.
The German insistence on ISAF being a stabilisation and post-conﬂict reconstruction
effort can partly also be explained with the fact that for a long time the security
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 489
situation in northern Afghanistan remained relatively stable compared to other parts
of the country. While in the south of the country US, British, Dutch or Canadian
troops have been engaged in heavy ﬁghting with insurgent forces, the Bundeswehr
operated in a low-conﬂict situation, although it had been deployed in the same
Afghan conﬂict theatre. Consequently, at ﬁrst sight, the operational framework
adopted in the Balkans seemed to be suitable in Afghanistan as well. Indeed, time
and again decision-makers stressed that combat operations against Taliban and
other enemy forces would be conducted by other allied forces only.23
What is more, sometimes German leaders have criticized their allies for what they
perceived to be an overly aggressive approach, especially in the south of Afghanistan,
while pointing at the seeming success of the civilian-guided German approach in the
north. It was not uncommon in German domestic political debate to separate, at least
rhetorically, German engagement in the north from the American-led ‘war on terror
approach’ in the rest of the country.24
As an astute observer has argued, for Germany there continue to be two Afghanistan
wars.25
The ‘ﬁrst war’ is prevalent in political discourse in Berlin and is supported
and renewed yearly by all political parties in the Bundestag except for the
leftist Linkspartei. It focuses on the civilian-led effort Germany is contributing in
the north, while suppressing most of the recent deterioration and ignoring potentially
unsavoury or troubling realities about counterinsurgency. Then there is a ‘second
war’, the one that actually reﬂects recent developments in northern Afghanistan.
In this war, there is the need to confront the uncomfortable necessities of counterinsurgency,
which include offensive operational conduct against the leadership of the
Afghan insurgency and the need to accept the added risk posed to one’s own soldiers
by being much more present in Afghan communities.
As will be shown below, political and strategic reasoning in Berlin, remained distanced
from operational realities in Afghanistan, and has been inhibiting operational
conduct after the insurgency began to take hold in the north in 2007. It did not enable
effective civil-military co-operation and contributed towards a defensive operational
mindset, which proved operationally counterproductive in Afghanistan. Both the
absence of an integrated use of civilian and military means and a defensive operational
posture had been shaping parameters of German operational conduct in the
Balkans in the 1990s.
A Balkan-Centric Operational Framework
Networked Security
Under the label of ‘networked security’ (Vernetzte Sicherheit), civil-military
cooperation is ﬂagged by German policy-makers as key to the success of the Afghanistan
mission and constitutes the German version of the comprehensive approach.26
However, in operational practice and for the purpose of stabilisation operations nonkinetic
capabilities, i.e., all means other than the use of force aimed at creating an
operation environment which is inhospitable to enemy forces but conducive to
overall operational aims, are critically underdeveloped in the German army, and
490 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
most civilian ministries are reluctant to get involved both with strategic issues and
operational conduct in Afghanistan. Thus, while political debate in Germany stresses
the civilian aspect of the Afghanistan mission, the German contribution to the ISAF
operation is de facto overwhelmingly conducted by the German military. In the wake
of increasingly intense operations since 2007 the gap between political rhetoric and
operational conduct on the ground regarding civil-military co-operation has become
more and more apparent.
Institutional integration and coordination of civilian and military capabilities
remains critically underdeveloped. This missing integration of civilian and military
means over time has been conﬂicting increasingly with the general approach within
the context of the ongoing counterinsurgency operation. Although German political
elites recognize the need for a comprehensive approach, they have consistently insisted
on applying it only to a comprehensive approach to post-conﬂict reconstruction. This
terminological difference between post-conﬂict and counterinsurgency is critical,
since the German version obstructs an effective contribution to NATO’s counterinsurgency
operation in Afghanistan: the reference to a ‘post-conﬂict’ scenario demonstrates
the German credo that civilian instruments will not be applied during ongoing
military operations.27
Missing integration of civilian and military thinking on strategic and operational
conduct is not an entirely new phenomenon in German defence and security policy.
In contrast to the Afghanistan mission, however, this has been rather unproblematic
due to the lack of operational pressure in previous deployments of the Bundeswehr.
Throughout the Balkans operations the military concentrated on the provision of
security in support of reconstruction efforts conducted by civilian ministries.
However, in the face of an insurgency movement on the ground gaining in relevance,
reconstruction efforts in northern Afghanistan have remained difﬁcult, since civilian
governmental actors lack capabilities and personnel capable of operating in the
fragile security environment.
Force Posture
In all previous post-Cold War deployments, there have been only few German fatalities
– overwhelmingly as a result of accidents – allowing both the political elite and
the public to grow accustomed to the perception that stabilization and reconstruction
missions are of low risk to deployed soldiers.28
So far, politicians and decisionmakers
have neither prepared themselves nor the public adequately for the increased
risk of Bundeswehr deployments in counterinsurgency environments such as in
Afghanistan. In the past, encounters with insurgent forces have been nervously
observed by parliament, government, and the wider public. Risk-averseness
remains dominant within German public discourse. This focus on risk-averseness,
however, hampers the ﬂexibility of German forces, as the practically existent doctrine
of force protection restricts operational presence beyond bases.
The ‘doctrine of force protection’ is also heavily shaping force deployment
concepts. The German interpretation of the PRT-concept concentrated forces and
resources around bases, thus providing for force presence around bases in concentric
circles. However, even in the low-threat-environment of Afghanistan before 2007,
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 491
force posture was not extended to reach beyond the proximity of bases, mainly due to
security concerns. From a military point of view, the problem in assisting the spread
of stability and governmental control was exacerbated by the lack of tactical means to
support deployed force elements – mainly artillery, tactical air support as well as
medical and logistical capabilities. Since force commanders had no manoeuvre
elements available that they could deploy for operational purposes other than the
immediate protection of base camps and civilian workers, a coherent campaign
plan was difﬁcult to put into practice.
Finally, the operational mindset heavily impacts on force posture. To achieve
effective protection of the population in the context of counterinsurgency operations
requires a constant presence, a proactive operational scheme, and aggressive patrolling.
A defensive mindset of the counterinsurgent risks alienating the counterinsurgent
from the population, since the focus on force protection undermines the
capability to protect the civilian population. A successful counterinsurgency operation
would have to follow a population-centric approach guided by a highly discriminating
management of violence that also allowed for targeted offensive action
against identiﬁed leaders and members of the insurgency. In Germany, the operational
spectrum of Special Operations Forces, Long Range Reconnaissance elements
and supporting paratrooper units of the airborne force would be suitable to carry out
such tasks. However, the experiences made in several post-Cold War deployments of
the Bundeswehr have reinforced a defensive force posture focused on force protection.
Whilst throughout the Balkan wars the defensive presence of a neutral, multinational
force alone effectively contributed to ameliorate security, the discriminate use
of force is crucial in the context of counterinsurgency.
Realizing the requirements for preemptive action against insurgents, German
ﬁeld commanders have pushed for change. While until July 2009, German soldiers
in Afghanistan were allowed to use lethal force only very restrictively – essentially
only in direct self-defence – the Rules of Engagement since then have been adjusted
to operational realities, largely in direct reaction to the emergence of the northern
insurgency.29
Under the new rules, handed out to each soldier in the four-page
Taschenkarte (‘pocket map’), German troops are now allowed to use force less
restrictively in order to prevent attacks on them: ‘Attacks can be prevented by
proceeding against persons who plan, prepare, or support attacks or show hostile
behaviour of any other kind’.30
This includes using force against insurgents who are
ﬂeeing after aborting or interrupting an attack, for instance – something German
troops were not permitted to do before.
