Arnon Grunberg
Afghanistan - Bundeswehr

Across from the reception desk at the Gandamack Lodge in the center of Kabul is a sign. The sign says it is forbidden by law to serve alcohol to Muslims and Afghans. The only guests here are Westerners. By eleven-thirty in the morning, quite a few expats are already nipping at their first gin & tonic in the Gandamack Lodge. The lodge’s garden looks like an oasis, with nothing to indicate that you find yourself in the middle of an emergency zone.
It is Tuesday morning, October 11. A few hours ago I landed at Kabul Airport aboard FlyDubai, the Ryanair of Dubai. The other passengers on my flight included a pair of Afghans in identical orange overalls, with no carry-ons. At customs, they were led off to one side. I was reminded of Guantanamo Bay, where I had seen prisoners in similar overalls in the winter of 2007. The men in orange suits had probably been expelled from Dubai.
Dubai is a haven for the more moneyed in particular, and the war, which has been going on for ten years now, has made some Afghanis rich. Millions of dollars in cash, it seems, are carried each day from Kabul to Dubai.
This is my third trip to Afghanistan, but unlike the first two times I am not traveling with the Dutch army. I am in Kabul, where I will stay for twenty-four hours without a military escort. My final destination is the German army camp at Kunduz.
Six months earlier I had entered a request to be embedded with the German army. I told them I wanted to write an article about the German army today, in the light of Germany’s complex history; I wanted to find out the extent to which the Bundeswehr had emerged from the shadows of the Third Reich. Back in 2007, a German officer in Uruzgan had told me: “For obvious reasons, we are an army without a tradition.” It had sounded as though he sorely missed having a tradition.
The Germany army turned down my request. Apparently, the Bundeswehr was not to be associated with the shadows of the Third Reich, just as those shadows seem only to rankle us as well.
After some persistence, though, they informed me that I would be allowed to pay a visit.
A few weeks before my departure I had phone Oberstleutnant (Lieutenant-Colonel) Fischer, who would be my host in Kabul. It sounded as though he had been waiting for my call.
Personnel from AKE, the private security enterprise that drove me around Baghdad and northern Iraq in 2009 and 2010, had met me at the airport. “Are you carrying any liquor?” one of the security men wanted to know – liquor, apparently, can be confiscated at checkpoints: an easy way for Afghan policemen to get alcohol.
Kabul was colder and grayer than I had expected. The last time I was here at this time of year, in October 2007, it had been as hot as summer.
That afternoon I have an appointment with an Afghan journalist at the Flower Street Café. People have warned me not to flag down cabs on the street; the receptionist at the Gandamack Lodge gives me the number of a reliable taxi service. Compared with Baghdad in 2008 – 2010, Kabul in 2011 seems friendly: fewer concrete blocks, fewer soldiers, less visible destruction.
I ask the cabbie to stop at a cash machine and a supermarket; I forgot my toothbrush in a hotel room in Dubai. The supermarket is well-stocked, but deserted. The Asian manager or owner keeps a close eye on me as I pick out a toothbrush. Another Westerner, a bearded man who seems to have made a halfhearted attempt to disguise himself as an Afghan, purchases a box of cornflakes.
Toothbrush in my breast pocket, I move on to the Flower Street Café, which is located on a quiet, unpaved street. There are a few guards around, but nothing special. The question, of course, is how much difference guards make when one realizes that you can also drive into a building with a truck full of explosives.
Inside the café are about a dozen Westerners, most of them with laptops. The atmosphere is relaxed. A café like this would have been unthinkable in Baghdad, outside the Green Zone.
Habib Zohori is a fairly young Afghan journalist. He had texted me that I would recognize him by his headgear, which vaguely resembles the cap worn by Chairman Mao.
Zohori orders a Greek salad, he seems to know a few of the expats in the Flower Street Café quite well. “I’m a journalist, but also a fixer, I do a lot of work for journalists from The New Yorker,” he says.
Unlike most Iraqis in Baghdad, who always talked in a muted tone, as though afraid of eavesdroppers, Zohori speaks loudly. “The civil war is going to start in 2014,” he says. “It depends a bit on what the Americans do, but in principle the war will start in 2014. When the war breaks out, my mother and sisters will go to Pakistan.”
