Germany’s defence minister gets his tongue in a twist every time he tries to explain why the German army is not in a “war” in Afghanistan, even though more and more German soldiers are coming home in coffins.

“If we were to speak of ‘war’ then we would only be focusing on the military aspect in the region and that would be a mistake,” Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said after three more German soldiers were killed on Tuesday, raising the total to 35.

“The goal of the German army is, alongside providing security, to help the country rebuild and with its development. We are not occupiers. Unfortunately there are situations where our soldiers have to fight. But we’re not looking for fights.”

Jung sounded even more opposed to the term “war” in a television interview: “That is not war. In a war you don’t build schools, you don’t set up the water and power supplies and you don’t build kindergartens and hospitals and you don’t train the military and the police.”

Jung is not in an enviable position as the conservative defence minister of a deeply pacifist country that has had to jump over some very long shadows of its troubled past before it was able to send troops abroad as part of international peacekeeping operations. That Germany is even part of a military deployment abroad and getting involved in combat despite the ghosts of its past is something that I could not possibly have imagined when I first came to the country in 1989.

Yet Germany has the third-largest contingent of NATO forces in Afghanistan — 3,720 soldiers concentrated in the north — even if the German forces are not allowed to shoot unless fired upon first and their Tornado aircraft are restricted to unarmed reconnaissance flights.

Public opinion is nevertheless overwhelmingly against Germany’s involvement in the NATO mission in Afghanistan — even though West Germany was a prime beneficiary of NATO’s unyielding support during the Cold War. With their post-World War Two indoctrination against war on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, it is hard to underestimate the deep anti-war sentiment throughout Germany — they are weaned on the notion of Nie Wieder Krieg! (War never again!). And Jung’s party, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, is eager to win the parliamentary elections in three months — and does not want any turbulence or a national debate about Afghanistan to get in the way.

Military leaders have quietly grumbled about how Merkel has largely avoided the whole Afghanistan complex and left Jung on his own to take the heat.

So that is why Jung, who last year was at the centre of a similar semantics debate about his reluctance to use the military-sounding term “fallen” (”Gefallene”) when talking about troops killed, is now soldiering on for his party and is forced to perform semantic backflips to avoid uttering the word “Krieg”. He repeatedly rejects any suggestion that German troops are involved in “war” even though his long answers to the simple question — “Is Germany at war?” — only invite more journalists to press him again and again for a clear answer.

The centre-left Social Democrats, partners in Merkel’s ruling grand coalition, are growing tired of Jung’s verbal gyrations. “The chancellor has to come out and explain to the people of Germany: this is a deployment in which people could get killed and we are in a war against terror,” said Peter Struck of the SPD, who leads the SPD’s parliamentary group and was a highly popular Defence Minister before Jung took over in 2005.

And the SPD’s Reinhold Robbe, parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, indirectly criticised Jung’s avoiding the term “war” once again this week. “It’s still being denied that the German army is fighting a war in the Hindukush,” Robbe said. “We’ve got to stop turning a blind eye to the facts.”
(Additional reporting by Dave Cutler in London)
PHOTO - Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung attends a session of the German lower house of parliament Bundestag in Berlin, June 18, 2009. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

How can you tell when U.S. forces in Afghanistan are operating alone?

When they call it “the coalition”.

That’s not a joke. It’s just how things work in Afghanistan, where two separate forces with two separate command structures — one completely American, the other about half American — operate side by side under the command of the same U.S. general.

 ”When we say ‘coalition’, basically that means it’s just us,” a helpful U.S. military spokeswoman explained last month to a reporter who had just arrived in country after being away for a couple of  years. “Otherwise, it’s the ‘alliance’.”

And it’s not just words.

“The alliance” and “the coalition” maintain completely separate press offices, each of which is often allowed to give only bits and pieces of detail about the same incident. The result can be a bit confusing.

First, some history.

The “coalition” refers to Operation Enduring Freedom, the U.S. (or, as they like to say, “U.S.-led”) mission ordered by President George W. Bush back in 2001 to catch Osama bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban.

Occasionally over the past eight years it has actually operated as a coalition, with contributions from Britain and other countries.

But these days, it’s strictly an American mission, with thousands of U.S. troops engaged in hunting insurgents, training Afghans and providing air support. (Well, maybe not quite strictly American: there could be a handful of British or Australian special forces in there too. But that’s a secret.)

“The alliance”, meanwhile, refers to NATO, which now leads the International Security Assistance Force, set up by the United Nations to provide a small number of mostly European peacekeepers for the capital after the fall of the Taliban, also back in 2001.

ISAF’s role gradually expanded until 2006, when it spread throughout the country, got a lot bigger and began fighting the Taliban, especially in the south and east. ISAF now includes contributions from around 40 nations, but these days the force is about half American and getting more so by the week as thousands of U.S. reinforcements arrive.

Since last year, ISAF and “the coalition” have both been commanded by the same U.S. General, David McKiernan, who is about to be replaced by another, Stanley McChrystal.

