[Richard]

Germany Gave Names to Secret Taliban Hit List
Der Spiegel, 2 Aug 2010
Part 2 of 2

Distinctions Become Blurred in Combat

Is this even legal? An attorney at the Defense Ministry, Lieutenant Colonel Hausmann, addressed the issue three years ago. In an eight-page report dated June 6, 2007, Hausmann writes, in relation to targeting: "When it comes to targeting, I believe that we lack a clear directive on whether and to what extent Germany can take part in the targeting process." Hausmann adds that this is "problematic," because the ensuing process cannot be "easily reconciled" with "national caveats" -- in other words, the restrictions that the Germans placed on their mission in Afghanistan, stipulating, for example, that Bundeswehr soldiers could only shoot in self defense.

A few things have changed since then. The German government now refers to the campaign as a non-international armed conflict, in other words, a war. And most international law experts who have commented on the issue in recent days do not necessarily feel that Germany's participation in the targeting process is problematic under international law.

And yet it remains a political problem. First of all, no one in the administration has commented clearly on Germany's role. Second, although a clean line can be drawn on paper between C for capture and K for kill, these distinctions quickly become blurred in actual combat.

Uneasy Feeling

A case in point, which still raises many unanswered questions, is that of Qari Bashir. One thing about the case is clear, however: Even if the Taliban commander, who was nominated by the Germans and listed as number 2,117 on the JPEL list since 2009, was only meant to be captured, he has been dead since Nov. 4, 2009.

How did this come about? It began when a US Special Forces major in Mazar-e-Sharif presented his plans for a major operation northwest of Kunduz to German General Jürgen Setzer. While presenting the plans, he showed Setzer pictures of the targets, including one of Bashir. But the German officers felt uneasy about the idea and said that German forces would not take part in the operation, which, to them, was too obviously a plan for the targeted killing of Taliban leaders. The operation began, and the fighting and heavy bombing lasted for five days. In addition to Qari Bashir, about 130 people were killed. The US Army claimed that all the victims were Taliban fighters.

The death of the 35-year-old commander, who had about 50 fighters under his command east of Kunduz and had ordered several ambushes against the Germans, proves that anyone who names candidates to the lists is effectively signing their death warrant.

This sort of information is giving shape to the war for the first time. In the past, there was a great deal of silence and a cloud of assumptions. There was also a sort of information cascade among informed individuals in the government, a few informed members of parliament and significantly fewer informed members of the relevant parliamentary committees, while the remainder of the Bundestag members was generally uninformed. In fact, even the defense minister was kept in the dark at key moments. The most glaring case unfolded last August, when Task Force 373 was discussed for the first time.

Withholding Information

On the sidelines of a cabinet meeting shortly before last September's parliamentary election, Chancellor Angela Merkel asked then Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung to tell her about Task Force 373. But Jung could only shrug his shoulders. In fact, until that point he had never heard of Task Force 373.

The chancellor was irritated. Several weeks earlier, the US military had sent a request to Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the then inspector-general of the Bundeswehr, asking for permission to station 300 special forces troops at the German base in Mazar-e-Sharif. Schneiderhan's response was to say that the US request would require "an extensive review." Schneiderhan apparently felt that simply approving the request was too risky during an election campaign. The targeted killing of Taliban in the German zone could have raised many unpleasant questions.

Keeping the chancellor and her defense minister in the dark was a blatant case of suppressing information. Nevertheless, failing to provide the political class, all the way down to ordinary delegates, with important information was apparently deliberate.

Members of the Bundestag can address questions regarding Afghanistan to the federal government, which is something that the veteran Green Party politician Hans-Christian Ströbele does again and again, although he finds that the answers he gets show that his efforts are only moderately successful. FDP delegate Elke Hoff sounds almost resigned when she says: "They don't allow themselves to be monitored by someone like me. It isn't our job to keep tabs on the special forces of other nations."

'Unrewarding and Counterproductive'

Not all parliamentarians have remained as acquiescent as Hoff following the WikiLeaks revelations. Rainer Arnold, the defense policy spokesman of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), believes that all this secrecy surrounding special forces is "exaggerated," and that it "tends to contribute to the development of conspiracy theories." Fellow SPD member Hans-Peter Bartels even goes a step further when he says: "It isn't enough to merely inform the representatives of the defense committee, if they are then subject to restrictions on passing on the secret information," he says. "Instead, the entire parliament should be briefed after operations are completed."

Bartels believes that "Capture or Kill" operations are "fundamentally problematic, unrewarding and counterproductive." The people being labeled as Taliban "commanders" are often leaders with the rank of a sergeant, in command of perhaps 10 to 15 men, he says: "These are not major commanders who are being captured or killed here." In fact, says Bartels, the operations have "led to greater animosity among Afghans, because some people were killed who shouldn't have been killed."

Bartels' intuition has been borne out in the field. In the region they supposedly control, the German officers are expected to put up with being humiliated and deprived of their authority by the Americans -- and they have to live with the consequences. "Now they're heading out on missions that aren't supposed to exist here," a German officer said with a groan on a spring evening in April at Camp Marmal near Mazar-e-Sharif. The drone of the engines of Blackhawk transport helicopters could be heard on the runway at the other end of the camp. "I've been working here day and night for the past four months. I've never seen Task Force 373; I've only heard them."

Friction between German and US Forces

The group of at least 40 elite soldiers has barricaded itself behind tall concrete walls and massive metal doors at the northeast end of the camp. Their meals were delivered to them, and they only move around in the camp, to and from the airfield, under cover of darkness. There has already been friction between Berlin and Washington because the Germans were upset over the fact that they were not even told when the Americans would be arriving in their sector. Instead, they came and went as they pleased, and whenever they did arrive at the camp, they expected the Germans to have their helicopters re-tanked by the time they were ready to leave again. Then they would simply disappear into the night. Now that Berlin has intervened, the German soldiers in northern Afghanistan are at least told when to be ready with their pump nozzles.

The Germans have no influence on the operations of Task Force 373, and yet they are the ones who are exposed to the Taliban's acts of retaliation. Besides, the lists are not reliable. Sometimes the Americans encounter real surprises with their "high-value targets," as they did last December.

According to a report among the secret documents, a man suddenly turned up at Forward Operating Base Shank, a small American base in Logar province. He said he was Mullah Matin, that his name was on the JPEL and that he was there to clear up a misunderstanding. He swore to the soldiers that he was not some dangerous Taliban fighter, and told them he had been deliberately wrongly accused and informed on, and that he even knew who the accuser was.

The reason for the accusation, he explained to the baffled soldiers, was that he was embroiled in a bitter dispute with the man over a piece of land.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...709625,00.html