My Word Is My Bond

Koenigs: We can’t cave in to the terrorist threat. That would be the worst thing you could do to the Afghans and to the aid workers who want to continue working there. You have to face the challenge and vigorously stay on course. There is no other way to bring the situation under control. And one must not forget: The Afghan people have asked us to support them. After all, they suffer most from the terror of the Taliban. A troop withdrawal would very much disappoint Afghans, just as the international community disappointed them once before, in 1989 [following the withdrawl of the Soviet occupying force, when the international community left the country] the suffering multiplied afterwards. It would be similar today. The Afghan people have suffered such a fate before. We have promised them we would support the reconstruction of their country and the restoration of democracy. Most Afghan people would like to see more, rather than fewer, Western troops in their country in order to improve security. The Americans have just contributed more troops. The British have also provided more troops. And there is strong pressure on other countries.

This comes courtesy of UN Special Representative for Afghanistan Tom Koenigs in an interview with Der Spiegel. He not-so-gently chides the Germans for very seriously pondering the withdrawal of the barely-deployed Bundeswehr. Are the commitments they made five years ago somehow invalidated by it not being easy? The U.S. bears a lot of criticism in this regard, as well—Bush’s new Executive Order giving him the right to seize anyone’s property who interferes in “stabilizing” Iraq curiously didn’t mention Afghanistan, almost as if he doesn’t care about it. This comes after he siphoned troops away from Afghanistan for the surge thing in Baghdad. It’s like they both—Germany and the U.S.—want to click their heels three times and magically turn Afghanistan into the next Utah, or something.

My less subtle criticism of Germany’s fecklessness in Afghanistan can be found here, here, here, and here.

This post was written by...

Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.

Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust

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