German Chancellor Angela Merkel paid a visit to northern Afghanistan Friday and vowed to continue military aid past 2014 provided Kabul continued to develop its democratic institutions. A senior Afghan official however said the chancellor showed a lack of respect for Kabul by turning up without advance warning.
In her visit, Merkel paid her respects to a German special-services soldier who was killed during a battle Saturday with Taliban rebels, the first German fatality in Afghanistan in two years. Germany has the third-largest Western contingent serving in Afghanistan. "Every dead soldier is a heavy blow for us," she said during a visit to the German military base in Kunduz in northern Afghanistan. She visited a memorial to 53 German soldiers who have died in the conflict.
The chancellor said the strategy of training Afghan forces and handing over security responsibility to local forces had stood the test. "A lot has been accomplished," she said, with foreign combat troops preparing to leave the country by the end of next year. Germany is the first Western nation to concretely offer troops to stay and train the Afghans from 2015 onwards. Merkel said there were conditions. "We require progress. We require fair elections. We require a political process. A victory over the rebels will not succeed by military means alone," she warned in a speech.
German government sources confirmed that the government of President Hamid Karzai was not told Merkel was arriving until just before her plane landed. They said the German embassy left Kabul uninformed for security reasons. An advisor to Karzai who asked not to have his name reported confirmed the government had been unaware she was planning a trip, and added that visits without advance notice were not part of "diplomatic usage."
It was "lacking in respect" for foreign government leaders to show up without telling the Karzai government what was going on, he said. Merkel's stay was confined to Kunduz and Mazar-e Sharif. She did not visit Kabul or meet with Karzai. On her last visit, in March 2012, she did not visit him either, but she phoned him from Mazar-e Sharif.
The Afghans say US President Barack Obama showed up in 2010 for a visit to the US base at Bagram without advance warning. The 4,300 German troops in Afghanistan are scheduled to leave by the end of 2014, along with the rest of the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. Germany has proposed to keep 800 personnel in Afghanistan beyond that date to train and mentor Afghan security forces.