Because ISAF — unlike “the coalition” — actually IS a coalition, it has stringent rules on what its members let it say. When its troops are involved in an incident, ISAF won’t say what country they come from, or precisely where in Afghanistan the incident took place.

The defence ministry of each country is supposed to reveal that information back home, but that can take hours or even days. And if troops from more than one Western country are involved — not to mention Afghan soldiers and police — piecing details together can require the skills of Sherlock Holmes.

Here’s an example: a few weeks ago, “the coalition” said one of its soldiers was killed in an incident. NATO said four of its soldiers had died. Neither said where: somewhere in eastern Afghanistan. It took several hours and phone calls throughout Afghanistan and Riga to determine that three of the soldiers were Americans, two were Latvians, and that the incident was the same as one Afghan troops had already reported in Kunar province.

The investigation ended with a conversation that went like something like this:

    Reuters: You’ve said one American was killed, right?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: That’s what we’ve said, yes.
    Reuters: And four NATO soldiers were also killed, right?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, that’s what ISAF has said.
    Reuters: And two of those NATO soldiers were also American?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, I can confirm that.
    Reuters: So actually three Americans were killed, yes?
    U.S. military spokeswoman: Yes, that’s correct.

 Confused? Join the coalition…

Soldiers took power in a coup in Mauritania on Wednesday after presidential guards deposed President Sidi Mohamed Ould Cheikh Abdallahi when he tried to dismiss senior army officers. Abdallahi took over only last year after winning elections to replace a military junta that had ruled since it toppled the previous president in a bloodless coup in 2005. The largely desert nation, one of Africa’s newest oil producers, has suffered five coups since 1978 but Africa as a whole has transformed its reputation for violent government ousters in recent years after notching up around 80 successful coups and many more abortive attempts between the 1950s and 2004.

There have only been a handful of military seizures in the last five years compared to the heyday of military takeovers in the 1960s. In the mid-70s around half of African countries had military governments. Since then, democracy has gradually made ground and attempts to seize power are strongly frowned upon.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and once notorious for military government, suffered its last coup in 1993. 

The African Union condemned the Mauritania coup within hours on Wednesday, demanding that constitutional rule be restored. The AU was established in 2002 to replace the Organisation of African Unity which was discredited by its tendency to turn a blind eye to violence and tyrannical government in its member states. The AU has strongly condemned previous attempts to overthrow legitimate governments by force and threatened to “excommunicate” rebels who came close to overthrowing the Chadian government last February before being repulsed by forces loyal to President Idriss Deby. But despite the AU’s strong rhetoric, African diplomacy has generally had little success in reversing coups. 

Most African governments are now anxious to attract booming foreign investment on the continent and nervous that coups or crises like that in Zimbabwe, whose economy has collapsed, will frighten off overseas investors.

Razia Khan, Chief Africa Economist at Standard Chartered Bank, warned that ripples from Mauritania’s coup could spread wider.

“This news will come as a setback to perceptions of improved governance (in Mauritania). It should also result in some focus on the political stability of Africa’s new oil economies, more broadly. A timely reminder of what is at stake and the risks — not favourable for investor sentiment.”

What do you think? Will Mauritania’s coup damage the economies and prospects of other African countries?. Should the AU take muscular action to reverse the military takeover?

Hezbollah literally rolled out the red carpet to welcome home five prisoners released by Israel in a U.N.-mediated exchange deal. Securing the release of the last five Lebanese held by Israel was a major triumph for the group, which in turn handed over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers captured in a 2006 raid into Israel.

Having achieved a long-held goal, Hezbollah is holding up the exchange as further evidence that its uncompromising, armed approach to dealing with Israel brings results, directly challenging the policies of Arab leaders who have engaged in negotiations or signed peace treaties with the Jewish state. The New York Times called the prisoners’ homecoming a triumph.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, visibly delighted by the prisoner release, addressed the issue during a rare public appearance. He saluted “the true identity of the peoples of our region … the identity of resistance”.

Broadcast into homes across the Arab world by satellite stations, Nasrallah’s rhetoric resonates with viewers who have seen few results from years of talks over the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Spoken by a man widely recognised as the Arab world’s most effective orator, the rhetoric is a challenge to states such as Jordan and Egypt. Both are ruled by U.S.-allied governments that have made peace with Israel and are concerned by the rising
influence of Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor.

But while Hezbollah’s charismatic leader still wins admiration across the Arab world, his Shi’ite group no longer enjoys the broad respect it once did in fractious Lebanon.

Nearly two years of political conflict with other Lebanese, including the country’s main Sunni leader, have opened deep sectarian wounds. Hezbollah’s brief takeover of Beirut in May increased the concerns of Lebanese critics who were already suspicious of the group’s vast arsenal.

Hezbollah is riding high in its conflict with Israel. It is now seeking reconciliation with Lebanese adversaries to avoid more conflict at home.