Resignations over Kunduz Airstrike

In the last couple days, several senior German officials have resigned over the handling of the crisis following the September airstrike near Kunduz. Since I'm not an expert on German politics, I asked my favorite German to explain.

First, the facts: on Thursday, the Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces, General Wolfgang Schneiderhan resigned. At the same time, the number 2 at the German Defense Ministry, State Secretary Peter Wichert, also tendered his resignation. The explanation: that both officials had withheld information not only from the public, but also from the civilian prosecutor charged with investigating the incident.

Then, today, the former Minister of Defense (who assumed the leadership of the Ministry of the Ministry of Labor following the elections) also resigned. This time, Franz Josef Jung explained his decision by saying he "accepted political responsibility" for mishandling information.

A couple points of interest: first, this is the most significant resignation in the German Ministry of Defense, more significant than resignations following spy scandals and the like. No former minister, number 2 civilian and number 1 military officials have ever resigned en masse. Second, both the military and civilian leadership had come under fire because they continued to insist on their version of the "facts", namely that no civilians had been killed in the strike.

Third, it now turns out that while the officials were asserting that no civilians had been killed, they in fact knew, because the military chain of command told them so, that the Colonel who had ordered the strike had in fact been unable to rule out the presence of civilians at the location of the strike. In short, the officials were lying. They lied to the German public, which already has an unfavorable opinion of the mission if Afghanistan. And, they lied to the local prosecutors charged with investigating homicide. Now the latter is a problem because lying to local prosecutors and withholding information is a possible criminal offense.

Multiple investigations are ongoing. First, as I mentioned, the local prosecutor is investigating, as it normally does whenever German troops kill host nation citizens. That investigation has, for now, been handed over to federal prosecutors who are now looking into the potential for crimes associated with the strike. Finally, the German parliament is also investigating, this time the incident itself and the conduct of the ministry of defense surrounding the incident.

In a hearing before the German parliament yesterday, the former defense minister apparently admitted that he never read the German military's classified report on the incident and simply forwarded it to NATO investigators. This curious lack of diligence apparently further sealed his fate.

Why does this matter? Because it shows a high potential for further fraying of German support to continued presence in Afghanistan. This also puts the new defense minister in a rough spot, particularly as he works to reinforce Germany's presence in the north, with both additional troops and heavier equipment.

More On Kunduz: Colonel May Have Lied to Get Strike (UPDATED)

According to an article in the German FT, the colonel who ordered the air strike in Kunduz may have lied about the danger facing his troops in order to get the planes to strike. Now I need someone to translate this article for me so I'm relying on this usually reliable French blog, Zone Militaire.

A quick translation of what I'm reading there--at Zone Militaire (and like I said, as soon as I've talked to German friends, I'll update) :

The article, using sources close to the investigation, say colonel Georg Kelin gave false information to justify the airstrike. He was already suspected of not complying with ISAF rules to avoid these types of incidents but Colonel Klein may have assured that his troops where "in contact with the enemy" when this was not the case. The Washington Post indeed reported that the officer requested the air strike based on the information of an informant on the ground.

If and it's a big IF that turns out to be true, then well, the rest is pretty obvious.

UPDATE: I finally got some help on the German FT article. Here goes (and here I'm going with paraphrasing instead of direct translation). The article says that the Colonel claimed her had troops in contact--which he needed to justify an air strike request to the command center in Kabul. When asked what kind of contact, he said he had visual contact even though he had no soldiers anywhere near the tanker trucks. Just before the air strike, he again stated that there was immediate danger to his troops.

Now, obviously this is about rules for getting close air support. In this case, the Colonel would have to follow ISAF rules, which are very restrictive. As far I'm told, for ISAF, having troops in contact is required to get close air support but it's not supposed to be a technicality. You have to have troops being or about to be fired on. They have to be immediately threatened. All this to say, if the Colonel did lie and did break the rules, the German prosecutor in Potsdam is going to be looking into this VERY closely.