German participation in peace missions

Germany participates in a number of different peace missions. German civilians, police officers and military personnel participate in missions led by the United Nations, the European Union, NATO and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As of September 2011, 192 German civilians, 140 police officers and 7,120 soldiers participated in these missions.

Germany has also deployed its citizens and security personnel to Afghanistan, the Kosovo, and in missions along the coastline of Lebanon and off-shore around the Horn of Africa. Another 39 Germans have participated in international peace missions in Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova/Ukraine, in Liberia, Haiti, the autonomous Palestinian territories and the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. OSCE centres in Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and four Central Asian republics have also hosted one to two German participants.

German Blue Helmets

As of September 2011, only 327 German citizens have participated in peacekeeping or peacebuilding missions directly led by the United Nations. This is no different from previous decades. The reason for this is that Germany, like other large industrialised countries, is only prepared to let troops serve under UN command in exceptional cases. To date, 14 Germans have died during UN-led missions, not necessarily in combat situations but in natural catastrophes, such as the earthquake in Haiti in 2010.

Cambodia 1992-1993

The first major Blue Helmet mission of the Bundeswehr took place in Cambodia from 1992 to 1993. Around 150 medical orderlies and about 70 German civilians were deployed to build a field hospital and to help provide medical care to UN troops and the local population in Phnom Penh. The German deployment was successfully completed.

Lebanon sea border since 2006

Since 2006, Germany has provided leadership in the maritime Task Force of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). After the war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah in the summer of 2006, the UN observer mission in Lebanon, which was established in 1978, was supplemented by a maritime task force. According to a UN Security Council Resolution, the observer mission was to prevent the trafficking of weapons by sea into Lebanon. The UN Resolution led to the fact that the conflicting parties, Israel and Hezbollah, agreed to a ceasefire. While initially, more than 900 soldiers participated in the mission, the number of German UNIFIL Blue Helmets decreased to 246 in September 2011.

In political terms, the establishment of the UNIFIL maritime task force helped in reaching a ceasefire in 2006. In military terms, however, its success is far less clear-cut, as it is far more probable that weapons were smuggled to Lebanon across country rather than by sea. This is confirmed by the fact that even though the UN task force searched more than 25,000 ships, they did not find any weapons on the ships, suggesting that they were likely trafficked into the country by other means.

EU Mission along the coast of Somalia

Germany has been involved in the EU-led "Operation Atalanta" since 2008. In an area of 500 miles along the Somalian coast, one German frigate, among other vessels, work to protect ships of the World Food Programme for Somalia and other ships from piracy. Even though the operation has been able to prevent the capture of, or to free previously captured ships from the perpetrators, they have not been able to reduce all acts of piracy.

NATO-led missions

The main focus of German participation in international peace missions is in NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and the Kosovo. Both NATO missions were mandated by the UN Security Council in arrears after NATO had intervened in Kosovo in 1999 and a US-led coalition had intervened in Afghanistan in 2001 without explicit UN mandates. The German parliament (Bundestag) decided to deploy German troops and has so far extended their mandates with an overwhelming consensus across all party lines.

Kosovo since 1999

After the end of fighting, the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) was mandated on 10 June 1999 by the UN Security Council to establish a safe and secure environment in a multi-ethnic Kosovo and to support the international humanitarian effort, among other things. While initially 8,500 of the 50,000 KFOR soldiers came from Germany, in October 2011, the KFOR unit consisted of only 6,240 soldiers of whom 1,451 were German. One result of the KFOR mission is that violent action has markedly decreased.

Afghanistan since 2001

Since December 2001, the Bundeswehr is part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The objective of the UN-mandated mission is mainly to support the new Afghan government, which was elected after the ousting of the Taliban, to reconstruct the country and establish a democracy. ISAF is also mandated to protect the population so long as Afghan security forces are unable to do so, and to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a safe haven for the international terrorist organisation, al Qaeda, that planned the 9/11 attacks in the United States on Afghan soil.

As of September 2011, 5,203 soldiers from the Bundeswehr participated in the132,000-strong NATO unit in Afghanistan. During ten years of participation in ISAF, 52 soldiers of the Bundeswehr have been killed; many others were wounded or returned after suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The costs of the German deployment in Afghanistan amount to between one and three billion euro per year. Like the United States and other NATO partners, the German government plans to reduce the number of soldiers as of 2012. While the deployment receives broad support in the Bundestag, a clear majority of Germans favours a troop withdrawal.

Problems and criticism

Peace researchers criticise the strong predominance of the military character of German participation in peace missions. Civil conflict prevention and civil conflict resolution only play a minor role in Germany’s contribution to peace missions, both with respect to financial resources and the number of the personnel deployed. One recurring criticism is that a detailed evaluation of the missions is not taking place in Germany. Often, the propagated objectives of peace missions are (in part) unrealistic or cannot be reached with the means available. One particular problem of the German deployment in Afghanistan is the chasm between the German government’s actions (or the majority decision in the Bundestag) and mainstream public opinion. This leads to a deficit in the legitimacy of the mission.