Berlin - The new German defence minister who took over last week, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, breached Tuesday a long-standing German taboo by using the word "war-like" to describe the armed conflict in Afghanistan. A revulsion for war has built up in Germany since its Second World War defeat in 1945. Many Germans, while backing peacekeeping abroad by their soldiers, oppose fighting in any war. To date, the Defence Ministry has insisted the Afghan conflict is not a war at all.
"I'll be perfectly frank. In parts of Afghanistan there are without any question war-like conditions," said Guttenberg in an interview published in the mass-circulation newspaper Bild.
"Personally, I understand any soldier who says, 'It doesn't matter whether it's a foreign army or Taliban terrorists who are attacking, wounding or killing me, it's a war in Afghanistan'," the defence minister said.
"The mission in Afghanistan has had a fighting element to it for several years. In the eyes of our soldiers and others, the Taliban is waging a war against the soldiers of the international community," he added.
However Guttenberg repeated Berlin's official position that the conflict is not a war as defined by international law.
Guttenberg, a charismatic 37-year-old conservative politician who as economics minister developed a reputation for plain talking, took over the defence portfolio from Franz Josef Jung, who had repeatedly insisted, "This is not a war."
The new minister spoke the same day as Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Washington, where President Barack Obama has been frustrated at Germany's reluctance to send more troops to Afghanistan.
Germany's soldiers' union, the Armed Forces Federation, welcomed Guttenberg's move.
"We are very grateful he is calling things what they really are. It shows how serious the situation is. Our men and women who come under fire every day say it is a war," the federation chairman, Colonel Ulrich Kirsch, told a newspaper, the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung.
Germany has 4,300 soldiers operating in the north of Afghanistan with light armoured vehicles. They have suffered dead and wounded in a series of set-piece skirmishes with Taliban insurgents using anti-armour weapons this year.
Defence Ministry spokesmen have argued that a war, as defined by international law, can only be fought between sovereign states.
They have explained that this position is necessary to maximize the value of life-insurance policies held by German soldiers, since insurers do not have to compensate for deaths of soldiers in a "war."
Guttenberg said, "International law is clear and says a war can only take place between nations. But do you think one single soldier cares about necessary legal, academic or semantic distinctions?
"Some of the words used in the past don't really describe the level of threat today," he added.
Guttenberg, who is a non-commissioned officer in the armed forces reserves, has been praised by the soldiers' union as a good choice for the portfolio.
His predecessor, Jung, also a conservative, repeatedly described what the German soldiers in Afghanistan do as a "mission for stability and the peaceful development of the nation." Jung has become German labour minister.
