BERLIN, March 8 (UPI) -- Germany's Parliament Friday decides on a controversial mission of German reconnaissance jets in Afghanistan, where a NATO spring offensive aims to drive back the Taliban.
The German government agreed last month to send eight Panavia Tornado reconnaissance planes -- six in constant flying, with two back-up planes -- and roughly 500 additional soldiers to Afghanistan to aid the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. The Tornados are tasked with identifying potential targets for ISAF and the U.S.-led Operation Enduring Freedom, and will relay back to mission control highly detailed photos of the ground in Afghanistan. The jets could fly their first missions as early as mid-April, but as Germany's lawmakers have to sign off on any military move the country makes, the deployment first has to be voted on Friday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung have advertised the mission at every possible venue, saying it was vital that Germany helps NATO in securing Afghanistan, an overall mission that must not fail.
While no one in Germany expects the vote to be negative, the mission has come under fire from several opposition politicians who fear the focus of NATO's security mission in Afghanistan is turning from civil reconstruction efforts to mainly military operations.
Indeed, ISAF on Tuesday launched "Operation Achilles," an offensive comprised of more than 4,500 NATO troops and 1,000 Afghan soldiers countering a threatened spring offensive by the Taliban.
Norman Paech, an international law expert from the far-left Left Party, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper in an interview that Operation Achilles and the Tornado mission, which will cost Berlin an estimated $45 million, documents the beginning of a war situation.
"We fear that an increasing militarization of the conflict through the Tornado mission and the offensive destabilizes the country even more, and throws it into Iraq-like conditions," he said.
The Left Party is for a quick pull-out from Afghanistan, a view that was backed Thursday by Tom Koenigs, the United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan, who warned in an interview with German ARD radio that the window for foreign troops in Afghanistan is closing.
The massive presence of NATO troops will not be sustainable "for us nor the Afghans," he said. "First of all they can do it better, second they can do it cheaper and third it will be more acceptable."
Germany currently has around 3,000 soldiers stationed with ISAF, but they are confined to relatively peaceful northern Afghanistan. Germany has led the Provincial Reconstruction Teams in the north, and has been very successful in building up infrastructure, schools and other municipal institutions.
Nevertheless, Germany has in the past come under fire from NATO officials for confining their troops to the north while the death toll in the south is rising. In light of the expected spring offensive of the Taliban, the Tornados are a much-needed support for the U.S., Canadian, Dutch and other soldiers fighting in the south.
Observers say the German government is eager to prove to its allies that it wants to provide additional aid in Afghanistan. The deployment of reconnaissance planes is seen as a relatively safe way to do so, at least when it comes to human casualties.
While the Tornado planes -- also used by the British Royal Air Force in Iraq -- are able to carry laser-guided bombs and air-to-air missiles, the mandate explicitly cancels out German fighting missions. Nevertheless, the mission is no walk in the park: German pilots should be aware of the danger from Man-Portable Air Defence Systems, or MANPADS, like ground-to-air Stinger rockets a single Taliban warrior can shoulder-fire. These rockets can hit aircraft at a range of up to 15,700 feet and at altitudes between 600 and 12,500 feet.
The Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, had to confirm a media report that the Germans don't have the capacity to rescue their own pilots in case they are shot down -- they lack the necessary helicopters. In an emergency, U.S., British or Canadian troops would have to embark on a rescue mission.
While some are worried about the well-being of the German soldiers in Afghanistan, others fear that in the wake of beefing up the Afghanistan engagement, Germans at home will increasingly move into the gridlock of Islamist terrorism.
Heinz Fromm, head of Germany's Verfassungsschutz, a domestic intelligence agency, told online daily Netzeitung in an interview Thursday that he had no reason to believe the Tornado mission would increase the terror threat in Germany. But he added that with or without deploying the reconnaissance planes, the danger of a terrorist attack in Germany remained "considerable."
