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The British and the Germans are in a spat about helicopter air support in Afghanistan. According to the British, German helicopters refused to continue supporting a combined British and Afghan formation in combat against the Taliban because... it was getting dark.
"For us ze war is over by teatime, ja," ran the headline in the Nov. 18 edition of the (London) Sunday Times. The British weekly accused the Germans of having abandoned their NATO allies in an offensive against the Taliban. Apparently, Bundeswehr medical evacuation helicopters pulled out in the middle of the battle because they needed to be back on home base by sundown. The other NATO forces were thus forced to retreat as well, the newspaper said."We were attacking the bad guys, then at three or four o'clock the helicopters are leaving," a Norwegian officer told the Sunday Times. "We had to go back to base. We should have had Norwegian helicopters. At least they can fly at night."Abandoned by their Western allies, some 600 Afghan soldiers were also forced to retreat until a convoy of U.S. Humvees arrived the next day to reinforce them.This isn't the first time that the Germans have been accused of being evasive in Afghanistan. The Norwegians and Canadians have made similar allegations at different times. The Bundeswehr (the German Army) has denied some of the allegations while allowing that German soldiers generally aren't permitted to patrol more than two hours from emergency medical facilities. There are some interesting things going on here. Public opposition to the war runs pretty high in Germany, which is in part a consequence of U.S. policy, both in terms of the generally inadequate support given to the Afghanistan operations and because of the invasion of Iraq. So, the German government is in a bit of a difficult position regarding the entire deployment; significant losses might make it hard for Germany to continue. At the same time I don't have too much sympathy for the Germans; as part of NATO they agreed to participate in this operation, they have significant excess military capacity, and they're letting other countries (like Norway, the UK, and Canada) bear the brunt of the war. It's fair to say that this kind of conflict is endemic to coalition warfare. Coalitions are great in terms of aggregating capability (more is better) and for creating political legitimacy, but they often lead to burden-shedding and efforts to avoid responsibility. In this case it's probably better to have the Germans there (even if there performance is lacking), but friction does make a coalition less than the sum of its parts. Via Danger Room.--Robert Farley
