GERMANY has admitted its Special Forces have spent three years in Afghanistan without doing a single mission, and are now going to be withdrawn.
More than 100 soldiers from the elite Kommando Spezialkrafte regiment, or KSK, are set to leave the war-torn country after their foreign minister revealed they had never left their bases on an operation.
The KSK troops were originally sent to A
fghanistan to lead counter-terrorist operations.
But Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, admitted they had not been deployed "a single time" in the last three years, despite a desperate shortage of Special Forces units in the country.
Troops from Britain's Special Boat Service and the SAS work round the clock, across Afghanistan, alongside US navy Seals and Delta Force, to target terrorists, arrest drug lords and rescue hostages.
The KSK were part of the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom, which spearheads the international hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Senior military officials last night blasted the KSK commanders for keeping the troops in camp. One western military official accused Germany of "sitting on the sidelines while the rest of the world fights".
He said: "It's just unbelievable to think there have been 100 highly-trained troops sitting doing nothing for three years, while everyone else has worked their socks off. It's no good sending troops if they don't do anything. They might as well have stayed at home."
Another source said: "It's ludicrous that they would be here and not contributing."
Berlin is under almost constant pressure from the rest of Nato to increase its troop contribution and scrap special national caveats which prevent German troops deploying to volatile parts of the country, like Helmand. Last year it emerged that Norwegian troops, fighting alongside their German allies, were forced to abandon a battle at tea-time because German pilots refused to fly emergency medical helicopters in the dark.
Mr Steinmeier claimed the KSK's inactivity as an excuse to withdraw the Commandos from Afghanistan.
He said: "That's why the KSK element should be taken out of the OEF mandate."
Berlin was set to renew the KSK mission for another year in November, but they are now expected to fly home instead.
A spokesman for Operation Enduring Freedom said: "We don't have enough troops in Afghanistan."
But, he added: "Common sense says if they weren't being used, they won't be missed."
The KSK revelations came as Nato's leading commanders were renewing their calls for more troops.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, agreed to send an extra 1,000 troops to Afghanistan this week, but they will be confined to the north of the country which is relatively safe.
Most of Germany's troops are based in Mazar-e Sharif, at an airbase complete with a series of bars and a nightclub. Nato wants Germany to do more in Afghanistan, but the mission is deeply unpopular with German voters.
Mr Steinmeier told Der Spiegel newspaper: "You cannot just keep piling elements on without taking a critical look at our current responsibilities."
BACKGROUNDSOME 40 countries contribute troops to the 47,600-strong Nato mission in Afghanistan, led by the United States with some 18,000 troops and Britain with more than 8,000. Germany is the third largest contributor. The US is set to send an extra 14,000 troops to Afghanistan next year, and it has been rumoured there are British plans to send 4,000 more.
It is still British, American, Canadian, Dutch, Australian and Danish soldiers who bear much of the combat weight in the country, alongside the soldiers of the Afghan national army. A recent French deployment led to the death of ten soldiers in a Taleban ambush, leading to widespread calls to withdraw the troops.
The full article contains 634 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
