Germany At War? They're Coming to Grips WIth It...

As the insurgency spreads to their area, German troops are finding themselves actually firing shots in anger.

German troops are fighting the first pitched battles witnessed by the Bundeswehr since 1945 in the face of a growing Taleban insurgency in the north of Afghanistan.

Security has deteriorated in areas such as Badghis province in the northwest, Kunduz, Baghlan and some parts of Takhar and Badakhshan provinces.

In April there was heavy fighting in Kunduz province during Operation Towheed, in which seven German soldiers were killed. Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the German Defence Minister, gave a warning last week of “new and greater risks” that German forces must bear. Recent opinion polls have put German public opposition to the country’s 5,000-strong Afghan deployment at 62 per cent.

A spokesman for the German forces in Kunduz told The Times this weekend: “It was intensive fighting in April. The situation is not stable and not secure. It has been deteriorating for more than a year.”

Since the Bundeswehr entered Afghanistan in 2002, 39 soldiers have been killed. The contingent is the third-biggest after the US and British forces.

In a speech last month the Chancellor, Angela Merkel, tried to drum up support for the military mission in Afghanistan in an uphill battle against growing public resistance. She told the Bundestag that German troops will try to start handing over some responsibility to Afghan authorities in 2011 but added that the country’s soldiers will stay as long as necessary. When German troops first deployed in Afghanistan in 2002 the north was seen as the safest part of the country and Berlin has resisted Nato’s requests to send its soldiers to more volatile regions.

What is alarming for Western commanders and the Afghan Government are signs that the northern insurgency is gaining a hold outside the Pashtun ethnic community. Pashtuns are a minority in the Tajik-dominated north.

General Stanley McChrystal, the Nato commander, is to send 5,000 extra US troops under German command to the north by September and announced last week that 56 helicopters would be sent to the area. Speaking in Germany, General McChrystal warned ten days ago: “The situation in the north will become dangerous, in parts very dangerous.”

Kunduz has become a key battleground since Nato said that it would open a resupply route running from Latvia via Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to the northern border. At the end of 2009, with government authority in Kunduz on the verge of collapse, the Afghan Government armed local militias who have, in some areas, pushed back the Taleban.

By: Brant