SHARE
COPY LINK

WEAPONS

Merkel gets flak for record Gulf arms sales

German arms exports to Gulf states are set to hit a new record in 2013, it was reported on Wednesday. In the first six months alone, the country sent over €800 million worth of combat weapons to the troubled region.

Merkel gets flak for record Gulf arms sales
Photo: DPA

Germany is sending millions of euros worth of tanks and howitzers to a region where governments have been accused of using force against their own citizens in violent crackdowns against dissent.

Judging by booming sales in the first half of 2013, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government looks set to top the record €1.42 billion of arms sold to Gulf states last year – €1.24 billion to Saudi Arabia alone – wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday.

Weapons worth €817 million have been approved for export to the six governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) this year, said the paper – most of which are destined for Qatar.

The figures come from the Federal Economics Ministry, released in response to a Left party parliamentary enquiry.

The majority of the recent arms sales – €635 million worth – has been to Qatar. In April newspaper reports revealed the Arab emirate had bought 62 German Leopard 2 combat tanks and 24 Panzerhaubitze tracked self-propelled howitzers.

“Angela Merkel is developing into the best friend of the Gulf despots,”

Left party MP and arms trade expert Jan van Aken told the paper. “If it carries on like this 2013 will probably break a new record.”

Merkel’s government has come under fire over the past 18 months from domestic critics who question the morality of arming governments with less-than-perfect human rights records during the upheavals of the Arab Spring.

“Despite all criticism Angela Merkel remains completely without conscience in her weapons exports,” van Aken told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“The German arms industry seems to be more important to her than human rights. She’s acting as if the Arab Spring never happened,” he added.

The Local/jlb

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

POLITICS

Sleep, seaside, potato soup: What will Merkel do next?

 After 16 years in charge of Europe's biggest economy, the first thing Angela Merkel wants to do when she retires from politics is take "a little nap". But what about after that?

Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes and smiles at a 2018 press conference in Berlin.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes at a 2018 press conference in Berlin. Aside from plans to take "a little nap" after retiring this week, she hasn't given much away about what she might do next. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

The veteran chancellor has been tight-lipped about what she will do after handing over the reins to her successor Olaf Scholz on December 8th.

During her four terms in office, 67-year-old Merkel was often described as the most powerful woman in the world — but she hinted recently that she will not miss being in charge.

“I will understand very quickly that all this is now someone else’s responsibility. And I think I’m going to like that situation a lot,” she said during a trip to Washington this summer.

Famous for her stamina and her ability to remain fresh after all-night meetings, Merkel once said she can store sleep like a camel stores water.

But when asked about her retirement in Washington, she replied: “Maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will start to close because I’m tired, so I’ll take a little nap, and then we’ll see where I show up.”

READ ALSO: ‘Eternal’ chancellor: Germany’s Merkel to hand over power
READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

‘See what happens’
First elected as an MP in 1990, just after German reunification, Merkel recently suggested she had never had time to stop and reflect on what else she might like to do.

“I have never had a normal working day and… I have naturally stopped asking myself what interests me most outside politics,” she told an audience during a joint interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

“As I have reached the age of 67, I don’t have an infinite amount of time left. This means that I want to think carefully about what I want to do in the next phase of my life,” she said.

“Do I want to write, do I want to speak, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I’ve decided to just do nothing to begin with and see what happens.”

Merkel’s predecessors have not stayed quiet for long. Helmut Schmidt, who left the chancellery in 1982, became co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a popular commentator on political life.

Helmut Kohl set up his own consultancy firm and Gerhard Schroeder became a lobbyist, taking a controversial position as chairman of the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

German writer David Safier has imagined a more eccentric future for Merkel, penning a crime novel called Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark  that sees her tempted out of retirement to investigate a mysterious murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel forms her trademark hand gesture, the so-called “Merkel-Raute” (known in English as the Merkel rhombus, Merkel diamond or Triangle of Power). (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
 

Planting vegetables
Merkel may wish to spend more time with her husband Joachim Sauer in Hohenwalde, near Templin in the former East Germany where she grew up, and where she has a holiday home that she retreats to when she’s weary.

Among the leisure activities she may undertake there is vegetable, and especially, potato planting, something that she once told Bunte magazine in an interview in 2013 that she enjoyed doing.

She is also known to be a fan of the volcanic island of D’Ischia, especially the remote seaside village of Sant’Angelo.

Merkel was captured on a smartphone video this week browsing the footwear in a Berlin sportswear store, leading to speculation that she may be planning something active.

Or the former scientist could embark on a speaking tour of the countless universities from Seoul to Tel Aviv that have awarded her honorary doctorates.

Merkel is set to receive a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros ($16,900) in her retirement, according to a calculation by the German Taxpayers’ Association.

But she has never been one for lavish spending, living in a fourth-floor apartment in Berlin and often doing her own grocery shopping.

In 2014, she even took Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to her favourite supermarket in Berlin after a bilateral meeting.

So perhaps she will simply spend some quiet nights in sipping her beloved white wine and whipping up the dish she once declared as her favourite, a “really good potato soup”.

SHOW COMMENTS