Lunch hour, it seems, is over. A few of the expats close their laptops and leave.
“This government,” Zohori says, “is just as fundamentalist as the Taliban, and just as cruel, but as long as the Westerners are here it pretends not to be fundamentalist. Our constitution is based eighty percent, or even ninety percent, on the Sharia.”
I order another cup of tea.
“At General Petraeus’s inititative, the Afghan Local Police, the ALP, was set up alongside the Afghan National Police. The ALP commits rape on a major scale.”
In a businesslike tone, Zohori sums up the facts: “An ALP officer in Kunduz told me: ‘We have no choice but to take money from civilians; we haven’t been paid for the last four months.’ I was happy when the Americans defeated the Taliban, but now most Afghans hate the Americans and other Westerners.”
I had heard the same thing in Iraq. The cheer and hopefulness after Saddam’s fall soon made way there for disappointment and hatred.
I follow Zohori outside. “The Pakistani intelligence service organizes the Taliban,” he says, “and they, like the Pakistani army, are financed by America. It’s a vicious circle.”
“So you’re saying that the West actually wages war against enemies they finance themselves?” I ask.
He nods. “You’re going to the Germans, aren’t you? They eat well. Lots of pork, I love pork. I’m an atheist. My father is a Marxist, one of the last Marxists left in Afghanistan.”
He calls me a cab. He himself walks off in the direction of a busy street. When we drive past him, I knock on the window, but he doesn’t hear me. His gaze is fixed on the paving stones.

Early that evening it starts to rain. I leave Gandamack Lodge and try to make my way to the military section of the airport, where I will be flying to Kunduz tomorrow morning on ISAF flight number 62. The flight was booked by the German army.
Two men from AKE drive me to the airport. In the car they offer me a hot and heavily peppered ear of corn.
The airport is being guarded by Belgian soldiers. I’m only allowed to enter after my escort arrives. “Those are the rules,” says a female Flemish soldier, in a tone you would expect more from a stewardess.
My escort consists of two female American GIs, who show me to a tent where I can spend the night. Unfortunately, all the cots are occupied. Bureaucracy sometimes misses a beat.
The women tell me about a Lebanese restaurant that stays open all night. Two soldiers are in there eating, otherwise the place is empty.
As soon as my humus and kebab arrive, the cook wraps himself in a blanket and lies down on the kitchen floor. The two soldiers have already left.
I’m reminded of Zohori’s prediction that the civil war will break out in 2014. If it does, I have no doubt that the cook in this restaurant will be just as pleased to fix kebabs for the Taliban as he is for the French, American, Belgian and Italian troops.
It’s still raining. I go to a rec room where there are ping-pong tables. An Italian is carrying on a noisy conversation on Skype.
I spend the night in an easy chair beside one of the ping-pong tables.
At three in the morning, an Afghan starts mopping the floor. He seems pleased to be able to clean my shoes as well.

The next morning in the German Transal, a military transport plane, one of the soldiers says: “Afghanistan is and always will be a shithole.” Right after that, he falls asleep.
Flying aboard a military transport plane remains a peculiar experience. Even though this time, unlike during my past flights with the Dutch army, no one is puking and the pilot undertakes no tactical maneuvers to avoid missiles. Still, the atmosphere in this transport plane is funereal as well.
At the base in Kunduz, I am met by Pressefeldwebel (Press Officer) Sickmann, a man in his fifties with an elegant moustache. He greets me and launches into an amiable monologue. “So you made it. We always advise people to fly straight to us with the Bundeswehr from Cologne. Flying in from Kabul is pretty much impossible. There are no German troops at Kabul Airport, and our contacts with the Americans there are chaotic, to say the least. But let’s get something to eat.”
He drives me to the mess hall in a civilian van. “In the afternoon there are nice little things to eat, in the evening there are nice big things,” the Pressefeldwebel says. “I’ve done a little background research of course. It’s interesting that you, with your biography, want to see how we…” He looks around and points to a little group of Dutch soldiers. “There are so many Dutch soldiers around here, and yet you choose to visit the Germans.”