Next to the politico-strategic imperative to keep troop numbers low and rather
immobile, thus reducing the risk for deployed soldiers, force posture is also constrained
by the requirement to provide high-quality medical care in accordance
with doctrinal requirements.31
According to these, during deployments abroad the
army has to provide for medical treatment on par with the qualitative standard in
Germany.32
Strict requirements for the treatment and transport of wounded soldiers,
combined with a severe shortage of medical evacuation helicopters (CH-53), de facto
limit the operational range of the German armed forces severely in a theatre as
geographically challenging as Afghanistan.
492 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
Reactions to the Northern Insurgency
As has been argued before, throughout the ﬁrst few years of the operation, the tasks of
the German ISAF contingent were mostly limited to patrols close to bases, which
were carried out with minimal troop strength and focused on intelligence gathering
and the security of garrisons. Since northern Afghanistan in comparison to the
southern and eastern provinces was deemed relatively calm, this operational
pattern remained sufﬁcient and civilian development and reconstruction programs
were able to progress.
In 2007, however, the security situation in northern Afghanistan began to deteriorate
signiﬁcantly.33
A suicide attack in the city of Kunduz in May 2007 left three
German soldiers dead. Since then the number of attacks on Bundeswehr bases and
units has increased continuously. The well-organized northern insurgency, with
close links to Pakistan as well as Uzbekistan, is trying to force a German withdrawal
from the region. Insurgents carry out suicide attacks and ambushes on ISAF troops
and Afghan security forces. They have used small arms, remotely triggered improvised
explosive devises (IED), and sophisticated rocket-propelled grenades to ambush
patrols as well as improvised rockets to attack bases.34
This wide array of tactical
approaches increasingly forced German troops to adapt their operational approach.
A key case that made evident that the German army was forced to fundamentally
adapt its operational pattern of conduct was Operation Harekate Yolo II in autumn
2007. Taliban-related insurgents had massed and gained strength in the northwestern
provinces of Faryab and Badghis, pushing out Afghan government representatives
and creating a Taliban shadow regime through threats and open violence,
thereby also blocking parts of the so-called ringroad, the main connection between
Afghanistan’s major cities and thus its economic lifeline. Consequently, the
German-led ISAF command had to counteract these developments with a series of
offensive operations. In the face of criminal groups either cooperating with the
Taliban or steered by them gaining more and more presence in a range of areas of
northern Afghanistan, Brigadier General Dieter Warnecke, German ISAF Regional
Commander North, launched the operation.35
In the short term, Harekate Yolo II
aimed at regaining military control over the disputed areas of Faryab and Badghis
in order to prove to the local population that the Afghan government and ISAF
could provide for security. The long-term goal was to establish regional stability
through the protection of civilian reconstruction programs and Afghan governance
structures.36
As the ﬁrst large-scale ground offensive under German command since the end of
World War II, operation Harekate Yolo II stands for a signiﬁcant change of ISAF’s
pattern of operational conduct in northern Afghanistan: counterinsurgency ‘shape,
clear, hold and build’ operations widened the operational spectrum signiﬁcantly
from a pattern of operational conduct build previously around patrols for intelligence
gathering and the enhancement of ISAF bases’ security. Applying military and nonmilitary
means simultaneously, the operation was conceived to be conducted over
several months and was carried out by Norwegian and American combat units
(the United States contributed ‘Embedded Training Teams’, ETT, for the Afghan
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 493
National Army), troops from the Afghan army as well as German support forces.
Germany also contributed force enablers such as logistics, reconnaissance, and
medical evacuation units. With the Norwegian Quick Reaction Force (QRF) as its
main combat element, the operation was intended to defeat and disperse insurgents
and to re-establish government control. Carried out quickly and effectively, the operation
succeeded in doing so, and the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) assessed the security situation afterwards positively. This allowed both
governmental and non-governmental organizations to take up their activities in the
region.37
Despite these early successes, the operation ultimately failed to launch a civilianled
long-term reconstruction and development process in the region. The implementation
of so-called quick impact projects intended to follow the application of military
power in fact never took place. One of the main reasons for this was that projects
depended almost entirely on voluntary cooperation by civilian organizations, since
the Bundeswehr itself did not have sufﬁcient reconstruction means at its disposal.
The intended integration of civilian and military instruments into a shared operational
plan failed. Thus, while the military intervention of ISAF troops and Afghan security
forces signiﬁcantly weakened insurgents in the provinces of Faryab and Badghis, the
implementation of the operation’s civilian dimension turned out to be much more
problematic and ultimately remained a patchwork affair. The operational approach
to ‘shape-clear-hold-build’ was effective only for the ﬁrst two of these four phases.
By early 2010, the situation in Faryab and Badghis provinces had deteriorated
signiﬁcantly.38
In addition, out of political fear that its strategic and operational dimensions could
become too large to handle, Harekate Yolo II was cut short by the political and military
leadership in Berlin. Although the operation’s commander set out his intention to
defeat insurgents so that civilian reconstruction programmes could take place, forces
were withdrawn from the region, allowing insurgents to reassert control in the area.
Moreover, throughout the operation interagency coordination at the strategic level
remained poor, since parts of the government bureaucracy and the political leadership
at the strategic level were reluctant to recognize the changing nature of conﬂict in
northern Afghanistan. As a consequence of these failures, and because forces were
withdrawn from north-western Afghanistan with the end of combat operations in
2007, insurgents were able to reassert control in the long run.39
Political nervousness about the reception of Harekate Yolo II caused German political
leaders to downplay the signiﬁcance of their original goals as much as possible.
In almost complete neglect of the importance of strategic communication, the
German government did not explain its goals and resulting operational success but
passed over the operation in near silence.40
Moreover, since German elites explicitly
downplayed the dimension of the operation and argued that German involvement
operation Harekate Yolo II did not represent the beginning of a new chapter in the
Bundeswehr’s Afghanistan engagement, German domestic debate about the changing
character of the German mission was to start only very slowly.
Nevertheless, operations such as Harekate Yolo II and the smaller, preceding
Operation Kuistani in the Badakshahn area marked the starting point of a new
494 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
phase of Germany’s involvement with ISAF. The German armed forces today are
taking part in operations against guerrilla forces in northern Afghanistan: enemy
forces focus on an approach that relies on IED of varying sophistication and
suicide attacks. Gradually, they have also begun to engage in more conventional
battles and coordinated ambushes. Furthermore, they wage information operations
aimed at local and German populations, respectively. Since 2007, the Taliban
leadership in the north has demonstrated a remarkable sophistication in establishing
signiﬁcant pockets of dominance and inﬂuence, most notably in districts around
Kunduz. Analysts have detected a ‘“grand design” to destabilise the north’41
in the
Taliban’s strategy.
This destabilisation in the north and the resulting pressure on German commanders
on the ground directly contributed to the so-called ‘Kunduz affair’ in the night of
4 September 2009.42
Up to 142 people were killed when the German PRT commander
in Kunduz ordered an air strike on two stuck tanker trucks that had been stolen by
insurgents several hours before. The bombing and its aftermath eventually led to
the resignation of former defence minister Jung (who had become labour minister
since then) and the forced resignation of the Bundeswehr Chief of Staff Wolfgang
Schneiderhan and Secretary of State Peter Wichert.
Lack of unambiguous strategic guidance and thinly stretched operational reserves
on the ground contributed to the German commander’s decision to call the air strike.
