Army boss falls on sword over airstrike

KABUL - The head of Germany's armed forces has resigned over allegations of a military cover-up after a Nato airstrike in Afghanistan killed dozens of civilians.

General Wolfgang Schneiderhan's resignation caps a deeply embarrassing episode for Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Government over German policy in Afghanistan.

The September 4 bombing of two oil tankers in the northern town of Kunduz caused carnage and was the deadliest incident involving German troops since World War II.

At first the German Nato forces, which had ordered the attack, claimed that all those killed were insurgents, although later the Government in Berlin expressed regrets if innocent people had been among the victims.

Yesterday Schneiderhan, the highest-ranking official in the armed forces, asked to be relieved of his duties for failing to pass on crucial information to ministers.

Peter Wichert, a Deputy Defence Minister who was in office at the time of the attack, also stepped down.

The resignations came after Bild newspaper published photographs from a secret Army video indicating that civilian deaths were known about even as the Defence Minister at the time, Franz Josef Jung, was insisting there was no evidence to show anyone but Taleban fighters had died.

Karl-Theodor Zu Guttenberg, the present Defence Minister, maintained that his predecessor, who is now the Labour Minister, had not seen the video at the time of his statement and that he himself only saw the images on Thursday. But opposition parties are now calling for a parliamentary inquiry and are demanding Jung's resignation.

Germany's Parliament is at present debating whether to extend its deployment in Afghanistan amid rising domestic opposition.

United States President Barack Obama is expected to announce next week that he will send 34,000 reinforcements and request up to 10,000 extra troops from other Nato countries. Germany, which has about 4200 troops in northern Afghanistan, has agreed to send a further 120.

However, German forces are disengaging from peacekeeping duties in Kosovo and should, according to Western diplomats, be in a position to send more to help the Afghan mission.

The order for the airstrike in Kunduz appeared to contravene directives from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, that they should be used only if allied forces were in immediate danger and there was no risk of civilian casualties.

His directives followed a number of "collateral damage" incidents involving Nato troops that had caused widespread anger among Afghans.

It is still not clear exactly how many civilians died in the Kunduz strike, which followed the hijacking by Taleban insurgents of two oil trucks that subsequently became stranded in a river. People gathered to collect fuel and many died when the area was bombed.

After the bombing, which was carried out by a US F-15 fighter, McChrystal travelled from Kabul to examine the scene and demanded to know why German troops had not secured the area sooner to ascertain what exactly happened.

He asked Colonel Georg Klein, the commander of the base: "Why didn't RC-North [the Nato mission in the region] come here sooner?" Klein responded: "I can honestly say it was a mistake."

McChrystal then set up an inquiry under a Canadian general whose report has been sent to the German Government but not yet made public.

This month, Guttenberg said the Nato report had found "procedural errors" but had concluded that the order to carry out the bombings was "appropriate in military terms".

According to Nato sources, the report contained a number of other critical comments that he did not mention.

GERMAN FORCES IN FIRING LINE

Northern Afghanistan used to be seen as a relatively safe and stable area untouched by the insurgency in the south and east of the country. That, however, has changed for the worse.

The air strikes ordered by the German forces on hijacked tankers causing loss of life and devastating political consequences came against the backdrop of increasingly ferocious attacks by the Taleban.

Many of the roads outside the towns in Balkh and Kunduz are no longer safe, with the Taleban carrying out ambushes. Although the number of insurgents is low compared with places such as Helmand and Kandahar, Uzbeks and Chechens with links to al Qaeda are present.

Critics blame the Germans for allowing the infiltration of the north by the Taleban, accusing the 4200-strong contingent of failing to stem the flow of fighters.

The Germans insist they are now taking a more aggressive stance and recently around 300 of their soldiers took part in an operation with Afghan security forces in which a number of insurgents were killed and captured.

But that may be too late. "If you let snakes into your house they breed, and then you can only kill so many if you lay down poison," said Rahim Nasrullah, who owns a transport business in Kunduz city.

- INDEPENDENT