After we’ve eaten, the Pressefeldwebel says: “Now we’re going to stop by and see Oberstleutnant Fischer.”
On our way to the lieutenant-colonel’s office, Sickmann says: “They claim that there have been seventy years of peace in Germany, but my grandfather served in a war, my father served in a war and I’m a soldier at war. My son, who is in the army too, is also a soldier at war. So what’s that seventy years of peace supposed to mean?”
I don’t know what to tell him.
Oberstleutnant Fischer is a little man with a close-cropped gray beard. He looks like a slightly older version of John Malkovich.
“We’ve put together a nice little program for you,” the Oberstleutant says. He points to a map of Kunduz and surroundings. “We’ve already driven out most of the insurgents to the south of Kunduz, but there are still some to the north.”
Although we speak German together, I notice that he uses the English word “insurgents” to refer to the enemy. Other German soldiers do the same thing.
“The Afghan police are good,” he says. “The army, not so.”
“That’s funny,” I say. “In 2006 and 2007, they told me exactly the opposite.”
“We’re going to be pulling out of Afghanistan before long,” Sickmann says afterwards. “It’s such a pity, you’ve just taught the child to walk, then you leave it on its own. And what’s going to happen when the Americans leave?”
He finishes his musings with the words: “Go and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning early, we’re leaving on patrol.”

The patrol begins at an Afghan police outpost south of Kunduz, where German soldiers are stationed as well. In a corner of the compound, Hauptfeldwebel (First Lieutenant) Kaitschik, the officer in command this morning, briefs us on the operation. He is a friendly, rather chubby man with acne scars. To make things a bit cheerier, they have hung Christmas lights on the compound wall. “We’re going to Mur Shaykh. I don’t know when the last time was that ISAF troops visited that village. We’re going to talk to the people there. The enemy – being familiar with our mores - works a lot with suiciders, because they know our weaknesses: invalids and children.”
Does the lieutenant mean that suiciders are usually children and invalids? Anyone who has ever been in a war zone will concur: morality is a form of weakness. Albeit, in the twenty-first century, an understandable form of weakness.
“We’ll be going with 35 men, plus 25 from the ANA [the Afghan army – ed.]. As long we make a display of force, they won’t try anything,” he says.
We arrive at our destination about half an hour later. An unmanned plane is floating high above us. Someone tells me that it is keeping an eye on the surroundings. On a hilltop a little further away I see a group of German soldiers and their vehicles; they arrived yesterday to carry out the reconnaissance.
The patrol can begin.
The first living thing we meet is a dog. It barks.
“These dogs carry diseases,” Sickmann says.
Someone points a rifle at the dog. “Only stones or dried mud,” the Hauptfeldwebel shouts. Upon which one of the interpreters starts throwing dried mud at the dog. Its owner, an old man with a child on his arm, comes out and sees to his dog.
Another dog’s life saved, the patrol continues.
“Someone found a playing card,” the lieutenant tells me. “That means the insurgents have been here. They use playing cards as signposts. Afghans don’t play cards.” Later he will tell me that they also use cassette tapes to exchange messages. The cassette tape itself can be misleading, though, because farmers sometimes drape it over trees and bushes to scare away birds.
We come across another old man. The lieutenant and an interpreter go up to him.
“What’s the safety situation like around here?” the Hauptfeldwebel asks.
“Fine,” the Afghan says. But he doesn’t want to talk about safety. “Last year the Germans promised me that they were going to dig wells here, but I haven’t heard a thing from them since. You’re the first German I’ve seen since then.”
“I’ll pass that along,” the lieutenant says. “But what about the safety situation?”
“The Taliban are very far away,” the Afghan says, pointing south.
The Hauptfeldwebel is taking notes.
We see lots of mud walls. Mountains in the distance. A few houses in the dry landscape.
A little further along we cross a stream. “Look at that, would you?” the Hauptfeldwebel says. “Plenty of water, ten minutes away by foot, and the old man is whining about water.”
We approach a shepherd. His sheep have been shorn only recently. Two boys, his sons probably, are helping him. Close to the flock is a trailer that looks like it belongs to the shepherd.