The PRT had been confronted with warnings for weeks of a potential theft of similar
nature and the fear was indeed that trucks could be used in attacks against the German
PRT or Afghan security forces.43
Obviously, the Kunduz affair has driven German debate signiﬁcantly. For
instance, the declaration by Foreign Minister Westerwelle in early 2010 that
Germany was participating in a war in Afghanistan stemmed in no small part from
the need to guarantee German soldiers the legal protection they are afforded for
actions in a war. In addition, it has inevitably greatly increased media attention on
Afghanistan and fostered debate on the proper role of the German army in the
conﬂict.
Nonetheless, while the immediate impact of the Kunduz affair was certainly very
signiﬁcant, the affair has not so much shifted or altered the debate but rather accelerated
the implementation of measures that Germany had initiated already as a
result of the deteriorating security situation in northern Afghanistan since 2007;
it eventually may also have a catalyst effect on the making of German strategy.
Initially, direct bottom-up driven adaptation in the areas of doctrine, force structure,
and institutions can be registered in at least some respects.
Innovations within the Institutional Army
Doctrine
Over the last few years the continuously growing insurgency movement in northern
Afghanistan has forced German political and military leaders to reconsider their
strategy in the context of ISAF. Until recently, the mission was politically legitimized
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 495
in Germany by emphasising that an indirect approach, which signiﬁcantly undervalued
the use of force, in the long run was contributing towards the prevention of
the emergence of an insurgency movement.
However, against the background of a signiﬁcantly deteriorating security situation
in the Kunduz region, German political reasoning in Berlin and Brussels
became more and more inconsistent with daily operational realities on the
ground.44
Despite the fact that media reports about violence in northern Afghanistan
and increasing German causalities undermined the German public consensus on the
mission,45
the ofﬁcial portrayal of the German contribution to ISAF changed only
very slowly. After all, acknowledging an increase in the level of violence in the
German area would have amounted to an admission that Germany’s post-conﬂict
stabilization strategy for northern Afghanistan had failed. Effectively, this situation
worked to strategically impair the politico-strategic centre of decision-making in
Berlin.
As a result, the task to formulate, explain, and ﬁnd support for a new German strategic
approach for northern Afghanistan has become an increasingly difﬁcult endeavour.
Inevitably, any strategic approach dealing with the requirements of
counterinsurgency would go along with a reversal away from the traditional prioritisation
of force protection in favour of an approach that would further expose troops
on the ground.
Thus, just at the time when Germany is losing more soldiers in combat in Afghanistan
than ever before and when public support for the Afghanistan operation has
reached an all-time low, Berlin would not only have to essentially admit that its civilian-guided
strategy and rhetoric has failed and even been counterproductive, but it
would also have to seek to domestically legitimise a strategy that would expose its
forces towards more risks. This situation makes consistent strategy-making even
more difﬁcult and further contributes to the bottom-up-development of counterinsurgency
doctrine, capabilities, institutions, and modus of operandi. Under these circumstances,
change was to be initiated from the operational level.
In the wake of the outbreak of the insurgency in northern Afghanistan, commanders
returning from service in Afghanistan emphasised the new challenges posed by
the insurgency movement and, protractedly, work was begun towards an initial ﬁeld
manual for counterinsurgency within the ministry of defence. There was an evident
need to do so because existing core documents on German doctrine for the Afghanistan
operation are to a large extent ill-suited to assure a coherent and effective
approach on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and beyond. For instance, doctrine
does not prepare military commanders for situations likely to occur in counterinsurgency
environments. As a consequence, it is de facto impossible for military commanders
to formulate a commander’s intent on the basis of guiding doctrine,
although this would be of critical importance on the ground. Crucial elements of
the capability to conduct irregular warfare are featured in some documents and in
speciﬁc contexts, but are not integrated into a comprehensive strategy. The most
important Bundeswehr documents on the German Afghanistan operation are the
Army Field Manual Truppenfu¨hrung von Landstreitkra¨ften and the December 2005
document ‘Einsatzkonzept Operationen gegen Irregula¨re Kra¨fte’. Both documents
496 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
have to be seen as deriving out of the less complex context of stabilization missions.
Therefore, neither sufﬁciently addresses counterinsurgency measures.46
The document
‘Einsatzkonzept Operationen gegen Irregula¨re Kra¨fte’ focuses on the kinetic
part, i.e., aspects concentrating on the use of force for military operations, assigning
measures against irregular forces exclusively to paratrooper brigades specialized on
irregular warfare. Non-kinetic dimensions of military conduct, which are essential in
the context of counterinsurgency, are disregarded.47
The document deals with operations
against irregular forces and claims that it constitutes an equivalent to the
Anglo-Saxon counterinsurgency doctrine, despite a heavy focus primarily on the
kinetic part of military operations against irregular forces.
As a result, according to doctrine, German concepts focus heavily on those means
intended to neutralise enemy forces, whilst ‘non-kinetic’ means are paradoxically
undervalued. Thus, German doctrinal thinking differs fundamentally from the comprehensive
counterinsurgency doctrines of allies such as the United States or
Britain. The respective doctrinal documents of these countries stress the importance
of population security, the training of local forces, the political nature of local operations,
and other non-kinetic aspects and they assume that all force elements engaged
in the theatre of operations should operate under the framework of a strategic
approach guided by counterinsurgency principles. Such an approach stands in
sharp contrast to current German army thinking.
The Field Manual Truppenfu¨hrung von Landstreitkra¨ften does not refer to counterinsurgency
explicitly, since it is rooted in operational scenarios from the Balkan
wars. Consequently, it does not offer a comprehensive view on counterinsurgency.
Instead, it merely conﬁrms the political position that the core mission of the
army’s stabilisation forces is to conduct defensive, stability, and reconstruction operations.
The text covers some aspects of small wars: it states that commanders need to
be able to address sudden changes in conﬂict intensity and the concomitance of
symmetric and asymmetric threats; it calls for the adaptation of modern military
paradigms such as the ‘Three Block War’ concept48
; and it stresses the importance
for armed forces to cooperate with civilian government and nongovernmental
organizations.49
Despite these references, the document does not adequately
prepare commanders for the operational challenges in Afghanistan. Depending on
the context, different operational procedures (offence, defence, delay, stabilization)
are proposed without considering their consequences in a counterinsurgency
environment. Furthermore, the document is restricted to stabilization scenarios and
the discussion of tactical phenomena such as combat against irregular forces. Thus,
considering the relative stability and the complete lack of an insurgency in the
Balkan theatre, the Field Manual fails to prepare German forces for the challenges
and dangers of the Afghanistan operation.
As a consequence of operational realities in Afghanistan, a debate on the necessary
capabilities for operational counterinsurgency measures has at least begun. The
resulting draft document ‘Konzeptionelle Grundvorstellungen zur Wahrnehmung
milita¨rischer Aufgaben im Rahmen von Counterinsurgency’ is currently being
discussed by relevant ministries. In contrast to previous documents, it acknowledges
for the ﬁrst time that counterinsurgency will be a crucial future task for the
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 497
Bundeswehr. Closely following the respective NATO doctrine,50
the document places
the population at the centre of all strategic, operational, and tactical efforts.51
Obviously, the objective is to offer military commanders some guidance in counterinsurgency
operations. Based on the evaluation of dynamics, characteristics, and
functions of known insurgencies, the document introduces four different options
for military leaders: building a secure environment; neutralizing a threat; enforcing
an operational aim; and supporting efforts. For the latter – previously the single
most important aspect of German doctrine – crucial factors are military intelligence,
information engineering, and civil-military cooperation. Within the four options,
commanders need to be able to take defensive, offensive, and supportive action.
