BERLIN, March 20 (UPI) -- Germany's military is increasingly active in international peacekeeping missions, yet the country's military ombudsman in a report presented Tuesday said German soldiers were underpaid and had to endure run-down barracks.
Reinhold Robbe, the ombudsman in parliament for the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces, said Tuesday in Berlin at the presentation of his yearly report that German military barracks were overfilled and in a terrible condition.
While eastern German barracks have been consistently updated, Robbe and most soldiers claim that the Bundeswehr has neglected the barracks located in western Germany. There, housing conditions were "unacceptable and in some cases even scandalous," Robbe said.
During an unannounced visit to western German barracks, Robbe said he encountered ceilings close to collapse, mold in the soldiers' sleeping rooms and sanitation facilities that "one should only enter with rubber boots."
"Soldiers must be housed in human conditions," he said, adding that the terrible conditions had sparked frustration with Germany's soldiers.
Several German soldiers who in 2006 took part in the country's contribution to the European Union-led election stability mission in the Republic of Congo filed complaints about poor camp conditions in Africa. The German military partly outsourced the camp's setup, and Robbe said the contracted company was clearly over-challenged. Camp conditions in the Congo were "unacceptable," Robbe wrote in his report.
The document comes as the Bundeswehr is undergoing a transformation process to become an army focused on multinational conflict prevention and crisis management operations. Response forces, stabilization forces and support forces are created so that the Bundeswehr is able to respond to the new security challenges together with its international partners, mainly in NATO and the EU.
According to Germany's Defense Ministry, roughly 8,200 soldiers are serving in missions in Afghanistan, Lebanon, Bosnia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Georgia, Kosovo and Sudan, making Germany one of the top contributors to international missions.
In Afghanistan, Germany has stationed nearly 3,000 soldiers with the International Security Assistance Force. Complying with a U.N.-request, Berlin earlier this month decided to send eight Panavia Tornado reconnaissance jets and an additional 500 troops to the country.
Yet even in Afghanistan, where the security situation has dramatically worsened over the past six to eight months, German soldiers are not sufficiently equipped, Robbe found.
Soldiers told Robbe that they lack armored vehicles and in some cases even a timely supply of ammunition.
"Such equipment deficits that have an immediate impact on the security of our soldiers can't be tolerated," Robbe wrote.
Part of the German soldiers' frustration is also rooted in low salaries, Robbe concluded.
"Two-thirds of them belong to the lower-income groups," he told a German public broadcaster ARD Tuesday morning.
German Defense Ministry officials Tuesday said plans are already under way to modernize the western German military barracks, and a raise for general conscripts is also planned.
The report comes a day after a group of German military trainers went on trial for their rough treatment of recruits during an exercise intended to prepare soldiers in case of a hostile kidnapping. Some 18 trainers are accused of abusing their recruits at a northern German military base, and the trial is expected to last for at least another month.
Yet Robbe said in his report that the Coesfeld methods were an exception in the German army.
"In view of the information I've been given since, I can say that the armed forces have definitely learned from this incident," he told ARD.
Some soldiers haven't learned much, however, as the number of right-wing extremist incidents within the German armed forces has remained stable compared to the previous year.
In 2005 Germany's armed forces recorded 147 cases of right-wing extremism or hostility to foreigners in its ranks, Robbe's report said. Some 70 percent of the incidents involved conscripts, the rest regular soldiers, with the vast majority of incidents involving Hitler salutes or Nazi chants. Robbe said in many cases the soldiers acted under the influence of alcohol and later regretted their actions. Disciplinary proceedings were launched in all cases, but it was impossible entirely to stop undesirable developments in society from spilling over into the military, he added.
"Right-wing extremism and xenophobia strain the inner cohesion of our troops and are inconsistent with the Bundeswehr's mission," Robbe wrote. "The Bundeswehr thus will have to combine all efforts to push back these terrible influences."
