Johannes Stern
The Grand Coalition is continuing the war mission of the Bundeswehr [Armed forces of Germany] in Syria and Iraq and will deploy its contingents in the region beyond its current mandate. This was decided by the federal cabinet last Wednesday.
The decision is supported by both government factions. Already last Monday, Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and new German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) had informed the parliamentary group leaders in the Bundestag about the plans in a joint letter.
A central point is the extension of the deployment of the Luftwaffe [German Air Force], which operates with fighter jets and tanker aircraft from the Jordanian military base in al-Azraq, for another five months until the end of March 2020. The training mission of the German Armed Forces in central Iraq and in the Kurdish autonomous region in the north of the country will be extended for a further year until 31 October 2020.
In their letter, Maas and Kramp-Karrenbauer justify the extension of the missions by invoking a continuing threat from the so-called Islamic State (IS). Even after the loss of its territorial areas in Syria and Iraq, the letter claimed the Islamist militia still had thousands of fighters and supporters at its disposal, thus posing a threat to the stability of Iraq, the region and the security of Germany and Europe.
That is the old propaganda. In reality, Germany and the other powers involved in the US-led mission are not concerned about the fight against the IS, which is itself a product of the US military intervention in Syria and Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands and destroyed large parts of the Middle East. It is about imperialist interests and the control of the resource-rich and geostrategically important region.
Comments in the bourgeois media and strategy papers of the foreign policy think tanks openly discuss this. “It’s about domination,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung commented two months ago. The conflict in the region “is not only about freedom of navigation and the smooth supply of the world economy with the lubricant of oil. The overarching objective is rather to control a region whose strategic importance in a world that continues to depend on oil should not be underestimated.”
The German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) argues in a recent paper, headlined “A ship will come”, for a European naval mission in the Persian Gulf led by Berlin. It states: “The unimpeded use of transport, supply and trading lines as well as the security of raw material and energy supply are among the foreign and security policy priorities of an export-dependent nation like the Federal Republic of Germany.”
In their letter, Maas and Kramp-Karrenbauer claim that the core of the missions in Syria and Iraq is “the German civilian commitment in the areas of humanitarian aid, stabilisation and the creation of the foundations for reconstruction”. In fact, it’s about war. “For the work of the civilian measures”, “the fight against the IS with military means remains necessary and the German military contribution indispensable”, the letters stresses.
The German government is stepping up its military intervention in the region at a time when US war preparations against Iran are escalating.
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