Enhanced Success Perspectives
The German Defense Ministry and the German Association for International Cooperation (GIZ) announced that they had signed an official cooperation agreement at the beginning of this month. At the signing of this agreement, GIZ board member Christoph Beier expressed the conviction that "the many years of cooperation" with the German Armed Forces can now be placed "on a better and institutionalized basis."[1] Beier and Inspector General of the Bundeswehr Volker Wieker "agreed" not only with the cooperation agreement's "collaboration between military in the field and development aid personnel," but also with the enhancement of "the perspectives of success of their respective missions."[2]
Information Exchange
According to this agreement, the GIZ will have access to data from the German Army's Geo-Information Department, procured in part by means of satellite surveillance and, in turn, will inform the soldiers in the field of the "development policy environment in their theatre of operations." In exchange for the GIZ taking over "construction projects" and "the handling of real estate" - for example in Afghanistan - the Bundeswehr is offering the development aid personnel an array of privileges: They will be permitted not only to be airlifted in military machines, but also have access to the transportation and supply capacities of the armed forces in the broadest sense of the term. In addition, GIZ employees will have full access to the military camps, use of the field post office, they can buy goods in the post exchange and have access to the assistance institutions.[3]
THW Model
The agreement signed by the defense ministry and the GIZ resembles, nearly word for word, an agreement concluded in December 2008 between the Bundeswehr and the Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW). In this agreement, there were also plans for "seminar-based joint cadre training programs" - both at the THW Federal College and at the German Armed Forces Staff College in Hamburg as well as at the Bundeswehr's Academy for Information and Communication (AIK), in Strausberg, previously the "School for Psychological Warfare/Defense." A regular exchange of information concerning their common "theater of operations" was arranged, similar to that in the agreement signed by the GIZ and the defense ministry. The THW has been granted access to the entire military infrastructure - from medical facilities and Medevacs (medical evacuations), the military postal service and including financial and logistical supplies. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[4])
Partner in Uniform
In its last years, the German Association for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), predecessor of the GIZ, had been exceptionally closely cooperating with the Bundeswehr, considered its "partner in uniform." For example the Northern Afghan "reconstruction projects" initiated by the GTZ, were intended, on the one hand, to win a higher acceptance by the population for German occupation troops and, on the other, to provide the possibility for recruiting informants from among the local population.[5] It is not without a certain pride that the GTZ/GIZ boasted in a recent publication of having "directed" the "construction of the Bundeswehr's bases of operations in Kunduz and Taloqan."[6] They explained that their work is based on the German military's "networked security" concept. "Networked security" had been repeatedly referred to also in the course of the negotiations of the current cooperation agreement.[7] This concept erases the differentiation between foreign combat operations and domestic repressive measures, on the one hand, while subordinating development policy projects to the requirements of current and future foreign combat missions, on the other.
Afghanistan Experience
Corresponding to this development, a member of the GIZ Board of Directors will take part in a "security conference" this weekend in Nuremberg. The conference will be hosted by the Nürnberger Zeitung, which is continuing a line of similar conferences hosted by other leading German media representatives, such as the Handelsblatt and the weekly Die Zeit. (german-foreign-policy.com reported.[8]) According to the press, the discussion in Nuremberg will also include the "use of military means" in Afghanistan. Follow a "situation assessment" by Christian Schmidt, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Ministry of Defense, there will be talks held by those with Afghanistan experience, Brig. Gen. Johann Langenegger and Adolf Kloke-Lesch, a member of the GIZ Board of Directors.[9] The initiators of Nuremberg's "Security Conference" include the FDP-affiliated Friedrich Naumann Foundation as well as several prestigious security policy think tanks and lobbies, including the German Armed Forces Association, the Clausewitz Society, the Society for Military and Security Policy, the Reservists Association and the Bundeswehr and Economy Working Group of Bavaria.
Running Risks
The mergence of military and development policy objectives, which is evident both in the Nuremberg conference and in the cooperation agreement between GIZ and the defense ministry, is strongly criticized by segments of the opposition. As the development policy spokesperson of The Left Party Bundestag caucus Heike Haensel recently declared, the German government is thereby "deliberately running the risk of GIZ employees getting killed." In the theaters of operations, they are now simply "being considered part of the military."[10]
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