More Germans
Please. Under this proposal, there’ll be up to 120 Eurocops training the Afghans, up from 60:
BERLIN - Germany’s foreign and interior ministers said the size of the European Union’s police training mission in Afghanistan should be doubled, and offered in an article published Sunday to double Berlin’s own contingent.
The EU has said that the mission should be fully up and running by April after months of difficulties. Nearly 200 police trainers are due to be deployed.
“After a difficult initial phase, the European police mission, Eupol, is finally finding its feet,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble wrote in a joint commentary for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper.
“Beyond this, we advocate doubling the personnel of Eupol and will make corresponding proposals to our European colleagues,” they added. “Germany will … then offer 120 police officers in total to serve in Eupol Afghanistan, instead of the 60 already offered.”
The EU started its police training mission last June to supplement 500 American experts in the country training the Afghan police.
EU officials acknowledged at the time that the size of the mission fell well short of expectations, and since then the 27-member union has struggled to find personnel for the operation. It also has been dogged by funding and leadership problems.
Trouble finding enough cops? Surely not in Germany.
NATO officials complain the weakness of the Afghan police force is undermining efforts to stabilize the country and say police training is lagging at least two years behind relatively successful efforts to train the Afghan army.
I have an idea. How about, Idunno, 10,000 fallschirmjaegers? That would be buckethead paratroopers, all armed up to run around the mountains of Uruzgon waxing the Taliban. If you don’t have that many fallschirmjaegers, regular jackbooted infantry will do.
It’s not like al-Qaeda hasn’t been active all over the Fatherland, plotting to fly airliners into American buildings, plotting to blow up German trains, etc. Germany used to produce some of the best soldiers in the world. It was just the use they were put to everyone had a gripe with.
You guys aren’t still hung up on the WWII thing, are you? Time to move on. Germany can be a leader again. Shame the French. Lend a hand to the Brits, Dutch, Canadians and Americans, all fighting bloody war in the mountains.
Topics: Afghanistan, Europe
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:49 pm on Sunday, February 24, 2008
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