If approved, the document will reduce the gap between German doctrine and
those of its allies, especially within the context of NATO. While the latter are
guided by counterinsurgency principles that direct operations on the ground,
German doctrine so far remains situated within the narrow framework of stabilization
missions and lacks a comprehensive assessment of the potential spectrum of warfare
that can be expected in theatres like Afghanistan. Thus, the draft document has the
potential to advance the German army’s understanding of counterinsurgency scenarios,
since it for the ﬁrst time introduces important terms to the discourse on doctrine
and conceptual approach. Moreover, it aims to identify the capabilities needed to
engage in effective counterinsurgency operations.
Force Structure
As argued above, a distinct weakness of Germany’s military policy in the context of
ISAF results from the fact that, in a paradoxical reversal of German political reasoning
that emphasizes civilian reconstruction in Afghanistan, current Bundeswehr counterinsurgency
doctrine focuses very strongly on kinetic capabilities, neglecting nonkinetic
issues to a large extent. This focus on kinetic capabilities has greatly impacted
on force structure. Force structure and doctrine of the Bundeswehr identify speciﬁc
units within the army as designated to combat insurgents or comparable irregular
threats. Next to the Army Special Operations Forces (Kommando Spezialkra¨fte,
KSK), the most important unit for operations against irregular forces is Airborne
Brigade 31, which almost entirely consists of professional paratroopers. As a
lightly armoured and highly mobile unit, the Brigade is able to cover a wide range
of tasks in operations, and is trained and equipped to support special operations
forces.52
In a sharp contrast to German political discourse, however, the Brigade’s
operational focus is the use of force against insurgents.
This lack of a comprehensive spectrum of available capabilities is the result of an
incomplete transformation process of the German armed forces, which to a large extent
has neglected the development of non-kinetic capabilities for counterinsurgency as
well as kinetic capabilities for non-conventional, irregular operations. In northern
Afghanistan, it becomes apparent that the Bundeswehr is critically short of crucial
counterinsurgency capabilities such as tactical air mobility, unmanned surveillance
capabilities, and close-air support assets.53
In addition, during the 1990s the number
of highly trained combat infantry in the army was reduced to only 18 operational
light and mechanized infantry battalions.54
498 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
Moreover, the German army lacks capabilities for critical counterinsurgency
areas like Foreign Internal Defense (FID) and Military Assistance (MA), both at
the Special Operations Force (SOF) level and below.55
In the absence of designated
capabilities, security force assistance units are raised from other, often armoured or
artillery units on an ad-hoc basis. In addition, commanders often are not provided
with sufﬁcient political and cultural advice since those capabilities have not been
implemented structurally. Moreover, compulsory conscription critically affects the
military’s force structure, since most of the regular draftees cannot be sent to outof-area
missions.
In the context of ISAF, these deﬁcits in force structure and capabilities have led to
a signiﬁcant discrepancy between ends and means in the Bundeswehr mission: while
the goal is to increase the share of Afghan military and security forces in the overall
war effort, German defence planning and operational conduct continue to overwhelmingly
rely on force protection and fortiﬁed bases and thus remain tied to the narrow
framework of low-intensity stabilization operations.
Institutions
Institutional capability to conduct operations can be divided into two dimensions. The
ﬁrst dimension includes military command and control capabilities as well as training
capabilities, while the second refers to the government’s capacity to execute a ‘whole
of government’ approach. In the context of the Afghanistan operation, the latter is
especially important, since civilian means are a crucial element of an effective comprehensive
approach.56
Thus, the integration of military and non-military government
bureaucracies is paramount.57
Concerning institutional command and control capabilities, as a force designed
for territorial defence purposes only, the Cold War Bundeswehr did not possess
proper national command and control capabilities at strategic and operational
levels.58
In the case of an attack by the Warsaw Pact, operational control would
have been transferred to the integrated command and control structures of
NATO.59
In the wake of the participation in multinational military operations after
the end of the Cold War, the German army built its own decentralized command
structure to command the individual services of army, navy, and air force in deployments.
As a consequence of this, until today the military command structure is
fragmented, which fuels institutional rivalries between services.60
Fragmentation and rivalry is manifested on the ministerial level as well,
which results in ill-coordinated cooperation between civilian and military planning.
While there does exist a small, regularly assembled inter-ministerial group with
senior members from the concerned ministries,61
overall the development of an
inter-ministerial ‘whole of government’ approach, highlighted by German political
leaders, remains an illusion. Rather, the German government lacks the capability
for integrated civil-military decision-making and strategy formulation.
In 2008, an attempt by the main government party, the conservative Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), to reform the institutional structures of German security
policy made headlines.62
The centre-right party proposed to institutionalise a
National Security Council as ‘the political centre for analysis, coordination, and
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 499
decision-making’ in the ﬁeld of security, equipped with a wide array of competences.
Theoretically, Germany does already have a Security Council (Bundessicherheitsrat),
whose members include the chancellor and the pertinent ministers,
yet it is essentially an institution that decides on arms exports and is barely used
for any other purposes. While the CDU/CSU’s proposal was short on speciﬁcs
and only in passing addressed the difﬁculty of integrating both La¨nder and
ministerial structures into a single new institution, it could have served as a starting
point for a debate on the deﬁcient institutional state of German security policy.
However, public and political reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and the
concept was soon pushed aside. One reason for this was of the CDU/CSU’s own
making: the concept paper also prominently argued for the availability of armed
forces domestically in circumstances other than territorial defence – a very sensitive
constitutional and political issue in Germany. This idea has been brought up by the
conservatives for years, yet opposed strongly by all other parties in the Bundestag.
Thus, debate about the build-up of institutions to integrate civil and military institutions
for the making of German strategy was derailed.63
At the same time,
however, the distinctly negative public reaction towards the proposal also reﬂected
some larger issues about the German discourse on security issue. The creation of a
centre of decision-making sounded like it could militarize, or even worse,
‘Americanize’ German security policy practice, and the proposal was not even
given the chance to be debated calmly.64
In sum – and regardless whether a National
Security Council, in whichever form, would be a useful solution or not – the making
of German strategy remains organised in a diffuse and ineffective manner.
However, due to operational pressure in Afghanistan there have at least been
some institutional reforms regarding the institutional structure of the German ministry
of defence (M.D). In 2008, the Joint Operations Staff (Einsatzfu¨hrungsstab)65
was
established, which turned the Chief of Staff, Bundeswehr (Generalinspekteur) into a
centralized command and control institution regarding military operations.66
The
staff unit comprises virtually all operationally relevant units within the MoD.
It thus addresses the fragmentation of ministerial strategy-making and can be seen
as a direct institutional reform effort to address the German institutional capabilities
gap that had been obvious for the kind of missions like ISAF. With this reform the
MoD aimed at improving inter-agency processes between all ministries involved in
the Afghanistan operation and decision-making processes for Bundeswehr operations.
As the Joint Operations Staff combines at least some civil elements with
the military operations section, the goal was to incrementally overcome the boundaries
of authority among the different ministries. Since the reform constitutes a
crucial and highly contested reorganization, it is an important step towards the development
of adequate capabilities for operations with a wide operational spectrum such
as counterinsurgency.
In sum, this review of the dimensions of doctrine, force structure and institutions
has made evident that protracted reform processes have begun in the institutional
army in the past three years as a result of pressure generated from the operational
level. When analysing the reorientation of German force posture in the Kunduz
500 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
region since 2007, it becomes evident that the operational army has undergone
profound learning processes.
