Military group says more German police needed in Afghanistan

“Robbery, blackmail, murder, hold-ups and larceny plague the situation in Kabul,” association head Ulrich Kirsch told the paper. “It can’t be solved militarily. The international community must immediately begin fighting crime more intensly,” he said.

Germany has fulfilled its promise to send some 4,500 Bundeswehr soldiers to for NATO in the region, he said. But alliance members expect new US President Barack Obama to ask for more troops to fight in the region, the paper reported.

Kirsch emphasised that German police have been working successfully to train Afghan police, saying it was “correct in the long term” because more police are needed to combat increasing crime.

“At the same time we need a civil mandate that clearly lays out the reconstruction,” he said. In the eighth year of Germany’s presence in the country, politicians still don’t understand that work in Afghanistan is a “Herculean task,” he said.

The German Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, voted in October to extend Germany’s participation in Afghanistan and increase the number of soldiers deployed there to 4,500. Most of the troops are stationed in northern Afghanistan, and have become the target of an increasing number of insurgent attacks as part of the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission there.