What Germany left behind:
The Slow Collapse of North Afghanistan
Six months ago, Germany’s military withdrew from Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Since then, regional security has eroded and many of those left behind feel abandoned. Even development work seems to have come to a halt.
Captain Faridoon Hakimi is sitting next to an enormous barbecue once used by the Germans to grill sausage, munching on an almond and squinting. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and the midday sun is blazing down onto the former German military camp in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. Next to him stands a solitary sign in the German language indicating the location of a certain Herr Baumlade’s office.
ANZEIGE
It has been six months since Hakimi’s friends and allies from Germany left the camp. All of the parking slots for helicopters and armored vehicles are empty. The white blimp, which once held cameras aloft in order to monitor the camp’s immediate surroundings, no longer floats in the sky above.”We don’t need reconnaissance,” says Hakimi, 32, the new camp commander who oversees the Afghan National Army troops stationed there. “We have our eyes.” The blimp, he says smiling, was a waste of money anyway. Hakimi wears a carefully trimmed beard — and rubber sandals.
His eyes shift to the horizon where the mountains are slowly turning green, indicating spring’s approach. Hakimi knows that the green also means the Taliban will soon be back.
For 10 years, Germany was responsible for the province of Kunduz as part of its role in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). It was the first real war the Bundeswehr, as Germany’s military is known, participated in, and Berlin’s aims were lofty indeed. German development experts were to help extend rights to women, democracy was to be fostered and the economy was to grow significantly. Billions of euros were made available — and the blood of German soldiers was spilled. Kunduz was a place of great sacrifice.
Until Oct. 6, 2013. On that day, Germany handed over the camp to Afghanistan.
‘Too Soon’
“They ran away,” croaks the deputy police chief for the Kunduz province in his office and gestures dismissively. “They simply ran away. It was too soon.”
“It was too soon. It was like an escape.” One can hear almost exactly the same thing from the mouths of German soldiers, some of whom even compare the Bundeswehr’s departure with that of the Americans from Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War. “If there is one thing the Bundeswehr is really good at, it’s retreating,” is a sentiment that can often be heard in the government quarter in Berlin these days.
What, though, did the Germans really manage to accomplish in Kunduz and what did the 25 Germans killed in the region die for? What did all the money buy? What remains of the mission? Berlin would rather not provide an answer to these questions: A complete evaluation of the Afghanistan engagement is not on the agenda.
But there are answers to be found in the Kunduz Province itself. The closer one gets to the former German camp, the emptier the roads become. There are no trees to block one’s view of the far-away horizon; occasionally, a burned out car or oil drum lies on the shoulder of the road. The pizzeria once frequented by the Germans has closed its doors. A few uniformed soldiers are rolling out barbed wire at the camp’s entrance. “We are here to guard the buildings,” says Said Muyer, 25, of the Afghan police. He says he is essentially in charge, adding that the real commander hardly ever makes an appearance.
The road passes by empty guard houses and torn open sandbags on the way into a ghost town of broad roads, vacant barracks and open ground where helicopters once took off and landed. It seems like a settlement of aliens who stayed for a time but then left after realizing that the planet was inhospitable — despite the fitness studios, bars and the big German barbecue.
Some 2,000 soldiers were once stationed in the camp, but there are few relics of their presence among the ruins: an aluminum can that once contained processed meat, packages of “Exotic” drink mix and a few slices of whole-grain bread.
“They only left garbage behind,” says Muyer, kicking a container of potato goulash. “We don’t eat stuff like that.” He rattles the door leading into the mess hall, inside of which the tables and chairs are neatly stacked. “Everything is locked up,” he says. Muyer says that the refrigerators were already gone by the time he arrived, sold in the town market.
Escape to Germany
Muyer and a few dozen others have been living in three of the roughly 50 buildings in the camp, originally built by Berlin at a cost of some €126 million. Where, though, is the police training center mentioned in a January progress report produced by the Foreign Ministry? Muyer looks confused and shakes his head saying it’s the first time he’s heard of it. A few of his men are playing volleyball while others are shelling beans for dinner. One wants to know the best way to escape to Germany.
The walls in a building called “Dresden” are badly cracked while water drips through the roof in “Frankfurt.” “We aren’t plumbers,” Muyer says.
In the middle of this declining ghost town, the army commander Hakimi is fighting — in his rubber sandals — to maintain a semblance of order and normality. He and his men are neighbors to Muyer and the police contingent, but the small area under Hakimi’s control is separated by a wall. And it looks as if Hakimi is trying to maintain a mini-Germany in defiance of the surrounding decay. There is no garbage to be seen, no potholes and even the cedar trees lining the roads are still green. “Twice a week, every soldier has to muster and help clean up,” Hakimi says, a convention he introduced. Hakimi also bought two solar panels to make up for the frequent power outages that plague the camp now that it is reliant on the Kunduz grid after the Germans removed their generators.
The commander rhapsodizes about his time serving along
Categories: Germany