Operational Reorientation: Kunduz
Since 2007, more and more attacks from small villages surrounding the city of
Kunduz on the German-led Provincial Reconstruction Team and forces patrolling
the province have caused an increasing number of ISAF casualties in the area. The
disproportionate increase of attacks in the Kunduz region is causally related to the
speciﬁc settlements structure in the area. Unlike in the rest of northern Afghanistan,
the Pashtuns, the main tribes supporting the insurgency in northern Afghanistan, live
in small villages at the fringes of the city. These villages have a long tradition of being
Taliban strongholds. Until today they provide bases for assaults on ISAF troops.67
The Bundeswehr reacted to this speciﬁc challenge by enhancing capabilities of
the Kunduz garrison. The main objective of the reorientation of force posture in
the Kunduz region was to increase capabilities comprehensively. Aside from
strengthening reconnaissance and combat capacities, mostly by inserting Army
Special Operations Forces (KSK) and specialized paratrooper units into the area,68
German military leaders also proposed a range of structural measures intended to
support momentum well beyond garrisons. Most importantly, a new force presence
concept was introduced, which focused on building up Afghan security forces and
relied on a range of non-kinetic instruments.
A central element of the concept was to enhance presence amongst the Afghan
population. To do so, German military leaders introduced Provincial Advisory
Teams (PAT) and temporary command outposts,69
which were to supplement the
PRT by extending the political and military reach of the German ISAF contingent.
While the advisory teams, much like the PRTs, were intended to advise provincial
governors and support local efforts to increase support for the national Afghan
government, the combat outposts aimed at facilitating a more reliant conduct of
patrols even in districts threatened or controlled by insurgents.70
The ﬁrst German
PAT was set up in the province of Takhar on 23 February 2008. The team was
signiﬁcantly smaller than the PRT, whose troop strength peaked close to 800. The
PAT was set to a maximum strength of 40, with a military share of 35 soldiers,
while combat outposts consisted of around 20 soldiers.71
The key remained to
raise enough civilian personnel.72
The PAT demonstrated the priority of increasing presence among the population
since military commanders shifted resources originally intended for force protection
and medical as well as logistical standards of military bases to those of the advisory
teams. By conducting night patrols in districts threatened by the insurgency,
commanders demonstrated that infantry units were there to protect Afghans against
insurgency activities. Moreover, the German force impact was enhanced by the
deployment of long-term military patrols into various provinces, which, against the
background of difﬁcult geographical realities, served to underline the reorientation
of German force posture. This willingness to reduce force protection in order to
increase force presence among the population constitutes an additional crucial
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 501
change away from traditional German force posture, which until then had left little
room for the deployment of smaller units among the population, as it prioritised
force protection and logistical support for army units.
Another important aspect of the new force presence concept was to ameliorate the
integration of military and development efforts. For the ﬁrst time, troops were
charged with identifying potential development projects in Afghanistan. This was
made possible only by widening the scope of regular operations into areas well
beyond the vicinity of bases. Both developments can thus be seen as critical developments
of the German strategic approach in the framework of ISAF. Information on
development projects gathered by patrols mainly served for investment into so
called Provincial Development Funds (PDF). PDFs are joint civilian and military
funds for on-site projects. As an effort by the German government to harmonize military
and civilian aspects of the ISAF mission, they are part of the reorientation
process of force posture in northern Afghanistan. Controlled jointly by numerous
ministries such as foreign affairs, defence, interior, and development, they are efﬁcient
operational and tactical means of civil-military co-operation.73
A more effective communication and the exchange of information between civilian
and military representatives, on the one hand, and key regional and local leaders
on the other, constituted a further element of the reorientation of German force
posture. Through regular meetings, important local leaders were kept engaged in
military and civilian planning. By doing so, military leaders now could inform the
population about pending military operations and to shape relevant Afghan
opinion.74
‘Key leader engagement’ was a result of an increased value put on
non-kinetic issues.
Another key piece of the reorientation process concerned training of and assistance
to the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP).
In fact, the introduction of Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (OMLT)
supporting the ANA was an essential element in implementing counterinsurgency
measures in the Kunduz area. By subsequently adopting the ‘partnering’ approach,
thus conducting joint operations and patrols, German ISAF forces have aimed to
gain more presence beyond bases, get more in contact with the Afghan population,
and, of course, improve and accelerate the training of Afghan security forces in the
ﬁeld. However, as has been argued above, the German army has neither experience
in nor speciﬁcally designed capabilities for security force assistance.
Nonetheless, the German government’s Afghanistan concept, as outlined by
Chancellor Angela Merkel in a Bundestag speech in January 2010, signiﬁcantly
expanded German efforts in this area.75
In line with the so-called ‘partnering’
concept, NATO and ANSF units would pair off as ‘sister formations’ of comparable
size, which means in consequence that they will train, plan, deploy and ﬁght together.
The number of soldiers participating in the training of Afghan forces was to be
increased from 280 to 1,400. Partnering initiatives were to be expanded, both in
numbers and geographically. Until then, most of the training had taken place
inside the camps; now, along with the signiﬁcant US enforcement of up to 5,000 soldiers,
German soldiers would signiﬁcantly increase their participation in operations
with ANA forces in the ﬁeld. In August of 2010, in a signiﬁcant step in this direction,
502 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
parts of the PRT Kunduz were added to the newly created joint Ausbildungs- und
Schutzbataillon (ASB) Kunduz (training and protection battalion), which is supposed
to operate in the entire RC North. More forces and capabilities were to be added
during the remainder of the year.76
Moreover, Merkel announced an expansion in police training personnel from 123
to 200. For instance, Germany leads 9 POMLT (Police Operational Mentoring and
Liaison Teams), which were created in 2009 to improve police training.77
According
to the extensive April 2010 report provided by the US Defense Department to
Congress, initial indicators of the success of these police training measures in RC
North are positive.78
Not surprisingly, the new focus on partnering leads to greatly
increased risks for German soldiers,79
even though the government originally downplayed
this danger.80
In sum, even though there have been some changes to Germany’s strategic
approach, operational dynamics on the ground are driving developments and are generating
bottom-up innovation and learning processes, also from international partners
within the institutional army. De facto, it has been operations, and not – as should be
the case – the politico-strategic level, that has guided the reorientation of German
strategy in northern Afghanistan in general, and doctrine, institutions, and force
structure in particular.81
While noteworthy, this reorientation has had only very modest effects. Germany
is still far from having sufﬁcient capabilities to operate according to counterinsurgency
‘shape, clear, hold and build’ sequences. As a report by the US Defense
Department from April 2010 puts it, ‘[i]mprovements in RC North have only
occurred in those provinces where international partners and ANSF retain the
capability to effectively conduct hold operations’.82
As a result of shortcomings in
doctrines, institutions, and capabilities, the Bundeswehr has to operate under critical
operational limitations.
Conclusion
This article has analysed the relationship between the making of German strategy for
the Afghanistan operation and operational conduct on the ground. The starting observation
has been that the German contribution to ISAF is characterized by a severe
mismatch between politico-strategic thinking in Berlin and operational conduct on
the ground. Adaptation is driven by operational demands on the ground. It is often
haphazard, protracted, and lacking in strategic direction. The focus of the article
has been on the impact the northern insurgency has had on the German Afghanistan
engagement at both strategic and operational levels. Until 2007 the course of the
German contribution to the Afghanistan operation has been shaped by experiences
deriving from German operational conduct in the Balkans. This has resulted in a
defensive operational approach based on ‘mutual avoidance’, comparatively low
risk tolerance on the side of commanders and the lack of effective civil-military
integration.83
However, due to ever growing theatre challenges, German politicostrategic
insistence that in Afghanistan it is conducting a stability operation has
eroded. In the wake of the deterioration of the security situation on the ground
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 503
counterinsurgency doctrine, capabilities, institutions and modus operandi have been
developed from bottom up. The institutional army has been forced to gradually
develop counterinsurgency doctrine, capabilities, institutions and modus operandi
for the conduct of military operations. Processes have been slow, and are far from
being advanced. As a result, to this day German counterinsurgency capabilities
remain rudimentary. Insufﬁciencies notwithstanding, German dogmatic insistence
on the stabilization character of the ISAF operation is eroding, and politicians and
decision-makers are increasingly accepting the need to adapt the Bundeswehr to
unconventional warfare.
