German defense minister in Afghanistan to support mission increasingly unpopular at home

German minister in Afghanistan to back mission

BERLIN — Germany’s defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg arrived in Afghanistan Wednesday in a show of support for his country’s military mission there which, according to a new poll, is increasingly unpopular at home.

“It is important for me to show the soldiers on the ground that the political leadership stands behind them,” Guttenberg said upon arrival in northern Afghanistan, according to his ministry’s Web site.

Germany has some 4,500 soldiers serving in the International Security Assistance Force mission, most of them in northern Afghanistan. It is Guttenberg’s third trip to the region since he took office in November. It comes less than two weeks after three German soldiers died in fighting near Kunduz— a loss that has heated up the debate in Germany about the military engagement once labeled as a stabilizing mission.

Stern magazine reported Wednesday that 62 percent of 1,004 people polled by the Forsa institute after the soldiers’ deaths said they support bringing the German troops home.

Stern said that is the highest percentage ever on that question, up from only 34 percent in September 2005 when Forsa did a similar poll.

The margin of error in the latest Forsa poll held April 8 and 9 was given as plus or minus three percentage points.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said last week she still thinks German troops are needed in Afghanistan, but they will not stay a day longer than necessary.

Merkel also said she can understand that soldiers call the conflict in Afghanistan a civil war or just simply a “war” — a word German governments have avoided since the Afghanistan mission’s start in early 2002.

Opposition leader Sigmar Gabriel of the Social Democrats reacted this week by saying that if the situation in Afghanistan is indeed a war the government should openly say so and parliament should vote on it.

Merkel’s spokeswoman Sabine Heimbach repudiated that idea on Wednesday, saying the mission’s legal basis had not changed.

Pressure has been rising on the government ever since a German commander ordered two fuel trucks captured near Kunduz by Taliban fighters to be bombed in September, killing up to 142 people, many of them civilians.