Photos showing German soldiers desecrating skulls in Afghanistan have tarnished an army trying to leave its Nazi past behind, writes Derek Scally in Berlin
This was supposed to be the week when the German army, the Bundeswehr, shook off the shadows of the past and stepped up to new international responsibility. Instead, a ground-breaking plan to regularise German military missions abroad was overshadowed by an ugly scandal that could tarnish the Bundeswehr's reputation and place its soldiers in Afghanistan in danger.
Three sets of photos have emerged showing German soldiers in Afghanistan in tasteless, macabre poses with skulls they discovered near Kabul. One photo shows a soldier with a skull perched on his flexed bicep, another uses a skull to simulate oral sex.
Bild newspaper published the first pictures on Wednesday, and new photos in the newspaper this morning show soldiers simulating an execution with a gun to a skeleton's skull. In another, the soldiers spell out their troop's initials in bones.
The photos have caused shock and anger in Germany as well as fear of reprisals in Afghanistan. High-level investigations are in progress against the soldiers involved and two have already been suspended.
"They will no longer be a part of the Bundeswehr," said defence minister Franz Josef Jung yesterday.
One of soldiers in the photos told Bild the site where the photos were taken near Kabul - a place where locals dig up clay for bricks - was an "insider tip" among stressed soldiers looking for entertainment.
"It was not a cemetery, not a place of worship. Anyone who didn't participate risked being called a wimp," he said. "It's hard on the nerves when you're constantly confronted with people from your own army or the allies getting hurt or dying. I think that's why the inhibition threshold was low."
An Afghan government minister has already expressed concern that the pictures could create a similar reaction to the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
"Afghans are very sensitive. Naturally, terrorists are going to make propaganda of it," said Amin Farhang, the Afghan trade minister, to the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper. German embassies in the Arab world have already stepped up their security measures.
With Germans only just getting used to the idea of their soldiers being sent abroad, the scandal is also likely to tarnish the reputation of the Bundeswehr at home.
THE BUNDESWEHR WAS founded in 1955, a decade after the dismantling of the Nazi Wehrmacht. In light of Hitler's use of military might at home to get his political way, post-war leaders wrote into the constitution that the Bundeswehr's role was defensive only.
The end of the Cold War saw the Bundeswehr absorb the East German National People's Army (NVA), but the army's prestige and relevance rapidly diminished as its funding and personnel were cut.
Then Germany's highest court ruled in 1994 that, despite tight constitutional controls, it was possible to deploy the Bundeswehr abroad on offensive missions where there was a risk to the security of Germany or its NATO allies.
An emotional wave of protest accompanied the first armed deployment in 1999 to Kosovo but the deployments since then - always ratified by a parliamentary vote - have been marked by ever-decreasing levels of protest. Today more than 10,000 German soldiers are stationed around the world, including the Balkans, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Horn of Africa, and the largest deployment of 2,800 soldiers in Afghanistan.
Just as Germans were getting used to it, the photos could see the public mood swing once again against foreign deployments. There is speculation in Berlin that the photos were leaked this week with precisely that aim. The scandal has given renewed energy to the many opponents of conscription which obliges all young Germans who don't choose the option of social service to perform nine months of military service.
As the scandal draws on, the top Bundeswehr brass is struggling with a new allegation that the skull scandal was an open secret among troops in Kabul, possibly shared by even high-ranking officers in Afghanistan.
The German government, anxious to expand the role of the Bundeswehr in the world, this week got a rude awakening that such change has to begin in soldiers' heads.
"It's hard to believe that there are people like this," said Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the Bundeswehr chief-of-staff. "It's particularly disgraceful that there are people like this in our ranks."