German debate over Afghanistan - lessons for Canada?
For Chancellor Angela Merkel and her conservative allies, the Bundeswehr’s bloody, seemingly open-ended Afghan engagement is a political time bomb that could go off in the run-up to the next federal elections, to be held by 2009.
So far, only the post-Communist Left Party is calling for a pullout. But left-wing MPs from the Social Democratic Party and even a growing number of MPs from their conservative Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union coalition partners, under strong pressure from constituents, are increasingly skeptical of the Afghan mission. Given this highly charged domestic political context, international demands that German troops deploy beyond the “safe” parts of northern Afghanistan to support terrorist-hunting operations in the south are not only misplaced but also play into the hands of those who want a swift German pullout.
