German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 19/238,
pp. 30999-31000.
Herr President. Ladies and gentlemen.
In Afghanistan, the results of a 20-year-long Western
engagement have been pulverized within a few days. The Taliban could re-conquer
the country without striking an opposition worthy of the name and the German
government knew nothing of it. The BND
[Federal Intelligence Service] knew nothing of it, Foreign Minister Maas was
entirely surprised while the Taliban conquered Kabul, the Chancellor sat in a
cinema, and the Defense Minister publicly baked tarte flambée.
The mission has cost the lives of 59 Bundeswehr soldiers and
the health of hundreds. Billions of euros were wasted in the Hindukush. And all
of that for what? Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Americans
had started a war against terror and sent troops to the Hindukush. It was the
sheer action for action’s sake of a great power attacked. Thus a reason for war
need be subsequently furnished. It left off at friendly names like the “export
of democracy” and “nation building”. Defense Minister Annegret
Kramp-Karrenbauer with hindsight based the mission on women’s rights. Without the
Bundeswehr, she said – the Chancellor has indeed today repeated it – there would
today apparently be no schools for girls and no women in the highest offices.
In other words, ladies and gentlemen, so as to carry gender
justice into the Moslem world, German men need lose their lives there.
Mechthild Rawert (SPD): Oh, that is disgusting!
How many Afghan women in high office or girls in school
actually make up for one dead German soldier?
In March 2004, the Defense Minister Peter Struck – the Chancellor
has recalled it – had declared: The security of the Federal Republic will also
be defended in the Hindukush. – Today we can, in view of the expected migration
streams form Afghanistan, subsequently correct Herr Struck. It needs be rightly
named: The security of Germany was first endangered in the Hindukush – and then
lost.
While the Bundeswehr officially fought terror, the
oppression of women and violent ethnic structures there, the policy imported the
carriers of such structures to Germany. The soldiers offered their bones to the
Hindukush for a policy which brings the Hindukush to Germany. The Allies were
always a year, an army, an idea behind.
In Afghanistan, the idea of “One World” and the export of the
Western way of living has failed with a crash. Our values, ladies and
gentlemen, are not universal. The majority of Afghans whistle at
Westernization. Who believes that
generations of ethno-cultural formation can be treated with enlightenment
courses and gender-mainstreaming only attests to a monstrous ignorance. Every
culture is simply not compatible with every other culture. Many people do not want to live like us at any price – and we also not like them.
Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, it is foolish, and
sometimes life-threatening, to haul them to us. Nevertheless, the EU Interior
Commissioner Johansson demands that endangered persons from Afghanistan be
quickly re-settled in Europe so as to here find a new home; the number of which
she estimates to be up to 5 million; the Federal Interior Minister has
propagated this same number. That, ladies and gentlemen, is complete madness!
According to an estimate of high-ranking soldiers who had
long served in Afghanistan, the number of the local auxiliaries [Ortskräfte], that is those natives who
in fact have worked loyally for the Bundeswehr, varies in the lower four-figure
range. To an inquiry of the Greens in the year 2018, the government named 576 Ortskräfte. To these people and their
families we can and will give asylum, but to no one beyond that.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already declared that
his country will accept not a single Afghan. Most other Europeans will react
similarly. Our country can cope with a second 2015 neither financially nor in
terms of security policy.
The lesson of the Bundeswehr’s Afghanistan mission reads:
Our army has nothing to seek in foreign lands. Exceptions to that are where
proximate German interests are affected, such as the fight against piracy. Otherwise,
it is to be exclusively an instrument of national defense. Instead of defending
women’s rights against the Taliban in the Orient, it should preferably defend
the German borders from dangers
Claudia Roth (Greens): My goodness!
which arise from the influx of people to whom our way of
living is fully foreign.
I thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
[trans: tem]
