Word: afghanistan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bild demanded to know Thursday in a story focused on the country's employment minister Franz Josef Jung and what details he knew and when, in his former job as defense minister, about the controversial air strike, called in by German forces, on two hijacked tanker trucks in northern Afghanistan on Sept...
...Bild, however, the Bundeswehr (as Germany's Federal Defense Force is called) leadership and the ministry had known of civilian victims early on. Those reports were withheld from prosecutors, and also, apparently, from Jung's successor as defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. (See pictures of the battle in Afghanistan's Kunar Province...
...warning to those who had commandeered the trucks by flying low across the scene was not taken up, Bild said in its commentary to the video. That revelation adds weight to criticism of the attack made at the time by the commander of American and international forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who had previously stressed the paramount aim of avoiding civilian casualties in Afghanistan...
...revelations come at a critical time. President Obama is due to reveal his new Afghanistan strategy in the next few days. If, as suspected, the U.S. deploys additional troops it's also likely to repeat calls for its allies to do likewise. But in Germany, where the Afghanistan mission is deeply unpopular, this incident and the alleged cover-up have raised fresh doubts about whether Germany should be there at all. Reflecting the mood, zu Guttenberg urged parliament to start "thinking the Afghanistan mission from its end," making the case for better-defined goals and an exit strategy. "There...
...uproar in parliament and in the media overshadowed a visit to Berlin by the General Secretary of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who was in town to make the case for increased efforts by European allies in Afghanistan. Chancellor Angela Merkel, at a press conference with Rasmussen, criticized the handling of the affair, saying: "If we want trust, we also have to have full transparency." Rasmussen pleaded that it was of the "utmost importance that an American announcement of an increased troop number in Afghanistan is followed by additional troop contributions from other allies." But that's likely to fall...