This time a balding captain does the talking.
“It’s a good harvest this time, isn’t it?” the captain says. He points at a pile of grain, something that looks like wheat. “Who’s responsible for security around here?”
“Commander Zia and Commander Amman,” the Afghan says.
Then we hear shots.
The captain and I go for cover behind the trailer. The captain signals to the Afghan to get down as well. With visible reluctance, he squats behind his pile of grain, his sons have already taken cover among the sheep.
After five minutes, we hear that the shots were not aimed at the German soldiers; a local Afghan police commander is in the habit of shooting at drivers who don’t stop fast enough.
The captain resumes his conversation with the shepherd. “You have such beautiful blue eyes,” he says. “Could I take a picture of them?”
The shepherd agrees. The idea that Afghans are actually Germanic is apparently fairly common in German military circles.
We move on.
Pressefeldwebel Sickmann points out a group of Afghan policemen sitting along the side of the road. “They’re very fond of taking a rest,” he says.
Then our patrol leaves the village of Mur Shaykh. It may be another year or so before NATO soldiers come here again, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that these are the last NATO soldiers to visit Mur Shaykh.
Back at the outpost, I have a brief conversation about corruption with a Belgian officer. He is here as an explosives expert. “Corruption,” he says. “It depends who you’re talking to. Unlike the Afghan soldiers, the Afghan police are all from around here. When we go out on patrol, they’re always talking on the phone to villagers, and of course we don’t know exactly what they’re saying.”

On Friday morning the Bundeswehr organizes a “Bible breakfast” for German soldiers. Friday is a holiday in Islamic countries, and the idea behind the special breakfast is that it should be something of a holiday for the German soldiers as well.
Pressefeldwebel Sickmann waits with me outside the church until the singing is over. “An army bishop came here a while back,” he says. “There were twelve men in the church. Everyone is searching for contact with God in his own way, but the way the church does that these days is completely obsolete. The church is like a telephone company that makes sure there’s static on the line all the time.”
When the singing is over, we go inside. The Bible breakfast is relatively well-attended. “They can have breakfast here a bit later than in the canteen, and it’s just a little bit tastier,” Sickmann says. “A Bible breakfast, I suppose, calls for a little marketing.”
Hanging on one wall of the makeshift church is a huge poster bearing a Bible verse: “Luke 18: 27 The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”
The Bible breakfast is organized by the local Protestant and Roman Catholic chaplains, along with the army psychologists; in the Bundeswehr, it’s unclear where the psychologists stop and the clerics begin.
After the Bible breakfast is over, I’m allowed to meet with the priest, the reverend and the psychologists.
The reverend, a rather squat man in his late forties, says: “We deal with questions of spirituality, the psychologists deal with more existential issues.”
The tasks here are obviously divided quite clearly.
But then the reverend adds a subtlety: “It’s also a matter of taste; some people prefer a pretty girl.” He points to one of the psychologists. “Others prefer a pretty boy.” He points to himself and to the priest.
I figure he’s joking, but no one laughs.
“There’s also another major difference,” the reverend says. “I’m bound by an oath of secrecy. The psychologists are not limited in that way, not in all situations.”
“Do you ever encounter situations that try your conscience?” I ask.
“Oh, you really only come across that in books or movies. I rarely hear about murder, and if I did I would say: ‘Go talk to the psychologist.’ So we could solve that together as well.” Claiming that one is rarely confronted with murder in a war zone seems to me a little like claiming to be rarely confronted with killing in a slaughterhouse. But just like in a slaughterhouse, one is often called upon to kill here, and murder is no longer referred to as murder.
One of the psychologists adds: “It would be naïve to think that people leave their hormones behind in Germany.”
When I ask whether they have programs here to prevent suicide, like the Americans do, another psychologist says: “We don’t actively try to prevent suicide, because there are almost no suicides here.”

Sitting on a makeshift patio overlooking the camp is Oberstleutnant Kuhn, a bespectacled man in his fifties who also served in the Balkans. He’s responsible for security in an area of fifty by seventy kilometers around the city of Kunduz. Pressefeldwebel Sickmann and Oberstleutnant Fischer have come along with me, they seem to feel that this meeting is important.
