BERLIN, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- As the European Union prepares an anti-piracy mission in Somali waters, an absurd debate is being waged among Germany's politicians as to what German military vessels can and cannot do when encountering pirates.
The F212 Karlsruhe, a 143-yard-long frigate of the German navy, has dealt with pirates three times over the past 10 days. On its way from the Persian Gulf to Egypt, the frigate was cruising in the Gulf of Aden, near Somalia, when it received an SOS call first from an Ethiopian freight ship, then from an Egyptian and finally from a British tanker. In all three cases, heavily armed pirates in small motorboats were attempting to seize the ships.
The captain of the Karlsruhe each time dispatched an MK 88A Sea Lynx helicopter equipped with torpedoes, air-to-surface missiles and machine guns. Upon arrival of the helicopter, the motorboats fled, the German navy said in a statement.
Over the past months the number of pirate attacks in the Gulf of Aden, an area of 1 million square miles bordered by Somalia and Yemen, has increased dramatically. This past weekend pirates hijacked a Saudi supertanker carrying some 2 million barrels of oil valued at more than $100 million. Saudi officials are currently in negotiations with the pirates over the release of the ship and its crew of 25.
The EU just decided to begin an anti-piracy naval mission, which is due to start operating on Dec. 8. Several nations have signaled their willingness to contribute to the mission, including Germany, which would then dispatch the Karlsruhe.
Yet in Berlin, a debate is being waged over how a mandate for such a mission should look. So far, a German military ship can confront pirates only while they are attacking another vessel; it is not legally empowered to pursue fleeing pirates. The Karlsruhe had to let the pirates go once they started to speed away -- an "absolutely unreal situation that frustrates" Germany's soldiers, Bernhard Gertz, the head of the Bundeswehr Association, the German soldier interest group, said Thursday in Berlin.
German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung is willing to dispatch the Karlsruhe to the EU mission, yet internal quarrels between his Defense Ministry and the Foreign, Interior and Justice ministries is blocking any progress.
"It's Absurdistan here in Germany," Gertz said of the quarrel, which is centered on the question of how much policing German armed forces should be entitled to do. The German Constitution, written in 1949, established a strict separation between police and military, because the Nazis had blurred that separation, leading to political oppression by the military and a ruthless police state.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives would like to see a robust mandate that enables German soldiers to not only fight but also pursue and arrest pirates; the center-left Social Democrats, their government coalition partner, argue that only federal police could do that.
Germany's federal police are hardly able to fight pirates off the coast of Somalia, however, and the Social Democrats realize that.
They fear, however, that the conservatives will use the anti-piracy mandate to push through a change of the constitution to hand German soldiers additional security powers inside Germany. One potential security job the German armed forces could take over is fighting terrorists, which domestically is the task of the federal police. (Germany hasn't experienced a successful terrorist attack so far, but police have foiled several planned attacks.)
The military can only help to fight terrorists through an official request from the police, but only by using police weapons. In reality, this means that when a speedboat full of terrorists attacks a German passenger ship in Hamburg harbor, a Navy frigate cruising nearby can interrupt after a police request, using pistols and machine pistols only, "but not machine guns or missiles, because these are military weapons," Gertz said, adding that this was an "absolutely unsatisfying" legal situation.
Much of this absurd debate is now spilling into the preparation of Germany's contribution to the EU's anti-piracy mission.
Observers hope that the legal bickering is resolved quickly, as any German contribution to an international mission has to be signed off by the country's parliamentarians -- and they also are taking their time.
Gertz, who in his remarks Wednesday was highly critical of the German domestic bickering, said he hopes for a decision to be made "before Christmas."
