Some soldiers in Afghanistan drink beer, the others risk their lives. That is how the British have characterized the current disparity among NATO allies in Afghanistan. The pressure on the Germans is growing.
So close, yet so far away. German troops are only a chopper trip from Afghanistan's war-torn southern provinces -- they could be deployed to dangerous combat zones within moments. But, the gulf that separates the Bundeswehr and its NATO allies holding the south is a wide, tangled mess of legal caveats and domestic politics that no chopper can traverse.
Once again this week, the friction that has been steadily building between Germany and its NATO allies flared up as 340 parliamentarians gathered in Quebec City, Canada for their annual meeting. Things are not going well in Afghanistan and allies fighting in the more dangerous southern part of the country are fed up with countries -- like Germany, France, Italy and Spain -- refusing to send reinforcements from their relatively peaceful sectors in the northern Afghanistan.
According to the German Green Party defense expert Winfried Nachtwei, who was at the meeting -- as quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Web site -- a British participant said that there are soldiers in Afghanistan who drink beer or tea, and there are soldiers who risk their lives.
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