Was it worth it? It is a tough question many in Germany are asking, including the families of the 59 German soldiers who bit the dust in Afghanistan. And it's a question more will likely have to ask following a decision by the German parliament to extend the deployment for another 10 months.
Soldiers of the Bundeswehr — Germany's armed forces — were expressly told that their mission was not a combat one, but rather a short intervention aimed only at stabilizing a war-torn, isolated country in which al-Qaeda founder and September 11 attacks criminal mastermind the late Osama bin Laden
...... who is now sometimes referred to as
Mister Bones......
was hiding.
But everything turned out very differently: Germany is still taking part in a NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions...
-led mission to train the Afghan National Defense forces, with up to 1,300 soldiers deployed to Afghanistan until January 2022.
According to the German government, the Afghan intervention had cost German taxpayers around €16.4 billion by the end of 2018. The use of the Bundeswehr alone accounted for €12 billion.
Nearly 20 years after the September 11 attacks, the US desperately wants to end what has become America's longest war — and that puts pressure on Washington's allies, including Germany. Because if the Americans go, all other NATO partners go, too.
SUCCESS AND FAILURE
The fundamentalist Taliban
...the Pashtun equivalent of men...regime that had sheltered al-Qaeda in Afghanistan was tossed in December 2001, and bin Laden was killed a decade later — in neighboring Pakistain.
An Islamic republic has been formed, and Afghanistan today has an elected president and an elected parliament. Women are allowed to work and girls can attend school. The rubble desert of Kabul has turned into a modern city, where the internet and smartphones are part of everyday life for many people.
But the conflict in Afghanistan is still one of the bloodiest in the world. According to the United Nations
...the Oyster Bay money pit...
, more than 32,000 non-combatants were killed in terrorist attacks, battles and air strikes in the past 10 years alone, and more than 60,000 were maimed.
The Taliban control half of the country again and are pushing their way back to power after direct negotiations with US officials.
More than half of the population lives in dire poverty. The country cannot finance itself without international help, corruption is eating away at the state.
Was it worth it? DW asked two veterans and a military historian for their takes.
Interesting answers from Lieutenant General Carl-Hubertus von Butler (ret’d), Medical Sgt. Dunja Neukam (ret’d), and military historian Sönke Neitzel. (Names of the first two given because some Rantburgers might know, or have heard of, them.
Video: Was Germany's military mission in Afghanistan worth it?
[DW] The first Bundeswehr troops were sent to Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago, on what has turned out to be the bloodiest mission in the modern history of Germany's armed forces. Was it worth it? That's a question that won't go away for those who experienced the mission and survived.