Spy allegations

According to media reports, three Germans were briefly arrested in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Saturday, as they had been suspected of being agents with Germany's intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

Police official Mian Saeed told German press agency dpa the three, one of whom is a colonel, had been arrested when they failed to provide police with information on their legal status - foreigners require special visas for certain areas of Pakistan and according to German online newsmagazine Der Spiegel, the three did not have such visas.

Saeed also said: "They were part of an unauthorized liaison office of the German embassy," who had been working in a secret office, which has now been sealed off by the police.

An unnamed intelligence official told dpa the German nationals were in fact intelligence agents posing as aid workers with the German international development agency GIZ.

GIZ told Deutsche Welle the three were not employees of the agency and that the vehicle and business cards they were using - reportedly with the GIZ logo - had not been supplied by the development organization.

Germans 'not detained'

The German Foreign Ministry has confirmed an incident did occur in Peshawar involving three people attached to the German embassy in Islamabad, and that they had left Peshawar at the request of Pakistani authorities. The Foreign Ministry also told Deutsche Welle in a statement that the case was being investigated and that, contrary to media reports, there had been no arrests: "Various reports of an arrest cannot be confirmed. No one was detained."

Afghanistan expert with the German think tank SWP, Nils Wörmer, believes the reports that the three had been working under cover for the BND sounds plausible but "one can only speculate on what exactly they were doing there."

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistani general, who now works as a political and defense analyst, said news that three Germans had been arrested on the weekend came to him as a surprise. "If it was not in the knowledge of the (Pakistani intelligence) ISI that they were working there, then obviously it creates a serious problem in the sense that they were doing something similar to what the Americans have been doing."

Taliban negotiations

Members of the Western coalition have been working hard to set up peace negotiations with the Taliban before NATO forces withdraw from war-torn Afghanistan in 2014. An office was agreed to be set up in Doha for such purposes at the beginning of the New Year and US envoy Marc Grossmann made a trip to Kabul to speak with President Karzai on preliminary Taliban negotiations at the end of last week.

Masood believes Saturday's incident may be related: "For all you know, they may be working towards having some contacts with the Taliban in Afghanistan because they think that maybe they have interlocutors in Pakistan who would be then communicating with them."

But if "countries in Europe or other places want to have contact with them (the Taliban), surely they can have those contacts, provided the host country, which is Pakistan in this case, also is aware of these contacts," Masood said.

Pakistan's interests

If the three Germans really were working for the German intelligence agency, it might possibly harm ties with Pakistan; "It is not in Pakistan's interest that there be an office set up in some Arabic country, for example like the one in Doha, for talks between the US and the Taliban. And it is definitely not in Pakistan's interest that European countries have undercover agents preparing talks in their own territory," said Wörmer.

Pakistan has been implementing measures to flex its muscle since a botched NATO attack which accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers in November last year and the US clandestine operation that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden seven months earlier. One of those measures has been to block the Afghan border to NATO convoys. It also boycotted the Bonn Conference on Afghanistan in December. Cracking down on possible foreign agents might be a further measure.

One reason is that Islamabad wants to stake its claim in peace talks with the Taliban. "The Pakistanis claim the right to be at the negotiating table," says Wörmer. "As the Pakistani Chief of Staff General Kayani put it, 'Pakistan commands over strategic depth in Afghanistan.' And this strategic depth can only be maintained if Afghanistan's future is mapped out to Pakistan's interests."

Whether or not the peace talks - with or without Pakistan - will be effective, has yet to be seen. What Germany can do is, according to Wörmer, continue to offer support and a platform for dialogue, as "German influence is just as limited as that of other Western nations."

Author: Sarah Berning
Editor: Darren Mara