Inconclusive probe
October 28, 2011
A committee of parliamentarians from Germany's main political parties has completed its investigation into a German-ordered airstrike in Afghanistan that killed at least 91 people - many of them civilians. The results are inconclusive, and arguably provide greater insight into political divisions over Germany's presence in Afghanistan than into the attack itself.
The investigators' work lasted for two years, they leafed through official documents, talked to witnesses, and often bickered late into the night.
They were trying to reconstruct a September 2009 decision by Georg Klein, the colonel in command of the German mission in Afghanistan at the time, to order an airstrike on two fuel tankers that had been hijacked by the Taliban. Residents from surrounding villages, however, had flocked to the tankers - apparently hoping to siphon off free fuel. Many of them were killed in the ensuing fireball. The German military believes that 91 people were killed and 11 injured, other official estimates are higher.
Grainy footage of the attack was circulated and published, causing outrage in a country that is constitutionally bound to only participate militarily in peacekeeping missions or in self-defense. The images' impact spread far beyond the German military, the Bundeswehr, and had a profound effect on German politics. Ultimately, the fallout from the attack unseated German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung and top general Wolfgang Schneiderhahn - as well as prompting the parliamentary inquiry.
Two years, few answers
The parliamentarians came together 79 times to collate their findings, they interviewed 41 witnesses - including Chancellor Angela Merkel - and reviewed 339 official files. They sought to answer some key questions: what motivated Colonel Klein to give the order? Why did some politicans and military representatives seek to cover up or downplay the events that night in Kunduz? What lessons should the Bundeswehr learn from its mistakes?
The investigators could not agree on answers to these issues. Those from the current Christian Democrat and Free Democrat coalition concluded that Colonel Klein could not be held accountable, that he did what he thought was right according the information that was available at the time. Opposition politicians also say that the colonel should not be blamed, but they do believe his decision to call in the strike was wrong. "Clearly, a string of mistakes were made," Social Democrat Rainer Arnold said of the attack.
The opposition argue that the general - who says he knew nothing of the civilian presence when he called in the strike - should have waited for more information and stuck to NATO's guidelines for such interventions.
"The threat that was supposedly posed did not really exist," Inge Höger of the Left Party said. Kelin and his superiors had justified the attack by saying that the tankers might have been used as a weapon against a nearby Bundeswehr base. The Green and Left parties both argue that the attack contravened human rights laws.
A political inquiry, not a military one
Party politics often seemed to eclipse the search for answers in this inquiry. Both sides lamented each other's cooperation and participation in the investigations, with the Greens' Omid Nouripour describing cooperation with politicians from the ruling parties as "a catastrophe."
The opposition ranks argued that the ruling powers had no interest in uncovering the truth, for fear that doing so might portray their leaders in a bad light. Coalition parliamentarians, on the other hand, accused the opposition of trying to abuse the incident to score political points. They said the opposition wanted to use the event to tarnish the reputation of the Christian Democrats' defense minister after Franz Josef Jung.
Then rising star Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg - often tipped as a chancellor of the future - was "grilled" by the committee for his contradictory statements on the attack, they say. In March 2011, Guttenberg was forced to resign, albeit for entirely different reasons.
Author: Nina Werkhäuser / msh
Editor: Nicole Goebel