In retrospect, political limitations based on fear of casualties, military risk avoidance,
lack of operational experience, and doctrinal confusion about the place of counterinsurgency
in relation to stabilisation have resulted in a German contribution to
ISAF that has under performed severely and is shaped by strategic inertia. Over
time this has contributed to severely weakening Germany’s strategic inﬂuence
within NATO overall. While NATO members such as the United States, the Netherlands,
the UK, and Canada have embraced the Afghan challenge, and have politically
accepted the resulting challenges and risks, Germany has only protractedly accepted
the challenges presented to the operational army by the theatre of operations. Inevitably,
such differences have severely weakened strategic cohesion within NATO,
which has resulted in an ‘Americanization’ of the war and, subsequently, may
result in a long-term weakening of NATO. The existing mismatch between politico-strategic
thinking in Berlin and operational challenges in Afghanistan has
affected the operational and in turn also the institutional army, and resulted in strategic
diffusion. In the future, it may also effectively hinder a signiﬁcant German contribution
to a comprehensive review of NATO policies regarding its difﬁculties in
achieving operational success in small wars. Frequent German criticism of US operational
conduct has also left its mark within theatre, as the then-ISAF Commander
General McChrystal’s reactions to the Kunduz affair have shown. Overall, dissent
over the conduct of the Afghan operation has had a catalyst function for a widening
gap concerning strategic and operational thinking within NATO, which has made it
evidently harder to agree on a common strategy, much less to execute it. Problems
presented to NATO members by the Afghan theatre also represent larger issues
within the Western security community, and essentially go back to different
answers NATO members give to some of the most fundamental questions: what is
security, how can it be achieved, and what are countries willing and able to contribute
in order to achieve it? The vastly differing approaches to Afghanistan over the past
few years will likely have the effect of exacerbating NATO’s lack of strategic consensus
in the context of operational challenges to come.
Finally, there is the issue of operational learning: Canada, for instance, may be
leaving Afghanistan in 2011. However, as a result of operational learning in the south
of Afghanistan and of consequently substantially enhanced capabilities, Canadian commanders
insist that they have learned signiﬁcantly lessons for future engagements of
similar character.84
German politico-strategic reluctance to identify similar strategic
and operational ‘lessons learned’ is threatening to prevent the same effects in Germany.
504 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S
The author would like to thank Adrian Oroz, the anonymous reviewers, and the editors of Contemporary
Security Policy for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The usual disclaimer applies.
N O T E S
1. See ‘Germany To Add Troops to Afghan War’, The New York Times, 26 January 2010, p. A11.
2. See Franz-Josef Meiers, ‘Von der Scheckbuchdiplomatie zur Verteidigung am Hindukusch. Die Rolle
der Bundeswehr bei multinationalen Auslandseinsa¨tzen 1990-2009’, Zeitschrift fu¨r Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik,
Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 2010), pp. 201–22.
3. This term has been widely used to describe Germany’s strategic culture after the end of the cold war.
See, for example, Kerry Longhurst, Germany and the Use of Force. The Evolution of German Security
Policy 1990-2003 (Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 2004), p. 130.
4. See Timo Noetzel and Martin Zapfe, ‘NATO and Counterinsurgency: The Case of Germany’, in Christopher
M. Schnaubelt (ed.), Counterinsurgency: The Challenge for NATO Strategy and Operations
(Rome: NATO Defense College, 2009), pp. 129–51, pp. 130–1.
5. See John E. Peters et al., European Contributions to Operation Allied Force. Implications for Transatlantic
Cooperation (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2001), p. 21.
6. See Richard Connaughton, Military Intervention and Peacekeeping. The Reality (Hampshire/Burlington:
Ashgate, 2001), p.117.
7. E. Gujer, ‘Der neue Egoismus’, Neue Zu¨rcher Zeitung, 24–25 July 2010, p. 1.
8. See Regina Karp, ‘Germany: A “Normal” Global Actor?’, German Politics, Vol. 18, No. 1 (March
2009), pp.12-35.
9. See Rolf Clement, ‘Auslandseinsa¨tze und Transformation der Bundeswehr’, in Thomas Ja¨ger, Alexander
Ho¨se, and Kai Oppermann (eds), Deutsche Außenpolitik. Sicherheit, Wohlfahrt, Institutionen und
Normen (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag fu¨r Sozialwissenschaften, 2007), pp. 123–40, pp. 126–30.
10. See Timo Noetzel and Martin Zapfe, ‘Aufstandsbeka¨mpfung als Auftrag. Instrumente und Planungsstrukturen
fu¨r den ISAF-Einsatz’, Study of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs,
May 2008, p. 8.
11. For a summary of the changing character of public legitimization regarding Bundeswehr deployments
see Christian Freuding, Streitkra¨fte als Instrument deutscher Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik seit Mitte
der neunziger Jahre (Hamburg: Helmut-Schmidt Universita¨t, 2007), pp. 41–103.
12. See Sippi Azerbaijani Moghaddam, ‘Northern Exposure for the Taliban’, in Antonio Giustozzi (ed.),
Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2009), pp. 247–68.
13. S. Lo¨wenstein and H. Bacia, ‘Bundeswehrverband: Krieg in Afghanistan’, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 4 September 2008, p. 2 and D. Bro¨ssler, ‘Anna¨herung an den Krieg’, Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung,
4 November 2009, p. 5.
14. Interview with Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung, 4 April 2010, available at: http://
www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/afghanistan-guttenberg-spricht-von-krieg-1.6058. Already in November
2009, Guttenberg had spoken of ‘war-like situations’ in parts of Afghanistan. See Bro¨ssler, ‘Anna¨herung
an den Krieg’ (note 13).
15. Westerwelle’s speech from 10 February 2010 can be found here: http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/
diplo/de/Infoservice/Presse/Reden/2010/100210-BM-BT-Afghanistan.html (accessed 4 August
2010). The original sentence, quoted more extensively, is: ‘Die Intensita¨t der mit Waffengewalt ausgetragenen
Auseinandersetzung mit Aufsta¨ndischen und deren milita¨rischer Organisation fu¨hren uns
zu der Bewertung, die Einsatzsituation von ISAF auch im Norden Afghanistans als bewaffneten Konﬂikt
im Sinne des humanita¨ren Vo¨lkerrechts zu qualiﬁzieren.’
16. The Small Wars Journal, for instance, offers the following approximation to the term, which reﬂects
the difﬁculties of deﬁning it: ‘Small Wars is an imperfect term used to describe a broad spectrum of
spirited continuation of politics by other means, falling somewhere in the middle bit of the continuum
between feisty diplomatic words and global thermonuclear war. [. . .] Just as friendly ﬁre isn’t, there
isn’t necessarily anything small about a Small War. The term “Small War” either encompasses or overlaps
with a number of familiar terms such as counterinsurgency, foreign internal defense, support and
stability operations, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and many ﬂavors of intervention. Operations such as
noncombatant evacuation, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance will often either be a part of a
Small War, or have a Small Wars feel to them. Small Wars involve a wide spectrum of specialized
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 505
tactical, technical, social, and cultural skills and expertise, requiring great ingenuity from their practitioners.’
See http://smallwarsjournal.com/site/about/ (accessed 15 August 2010).