“This,” Kuhn tells me, “is in fact an American project, based on an American idea. Namely, that democracies don’t attack each other. We’ve been trying that for ten years now.” It sounds discouraging. Trying for ten years. As a Dutch writer once said to me: “If the human race was a car, it would have been recalled long ago for substantial defects.” But that is how people are, they keep trying stubbornly, even when it comes to spreading democracy in Afghanistan.
I casually mention the magic year 2014, the year that the NATO will probably pull out.
“Yes, that’s a tricky one,” Kuhn says. “It’s a way of encouraging the insurgents to say: we’ll stick it out for a while and then they’ll be gone. On the other hand, it’s also a way of putting Karzai on the spot and saying: before long you’re really going to have to start doing it yourself, man.”
He looks around at the press officer and the lieutenant-colonel, as though wondering whether he’s allowed to say this. He is allowed.
“We can’t do everything the European way, that’s a false assumption,” Kuhn says. “Different cultural values apply here. The Afghan army isn’t bad, they attach more importance than we do to some things. The devotion they expect from subordinates, that total submission. But there’s a lot of competition between the Afghan army and the Afghan police.” Fischer interrupts him: “Even Mrs. Merkel has said that we emphasized the wrong things, back then.”
There is a brief silence. Then Kuhn goes on: “In Germany, it’s only a tiny elite who is still interested in this war. The others don’t have a clue.”
“Doesn’t that form a risk for the democratic process?” I ask.
“A great risk,” Kuhn says. “The elite has to comply with the will of the uninformed. I believe in education, and not just in Afghanistan. Europe needs to invest in education. Otherwise, a hundred years from now, we are going to have a major problem.”
The Europeans and Afghans of the future: with that thought I take leave of Oberstleutnant Kuhn.
That evening, in something that looks a lot like a classroom, we run through tomorrow’s mission. Seven German military vehicles will be going to the villages of Alchin and Imam Sahib, to see how things are going with the construction of school toilets there.
The mission’s commander clarifies who will take command, should anything unfortunate happen to him. He runs down the list and finishes with the words: “And whoever’s left then, they take command.”
Once again, it sounds discouraging.
During this “Befehlausgabe”, a kitten has wandered into the room and is being cuddled by one of the soldiers. Later I hear that the kitten lives illegally on-base.
When the commander is finished, one of the soldiers looks at me and says: “The last time I went out with someone from the press, everything went ‘boom’.” Does he believe that the press brings bad luck?
Pressefeldwebel Sickmann, in any case, is not hindered by any such superstition. He speaks regularly of “our comrade from the media”. At moments like that, I’m reminded of a song my father used to sing: “Ich hatt’ einen Kamaraden / Einen bessern findst du nit.”

The next morning, seven German military vehicles leave the camp to inspect the German toilets for Afghan children. The villages of Alchin and Imam Sahib are not far from the border with Tajikistan. First we drive through the city of Kunduz: a lively town, livelier than Kabul, and after a full hour’s drive we arrive at Combat Outpost Fortitude, an American outpost. From there we go on foot to the school at Imam Sahib.
The restrooms are being built behind the school. A hole of about five cubic meters has already been excavated, and there are a few walls standing, where the toilets are to be installed. The contractor is a well-groomed man in a traditional Afghan robe. The school principal is a bit skinner and a bit more unkempt, he doesn’t wear traditional Afghan clothing.
The contractor says proudly: “We’re going to put a water tank up there that can hold a thousand liters.”
“The walls won’t be able to take that,” says Hauptmann (Captain) Mildenbergen, a soldier who knows about construction and came along for that specific reason.
Pictures are taken of the work-in-progress on the toilets.
Hauptmann Mildenbergen pulls out his pocketknife and cuts a groove in the blocks, to test their quality.
Then the school principal says he needs more money for another wall. One of the German soldiers gets peeved. “We’re building the toilets, let him build that wall himself. He claims this school has five thousand students. Let him build that wall, it would be good practice for him.”
