In a letter to the editor of Frankfurt-on-Main's F.A.Z. newspaper a German Army colonel is summing up his Afghanistan experience...
"Regarding the Afghanistan report in the F.A.Z. of August 24, and in particular the report on the evacuation of local staffers plus their families: Thank you very much for the detailed reporting on the events in Afghanistan, especially on the efforts to fly out local forces and their dependents.
I too am one of the Bundeswehr soldiers who was deployed in Afghanistan. In 2005-2006 with the rank of colonel I was the commander of 'Camp Warehouse' in Kabul, the largest international camp at the time, with about 2,400 soldiers from more than 20 nations, in the 9th and early 10th German contingent. As far as local forces are concerned, I have a different approach than the one usually propagated in the media. At Camp Warehouse, there were some local support staff. These young men (there were even some Afghan women at 'Radio Andernach') knew exactly the situation in the surrounding society.
Selflessness was the last thing that drove these people to work for us. These romantic-idealizing ideas are unknown there or are met with complete incomprehension. Life there is much too hard to concern yourself with drivel customary to prosperous countries.
Our local forces were paid a princely wage by Afghan standards, treated well, and self-evidently participated in our excellent lunches. They were usually given clothes, shoes by the soldiers of the German contingent when they changed contingents. I issued dozens of certificates so that these gifts were not taken from them when they were checked at the guard post.
So it was worth working for us. Of course, this was also known to their surroundings. If they belonged to strong families, tribes, clans, these also benefited and protected these people. It's important to know that Afghans define themselves exclusively by their families or tribal affiliations, individualism is unknown. If they belonged to weaker groups, they had to pay protection money to avoid being killed. In addition, intelligence had to be provided by them. The Taliban or similar groups were thus informed in detail about our numbers, equipment, and possibly even our intentions.
The officers who assisted me in running the camp, were instructed accordingly and warned to be careful when passing on information. I am not surprised that all of the local staff now want to come to us, after all they had gained a fairly accurate insight into our standard of living.
Inwardly these people despise us, which of course they will never admit for understandable reasons. After all, they want to reach the prosperity magnet that is Germany. I do not want to deny that there may be exceptions but I have not encountered any. Perhaps I was blind, howeve, I am in good company when I look at the reports on the collapse of the political order in Afghanistan promoted by the Western countries."
F.A.Z.
Dr. Thomas Sarholz, Colonel (ret.), Andernach
A sober statement issued by a professional who had years to see the situation in Afghanistan for himself.
In Germany the conflict situation regarding the fate of the 'Ortskräfte' (local staffers) is rather mixed.
Right-wingers want to 'save' the former helpers as a matter of national pride, thinking that they were venerating the Germans because of their democracy and their 'selflessness' with which they tried to pacify the helpless and poor country.
Interestingly, they have the left-wingers on their side just for different reasons.'
The Left are jumping at the chance to attract as much Afghans to Germany as possible, giving them the chance to make Germany even more diverse while being able to change their genders and develop a sense of entitlement to various public financial sources.
Members of the ruling government coalition are still busying themselves with deflecting the blame that they should have known the gravity of the Afghan situation earlier and that German transport planes should have arrived at Kabul earlier and the like.
They are not discussing the subject of 'Afghan protection seekers' as yet because they don't want to rock the boat just before the national elections in four weeks time...
Just enter the code word "Biden with love" to receive your 99% off of purchased price.