17. The German Defence White Book of 2006 states that ‘missions to prevent conﬂicts and to cope with
crises’ are to be the primary tasks of the Bundeswehr. In its entire vagueness this ‘deﬁnition’, however,
leaves enough room for conceptual developments, see German Ministry of Defence, Weißbuch 2006
zur Sicherheit Deutschlands und zur Zukunft der Bundeswehr (Berlin: Federal Ministry of Defence,
2006), p. 12.
18. Timo Noetzel and Thomas Rid, ‘Germany’s Options in Afghanistan’, Survival, Vol. 51, No. 5
(October/November 2009), pp. 71–90.
19. Klaus Naumann, ‘Scheitern an der ganzen Front. Das Versagen deutscher Politik torpediert die
Auslandseinsa¨tze der Bundeswehr’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 63, No. 9 (September 2008),
pp.82–9, p. 89. Naumann elaborated his argument in Einsatz ohne Ziel? Die Politikbedu¨rftigkeit
des Milita¨rischen (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2008).
20. Until this day, the German contribution to ISAF has been basically supported by both major parties, the
Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, and two of the three smaller parties (Greens and free
Democrats) represented in parliament. Only the leftist Linkspartei was opposed. With the end of the
grand coalition by both major parties in 2009, this key policy consensus over foreign policy has
become more and more fragile.
21. In the ﬁrst few years of the engagement, public support was usually well above 50 per cent. For those
ﬁgures, see T. Petersen, ‘Wird Deutschland am Hindukusch verteidigt?’, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung, 26 May 2010, p. 5. In addition, a very useful reference for public opinion with respect to security
policy is the thorough annual survey by the Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr. The
most recent one, which already reﬂects the growing public uneasiness with Afghanistan, is Thomas
Bulmahn et al., Sicherheits- und verteidigungspolitisches Meinungsklima in der Bundesrepublik
Deutschland. Ergebnisse der Bevo¨lkerungsbefragung 2008 des Sozialwissenschaftlichen Instituts
der Bundeswehr (Strausberg 2009).
22. See Franz-Josef Meiers, ‘The German Predicament: The Red Lines of the Security and Defense Policy
of the Berlin Republic’, International Politics, Vol. 44, No. 5 (September 2007), pp. 623–44.
23. See The German Federal Government, Das Afghanistan-Konzept der Bundesregierung (Berlin: Bundesregierung,
September 2008), p. 9.
24. See Stefan Kornelius, Der unerkla¨rte Krieg. Deutschlands Selbstbetrug in Afghanistan (Hamburg:
edition Ko¨rber-Stiftung, 2009), pp. 36–42.
25. See G. Appenzeller, ‘Der eine und der andere Krieg’, Der Tagesspiegel, 3 August 2010, p. 1.
26. Bundeswehr Chief of Staff General Volker Wieker, ‘Von afghanischem Boden darf keine Gefahr mehr
ausgehen’, Die Welt online, 16 Feb. 2010, available at: http://www.welt.de/die-welt/debatte/
article6414780/Von-afghanischem-Boden-darf-keine-Gefahr-mehr-ausgehen.html (accessed 15
August 2010).
27. See Timo Noetzel and Benjamin Schreer, ‘Missing Links: The Evolution of German Counter-Insurgency
Thinking’, The RUSI Journal, Vol. 154, No. 1 (February 2009), pp. 16–22, pp.17f.
28. An overview of the soldiers who have died while deployed abroad can be found here: http://www.
bundeswehr.de/portal/a/bwde/kcxml/04_Sj9SPykssy0xPLMnMz0vM0Y_QjzKLd443cTQCSYGYxg
Eh-pEwsaCUVH1fj_zcVH1v_QD9gtyIckdHRUUATi3qcg!!/delta/base64xml/L2dJQSEvUUt3QS80
SVVFLzZfQ180QTI!?yw_contentURL=%2FC1256EF4002AED30%2FW27Q3DTU941INFODE%
2Fcontent.jsp (accessed 3 August 2010).
29. M. Schmidt, ‘Bundeswehr erha¨lt neue Einsatzregeln’, Der Tagesspiegel, 27 July 2009, http://www.
tagesspiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundeswehr-erhaelt-neue-einsatzregeln/1566274.html (accessed
2 August 2010).
30. J. Bittner, ‘Grundkurs Krieg’, Die Zeit, 6 August 2009. Bittner quotes a few sentences from the
Taschenkarte.
31. See Ministry of Defence, HDv 100/100 Truppenfu¨hrung von Landstreitkra¨ften, Bonn 2006, No.
33014-33017
32. For an example of the Bundeswehr’s presentation of its medical care in the PRT Kunduz, see http://
www.bundeswehr.de/portal/a/bwde/einsaetze?yw_contentURL=/C1256EF4002AED30/W2764ED
4348INFODE/content.jsp (accessed 6 August 2010). The need to provide for a very high standard of
care for all soldiers contributed to the comparatively large size of the PRT in Kunduz.
33. For a good survey of the origins and the evolution of the northern insurgency, see Antonio Giustozzi
and Christoph Reuter, ‘The Northern Front. The Afghan Insurgency Spreading Beyond the Pashtuns’,
Afghan Analysts Network, AAN Brieﬁng Paper 03/2010.
506 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY
34. See, for example, M. Feldenkirchen, M. Gebauer, and S. Najaﬁzada, ‘Angriff auf Bundeswehr war
milita¨risch geplant’, Spiegel Online, 30 April 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/
0,1518,622125,00.html (accessed 25 June 2010).
35. For Warnecke’s perspective on Harekate Yolo II and an analysis of the insurgents’ strategy in Badghis
and Faryab, see Dieter Warnecke, ‘Harekate Yolo II – Sicherheit fu¨r Afghanistan. Mit milita¨rischen
Mitteln den Wiederaufbau mo¨glich machen’, Europa¨ische Sicherheit, Vol. 57, No. 5 (May 2008),
pp. 16–20.
36. See A. Szandar and Y. Musharbash, ‘Bundeswehr an Gefechten in West-Afghanistan beteiligt’,
Spiegel Online, 11 November 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,516455,00.html
(accessed 3 June 2010).
37. On the composition of the operation and its temporary success in facilitating aid delivery see
Warnecke, Harekate Yolo II (note 35) pp. 19–20.
38. Giustozzi and Reuter, The Northern Front, p. 3 (note 33).
39. With data on both provinces: Matthew C. DuPe´e, ‘Badghis Province: Examining the Taliban’s Northwestern
Campaign’, The Culture & Conﬂict Review, Vol. 2, No. 5 (December 2008), http://www.nps.
edu/programs/ccs/journal/December/202008/Badghis_Final_Draft.pdf (accessed 14 October 2010).
40. See R. Birnbaum and H. Monath, ‘Bundeswehr operiert an der Mandatsgrenze’, Der Tagesspiegel, 8
November 2007.
41. Giustozzi and Reuter, The Northern Front, pp. 3–4 (note 33).
42. The fullest media account on that night and its aftermath is: U. Demmer et al., ‘Ein deutsches
Verbrechen’, Der Spiegel, 1 February 2010, pp. 34–57.
43. Ibid., p. 41.
44. US Department of Defense, ‘Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan and
United States Plan for Sustaining the Afghanistan National Security Forces’, Report to Congress,
April 2010, pp. 31–2.