An unexpected sadness comes over me. The NATO heads out with its heaviest rolling stock to see whether toilets are being built correctly. They are two very different things, hearing that the toilets are going to be inspected and then ending up in front of these half-finished restrooms.
When the army is deployed to check on the building of toilets, you can only conclude that we are geared to defeat, from head to toe. The soldiers ask whether there’s anything else I want to know. I tell them I would like to see the classrooms.
Most of the classrooms are fairly crowded, but quite a few of them seem to be missing a teacher. I see no books, no notebooks, not even a pen or pencil anywhere.
“We don’t have enough money for books,” the principal says.
“Can all the teachers read and write?” I ask.
“All the teachers can read and write,” he replies. “Some of the teachers have only attended primary school, others have been to college, but it’s just hard to find good teachers.”
The principal invites us to have lunch with him but, unlike the Americans in Iraq who occasionally stay to lunch with a sheikh, the German soldiers turn down his invitation.
We walk back to Combat Outpost. The soldiers are feeling optimistic; progress is being made with the school toilets at Imam Sahib.
On the road to Alchin, the convoy stops unexpectedly. One of the vehicles, a TPZ (Transportpanzer), has broken down. We make a roadblock with sand-filled bottles, linked with rope. It takes two soldiers at least ten minutes to get the knots out of the rope.
What strikes me is the relaxed atmosphere, especially in comparison with the American army.
No one is guarding our flanks. A German soldier points to the left and says: “The Taliban could come out of those bushes at any moment.” But it sounds resigned. Sort of like: if they show up, then they show up.
Another soldier takes off his helmet. “Don’t take pictures of me,” he says. “Officially, I’m not allowed to do this.”
A few Afghans approach the improvised roadblock, they seem angry about not being able to get through.
“What are they shouting?” a soldier asks the interpreter.
The interpreter says: “That man is shouting that Karzai is an ass.”
To which the soldier replies: “If he knows Karzai that well, he should advise him to expel the Western powers from his country.”
Pressefeldwebel Sickmann, in a muted voice, says: “This doesn’t contribute much to the Afghan’s good humor.”
As it turns out, the Transportpanzer can’t be fixed on the spot. That means we will not be going to the village of Alchin, the toilets being built there will not be inspected by us.
As a souvenir, Hauptfeldwebel (Sergeant) Thomas Uelschlägel has plucked a bit of cotton from a field. He’s a tall, cheerful-looking man – the top of my head barely reaches his shoulder. “What we did here today is typical of the kind of work I do,” he says. “This is my eighth time here. I love this country. It’s so varied. I really enjoy leaving the compound. Look, I’m a professional soldier. That’s what I’ve chosen to do.”
“Why?” I ask.
The sergeant hesitates. Then he says: “Family tradition.”
By the time we get back it’s almost time for dinner, but first I have an appointment with Major Matthias Kock, a sympathetic thirty-year-old with a mild skin disorder on his nose. We go to one of the gardens and sit under a tree; this camp has real gardens.
“I’m an intercultural advisor for the German army,” Kock tells me. “I studied law and political science, did research into conflict-resolution with Pashtun tribes. The first time I came to Afghanistan was as a civilian. Then I went to work for the GTZ [Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit – ed.], I helped build the road from Chora to Tarin Kowt. That was a 26-million-euro project. That was where I met the Dutch as well. I bought 400,000 almond trees. All an almond tree needs is a little bit of water. We passed them out free to the locals. I also bought them an almond-husking machine. The Dutch people thought it was wonderful, so did the locals. That almond-husking machine might even still be working.”
The major is visibly pleased by the memory of the machine.
“I went back to Germany, but I was bored to death there. Then I signed a contract with the army.”
“What do you think you people will be able to accomplish by the end of 2014?” I ask.
“Not much,” the major says. “If Afghanistan is a car, then we’ve crashed it into a tree. That’s partly the Afghans’ fault as well. They’re lazy, they’re indigent, they’re plagued by false pride. To say nothing of their egoism and ignorance.”
“Didn’t the Westerners do anything wrong, though?” I ask.
