Germany's peculiar Afghanistan mission

After the recent bloody incidents near Kunduz debate has once more flared up over the sense and aims of the German Bundeswehr's mission in Afghanistan, the daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes: "The Afghanistan debate has long been one of the most peculiar in Germany. On the one hand countless media are demanding that politicians in Berlin should 'finally admit' that war is raging in the Hindu Kush and that the Bundeswehr's mission includes not only protecting and reconstructing, but also killing and dying. At the same time, however, the same observers often seem to consider war as an official act, managed in a well-considered, proportionate way within a solid legal framework on perfectly overseeable terrain. Consequently there is practically no such thing as a German manoeuvre involving Afghan casualties which is not the object of investigations by the German prosecution."

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