45. See Petersen, ‘Wird Deutschland am Hindukusch verteidigt?‘ (note 21), p. 5.
46. See Noetzel and Zapfe, ‘NATO and Counterinsurgency’ (note 4), pp. 138–40.
47. See Ministry of Defence, Einsatzkonzept Operationen gegen Irregula¨re Kra¨fte, Bonn 2005, p. 6.
48. Charles C. Krulak, ‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War’, Marines Magazine,
January 1999, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/usmc/strategic_corporal.htm (accessed 10
August 2010).
49. See Ministry of Defense, HDv 100/100 Truppenfu¨hrung von Landstreitkra¨ften, Bonn 2006, No. 3012,
No. 5010, No. 5011.
50. See Allied Joint Publication for Counterinsurgency 3.4.4, 13 November 2008, p. 6.
51. See Ministry of Defence, Konzeptionelle Grundvorstellungen zur Wahrnehmung milita¨rischer
Aufgaben im Rahmen von Counterinsurgency (DRAFT, 19 May 2009), p.15.
52. In addition to the army’s KSK, German Special Operations Forces include the navy’s Kampfschwimmer.
53. For its roughly 5,000 troops, Germany has deployed only 6–8 heavy transport helicopters CH-53 GS,
some of which are reserved for MEDEVAC purposes. Furthermore, tactical air support is exclusively
provided by allied forces.
54. These include mechanized infantry (Panzergrenadiere), motorized infantry (Ja¨ger), specialized
mountain infantry (Gebirgsja¨ger) as well as paratroopers (Fallschirmja¨ger).
55. See Timo Noetzel and Benjamin Schreer, ‘Spezialkra¨fte der Bundeswehr. Strukturerfordernisse fu¨r
den Auslandseinsatz’, Study of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, September
2007, p. 23.
56. Civilian actors have been, for example, a crucial component of the British strategy in Helmand since
2008. See Theo Farrell and Stuart Gordon, ‘COIN Machine. The British Military in Afghanistan’, The
RUSI Journal, Vol. 154, No. 3 (June 2009), pp. 18–25, p. 20.
57. See Paul Cornish, ‘The United States and Counterinsurgency: “Political First, Political Last, Political
Always”’, International Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1 (2009), pp. 61–79, pp. 71–5.
58. See Noetzel and Zapfe, ‘NATO and Counterinsurgency’ (note 4), p. 130.
59. See Bruno Thoß, ‘Einleitung’, in Helmut R. Hammerich et al. (eds), Das Heer 1950-1970. Konzeption,
Organisation, Aufstellung (Mu¨nchen: Oldenburg, 2006), pp. 1–15, pp. 5–6.
60. Each of the four services has its own service headquarters with a ﬁfth ‘Operational Headquarters’
(Einsatzfu¨hrungskommando) supposed to lead the joint deployments. In practice, the responsibility
of national operational leadership is not adequately uniﬁed in one joint headquarters, which leads to
redundancies and rivalries.
61. Kornelius, Der unerkla¨rte Krieg (note 24), p. 89.
GERMANY’S SMALL WAR IN AFGHANISTAN 507
62. ‘Eine Sicherheitsstrategie fu¨r Deutschland. Beschluss der CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion vom 6. Mai
2008’, http://www.cdu.de/doc/pdfc/080506-beschluss-fraktion-sicherheitsstrategie.pdf (accessed 4
August 2010), pp. 12–13.
63. Naumann, Einsatz ohne Ziel? (note 19), pp. 13–14.
64. For some of the reactions see S. Weiland, ‘SPD und Opposition blasen zur Jagd auf einen Papiertiger’,
Spiegel Online, 7 May 2008, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,552059,00.html
(accessed 5 August 2010). Newspapers from the left to the conservative side were quick to point out parallels
to the US National Security Council and eventually most considered the proposal to be ill advised.
65. The term ‘Joint Commitment Staff’ is also used as a denomination.
66. See Timo Noetzel and Martin Zapfe, ‘Der Einsatz im Fokus? Das Verteidigungsministerium und die
Auslandseinsa¨tze’, in Robert Glawe (ed.), Eine neue deutsche Sicherheitsarchitektur – Impulse fu¨r die
nationale Strategiedebatte (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2009), pp. 187–94.
67. See ‘Operations Update by Major General Bill Mayville, US Army’, http://www.isaf.nato.int/en/theafghan-hands-blog/commanders-blog/ops-update-the-state-of-the-insurgency.html
(accessed 3 June
2010).
68. Within the German Army, the KSK is supposed to be the ‘Tier’ 1 SOF, while the paratroopers, in parts,
are intended to be the supporting ‘Tier 2’, comparable to the US Army Rangers under SOCOM.
69. These are the German equivalent to US combat outposts that were conceptualized during the predominantly
urban ‘surge’ in 2007 and whose concept is increasingly transferred to Afghanistan’s rural areas
of operations. See Kimberly Kagan, ‘Enforcing the Law: The Baghdad Security Plan Begins’
(Washington DC: Institute for the Study of War, 2007), p. 10.
70. See Noetzel and Zapfe, ‘Aufstandsbeka¨mpfung als Auftrag’ (note 10), pp. 17–18.
71. On the introduction of the PATs by Germany see German Federal Government, Afghanistan-Konzept
(note 23), p. 41.
72. Interview with Bernhard Gertz, Chairman of the Bundeswehr Association, Der Tagesspiegel, 10
October 2008, p. 4.
73. http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/diplo/en/Aussenpolitik/RegionaleSchwerpunkte/
AfghanistanZentralasien/Downloads/factsheet__provinzentwicklungsfonds.pdf (accessed 6 August
2010).
74. Informing the civilian population of military operations that are about to be conducted has been a new,
if criticized, feature of operations since General McChrystal took command of ISAF. See Frank
Gardner, ‘Afghan Operation Moshtarak Places Success Over Surprise’, BBC News, 8 February
2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8505179.stm (accessed 3 June 2010).
75. Merkel’s speech (28 January 2010) is available at: http://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/
DE/Regierungserklaerung/2010/2010-01-28-merkel-erklaerung-afghanistan.html (accessed 4 August
2010).
76. http://www.einsatz.bundeswehr.de/portal/a/einsatzbw/aktuelle_einsaetze/afghanistan?yw_content
URL=/C1256F1D0022A5C2/W287YEXH381INFODE/content.jsp.html (accessed 5 August 2010).
77. http://www.isaf.nato.int/images/stories/File/factsheets-april/Apr2010%20-%20ANP.pdf (accessed 5
August 2010).
78. ‘Report to Congress’ (note 44), p. 121.
79. Four German members of an OMLT were killed in an attack close to Baghlan. See M. Gebauer, ‘Ausbilder
auf to¨dlicher Mission’, Spiegel Online, 15 April 2010, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/
ausland/0,1518,689279,00.html (accessed 5 August 2010).
80. Peter Blechschmidt, ‘Mehr Geld, mehr Soldaten, mehr Risiko’, Su¨ddeutsche Zeitung, 27 January 2010,
p. 6.
81. Timo Noetzel, ‘Germany’, in Thomas Rid and Thomas Keaney (eds), Understanding Counterinsurgency
Warfare. Doctrine, Operations, Challenges (Milton Park: Routledge, 2010), pp. 46–58.
82. ‘Report to Congress’ (note 44), p.130.
83. Giustozzi and Reuter, The Northern Front (note 33) p.2.
84. B. Campion-Smith and A. Woods, ‘Canadian Army Well-Prepared For Future Roles, Thanks To
Afghan Mission, Top Commander Says’, thestar.com, 15 June 2010, http://www.thestar.com/news/
canada/afghanmission/article/824026-canadian-army-well-prepared-for-futureroles-thanks-to-afghanmission-top-commander-says?bn=1
(accessed 7 August 2010).
508 CONTEMPORARY SECURITY POLICY