Due to the Iran war? I didn’t know Germany even had a Middle East presence.
But I guess 30 guys holed up in a camp on the edge of the Erbil airport counts.
German military to leave base in Erbil, northern Iraq by September, Spiegel reports – German troops are set to withdraw from Erbil, Iraq, by the end of September following a broader effort to reduce Germany’s Middle East presence due to the Iran war.
30 of the 120 German soldiers stationed there are to be immediately flown to safety.
However, it was unclear at this time just who will be flying them out as the German military doesn’t have any aircraft that actually fly.
Germany is moving some of its military personnel from Iraq to neighboring countries over security concerns, the government told lawmakers, days after the killing of a top Iranian military commander in a U.S. drone strike.
Einige der in Bagdad und Tadschi stationierten Truppen sollen den Irak vorerst verlassen. Laut Verteidigungsministerin erfolgt der Teilabzug aus Sicherheitsgründen.
Clearly still under shock after his party’s latest crisis, the SPD’s ex-boss Gabriel just accidentally praised Donald Trump.
Needless to say he was immediately rushed to the nearest hospital and is currently under observation – and very strong medication.
German center-left SPD’s ex-leader Gabriel gives Trump praise – The US president is right to criticize China and to negotiate with North Korea, according to left-of-center former Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel. Gabriel also warned against seeing Trump voters as “dummies.”
“His criticism of China is justified, and so is his courage to negotiate with North Korea. And he is also right when he calls on Germany and Europe to get their terror-supporting citizens out of Syria and Iraq and put them on trial, instead of letting the Kurds deal with it.”
Out of the goodness of its heart. With a giant electricity agreement worth billions.
The Germans may not have been prepared to help free the country from Saddam Hussein militarily but they have finally taken a great step forward and are now prepared to free it from lots and lots of money makes the world go around.
Iraq and German giant Siemens have signed a framework electricity agreement potentially worth billions of dollars. The Iraqi premier was in Berlin to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“Our claim is that we are a reliable and affordable power supplier to the people of Iraq and want to help them rebuild their country.”
After all Germany has done for Iraq.
Germany’s main industry federation said U.S. pressure to quash Siemens AG’s $15 billion power-plant deal with Iraq is unacceptable and shows how President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance is corroding business decisions.
Iraq signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric Co. on Oct. 15 after U.S. officials warned Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi that U.S.-Iraqi relations would be at risk if his government accepted the deal with Siemens, Bloomberg reported.
Hey. All’s fair in love and business (Siemens is fighting back).
“To implement the America First doctrine in this way in the global competition of multinational companies is not acceptable.”
That means data privacy and Germans are notoriously big on that, as you well know.
Take Germany’s planned reconnaissance flights over Syria and Iraq, for instance. Germans are so concerned about data privacy that they are already planning not to share the intelligence they might gather there with their allies. Sicher ist sicher (better safe than sorry).
The aircraft are expected to operate from Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey, and as Nato allies, the two countries would normally expect to share intelligence. But German commanders are concerned Turkey may use surveillance information from the flights to direct attacks against Kurdish forces allied to the West.
Deutscher Anti-IS-Einsatz: Berlin will Aufklärungsdaten für Türkei zensieren
No, not the movie. That’s the number (12) of German “troops” currently active in Northern Iraq training Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
Just sending weapons all the time was starting to get a little peinlich (embarrassing) for everybody – even here in Berlin – so this bold military move needed to be undertaken to prove to the rest of the world that, well, I don’t know what this was supposed to prove.
And now get this: Word is out that Angela Merkel’s government may now even want to surge big time and send more than 100 trainers more.
But don’t worry another invasion of Poland or anything just yet: Under German law, any military deployment abroad requires parliamentary approval, but this mission may require more than a simple parliamentary vote. The Defence Ministry fears it may require a change in the Basic Law, Germany’s constitution, Bild reported quoting an unidentified ministry source.
Right. The Germans will change their constitution for this? Hey, it’s better to have a dirty dozen than no dirt at all.
550 German jihadists. Take one down and put in the ground, 549 German jihadists on the wall.
And it looks like we’re already down to 490, folks. All together now!
490 German jihadists on the wall, 490 German jihadists. Take one down and put in the ground, 489 German jihadists on the wall…
German intelligence sources say some 60 Germans have died fighting for the jihadist group “Islamic State.” Many others have returned from conflict zones in Syria and Iraq – and now pose a threat at home.
Word is out that Germans will “most likely” provide military training to Kurdish groups in northern Iraq.
That’s cool, I guess. But we can only hope that these trainers won’t be as ineffective as those who just spent ten years training Afghan police forces and failed miserably at it.
German officials have been training police in Afghanistan for a decade, but a visit to their training center in Mazar-e-Sharif creates major doubts about the effectiveness of the mission. Afghan police remain poorly prepared to tackle the mighty challenges they will face as Western forces withdraw.
Ineffective and Unsustainable: Failure Threatens Afghan Police Training Mission
You know, ransom? And this time the German government will be paying to get back two Salifists.
ISIS is holding two German hostages in Syria they now see as being traitors. It seems these two fun-loving extremists felt the calling and flew down south to help the ISIS cause only to be shocked by the atrocities their ISIS heros commit (it wasn’t like this on the video game). They have now expressed their keen desire to leave the real world and return back home to Theme Park Germany.
Die beiden Personen sollen frühere Salafisten sein, die nach Gräueltaten des IS nach Deutschland zurückkehren wollten.
Observing Hermann 