“We also did something wrong. We were faced with a dilemma, we wanted to win the hearts of the population, so we gave them scads of money without checking to see what they did with it. We didn’t make them account for themselves. That’s why it’s all going wrong. Every day, fourteen million dollars in cash is flown out of Afghanistan to Dubai.”
It’s become so dark now that I can barely see the major’s face.
“So what’s the good news?” I ask.
“If the Taliban come back, and I have no doubt that the Taliban will come back in most of the provinces, they’ll be less cheeky than they were in the 90s. A lot of Afghans have worked for the Western powers. We’ve had a certain impact, but exactly how great an impact, we have no way of knowing that yet.”
The news after ten years of warfare: the Taliban are winning, but it’s the Taliban Light.
“And if I can tell you a little more good news,” the major says. “Afghanistan has been unbelievably important in my life. Afghanistan has changed me.”
“What’s your relationship like with other soldiers in the Bundeswehr? You’re obviously not a typical soldier,” I say.
“Commander Rosch [the top German commander in Kunduz – ed.] is an excellent military strategist,” the major replies, and he sighs deeply. “In the Great Patriotic War, he would probably have stopped the Russians at Moscow or Berlin. But we don’t need a military strategist like that here, this isn’t a patriotic war.”
It takes me a few seconds to realize that when he says “the Great Patriotic War”, he’s referring to WWII.

Bern Schumi is a policeman from Stuttgart. Unlike the Dutch military police, for example, all German law enforcement personnel are employed by the Department of Internal Affairs. He is responsible for training Afghan policemen.
“You’re a Dutchman,” Schumi says. “We’ve been training policemen here for the last ten years. Starting this summer, there have been a few Dutch people here as well. Our mandate was already limited. Their mandate is horribly limited.”
With his hands he shows me the scope of the Dutch mandate; you would need a magnifying glass to see it. “The Dutch are almost not allowed to do anything. We’re not allowed to do a whole lot, but they’re allowed to do even less. And don’t forget, most of the Afghans have already had their training.”
“Were you there during those training sessions?” I ask.
“I’m one of the leaders here, so I wasn’t involved in the training sessions in a particularly active way. But I know that the policemen are motivated, and that motivates their trainers. At the end of their courses, when the Afghan policemen are able to write their own names, you can see the gratitude on their faces.”

In the Talibar, a bistro for German military personnel, the beer and wine flow freely. Unlike Dutch soldiers, the Germans are allowed to drink. They do so with moderation, but also with a keen professionalism.
The Talibar is much more pleasant than the bigger Lummerland bar, even though at the Lummerland you can play ping pong, snooker and table soccer. I had a drink there earlier with three Flemish soldiers who, although the name “Belgium” was featured on their uniforms, expressed the hope and the expectation that Belgium would soon cease to exist. One of them, a medic, told me that Flemish soldiers were slaughtered en masse during the First World War because they were unable to understand the commands of their French superiors. According to him, not much has changed since in the Belgian army: the Walloons are given preferential treatment. I get the impression that he would rather shoot at Walloons than at the Taliban.
In the Talibar, Oberstleutnant Fischer calls for a beer, I order a glass of wine. There are nuts to go with it. This is my last evening.
“We’re the world’s third biggest export country,” the Oberstleutnant says. “We have to keep our irons in the fire, we have to be everywhere. If we’re not everywhere, raw materials will become more expensive and our competitive position will be weakened. Sometimes people ask me: ‘What are you people doing about cyberwarfare?’ But we’ve been waging a cyber war for years.”
I take a few nuts.
“Köhler [the former German president – ed.] was right of course when he said that we’re here to serve Germany’s economic interests,” the lieutenant-colonel says.
I bid a fond farewell to the Oberstleutnant and the Talibar. I’m going to miss the bar.

During my time with the Bundeswehr, I heard fewer racist and sexist comments than I had from the American or Dutch army personnel I’ve met. And although Pressefeldwebel Sickmann let me know that he knew I was the son of German Jews, he treated me like a “comrade from the media”.
But no matter which NATO army you spend time with in Afghanistan, what you see is almost always the same: the bureaucratization of the grotesque. And that is what we call war.