Bundeswehr Blues; Germany plans to remake its Army into a rapid-reaction, humanitarian-intervention force. Can it?

Byline: Stefan Theil

Never during its four-year deployment has the German Bundeswehr's contingent in Afghanistan gotten such a rash of coverage. Two weeks ago, the troops were at the center of the "Skulls Affair," after a tabloid published photographs from 2003 of soldiers posing with old skulls they'd found in a clay pit next to a former Soviet outpost. Then, last week, Germans were scandalized by revelations that a special-forces unit stationed in Oman had stenciled on the door of its jeep a palm tree and Iron Cross vaguely reminiscent of the Wehrmacht's famed Afrika Korps under Erwin (Desert Fox) Rommel. Just this weekend, Germans were shocked yet again by fresh allegations that a German soldier in 2002 put a gun to an Afghan child's head as a macabre "joke." Banner headlines called the incidents germany's abu ghraib. Commentators questioned the sense of Germany's Afghanistan mission. A survey released last week showed 73 percent of Germans want the Bundeswehr to cut back its foreign engagements.

Reality check, anyone? Distasteful these incidents were, yes. But they hardly reflect upon Germany's 2,700 soldiers in Afghanistan the way prisoner abuses and alle-gations of torture discredited America's reputation in Iraq. If anything, the tizzy illustrates a growing nervousness on the home front. With the German Navy deploying on the coast of Lebanon last week and fresh worries that German peacekeepers in Congo may not be home as planned by Christmas, the country seems only now to be wak-ing up to its new global military role. So far, Germany's missions have been mainly humanitarian, largely avoiding both having to kill and the risk of getting killed. With growing unease, Germans are beginning to realize that things aren't likely to stay that way.

The pace of change has indeed been unsettling. It took a constitutional-court ruling in 1994 to permit German soldiers to be deployed abroad at all. Today, close to 10,000 Bundeswehr troops find themselves stationed in places as far-flung as Bosnia, Djibouti and southern Sudan--where the Germans patrol streets, dig wells and build schools. That much Germans have gotten used to, and it suits their self-image as a power that doesn't do the nasty things others (like the Americans) do. Says Jan Techau of the German Coun-cil on Foreign Relations, "The idea of Germans waging war is still a great taboo."

But all of a sudden, Germany seems to be inching toward breaking that taboo. As the Skulls Affair ...