Nearly three years after the U.S. abuse scandal in Iraq first came to light, another one involving the German "peacekeepers" in Afghanistan has just surfaced threatening to tarnish the image of the entire NATO-led force in the country.
The German army is investigating allegations of misconduct of German soldiers in Afghanistan.
Germany's Bild newspaper published shocking photos depicting scandalous acts by German troops in Afghanistan. In one image a German soldier appeared playing with a human skull on a military vehicle.
"It's absolutely clear that we cannot tolerate such behaviour by German soldiers," Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung said, ordering an investigation into the incident and pledging that any soldier found to be involved in such scandalous acts would be punished, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Soldiers appearing in the appalling pictures published by Germany's biggest-selling daily, Bild, are believed to be German "peacekeepers", part of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), deployed near the capital, Kabul, in early 2003.
In one of the pictures, a soldier places the skull on the cablecutter at the front of a patrol vehicle, bearing the German flag and the acronym for the international force, ISAF.
In another, one soldier wearing a bullet-proof vest poses with the skull next to his exposed penis.
The paper said the photographs were taken in spring 2003.
Soldiers would have to reckon with disciplinary consequences 'and possible criminal prosecution' if investigation proved the photos' credibility.
"We are conducting the investigation at full steam," Jung said. If the incident is confirmed, he added, those involved will face "disciplinary or even criminal measures." Jung described the barbarous behaviour of soldiers as "diametrically opposed to the values and ways of behavior" that German troops are taught in training.
"Anyone who behaves this way has no place in the Bundeswehr," Jung said.
"It is revolting and disgusting," said Bernhard Gertz, chairman of the German Armed Forces Association, responsible for German soldiers in Afghanistan.
Under a headline reading "German soldiers desecrate a dead person," Bild said that the skull apparently came from a mass grave, but it didn't elaborate on whether it belonged to an Afghan or dated back to the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
The paper also didn't say how it obtained the photos.
"These pictures arouse repugnance and horror," the Defense Minister told reporters.
Two of the soldiers who appeared in the scandalous photos had been identified and are being investigated, Military chief of staff Gen. Wolfgang Schneiderhan said, adding that one of them is still with the military and the other has left the army.
"The matter has been handed over to prosecutors," Schneiderhan said.
Last week investigators launched a probe into allegations that German Special Forces in Afghanistan abused a prisoner named Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who was later kept at the U.S.-run detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Kurnaz complained that German soldiers slammed his head into the ground during interrogations at a camp near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar in 2002.
Schneiderhan said he rejects any attempt to draw comparison between the German soldiers' scandalous acts and the U.S. abuse scandal in Iraq which surfaced in April 2004 with the emergence of photos depicting sexual and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees at the hands of American troops at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib jail near the Iraqi capital.
Germany has 2,800 troops, part of 30,000-strong NATO-led "peacekeeping" force deployed in Afghanistan. Last month, Bundestag, or lower house of the German parliament, announced extending their mandate in Afghanistan until October next year.
It seems that this is the only form of peace and democracy Western countries can bring to the thirld world nations. First it was the U.S. and UK in Iraq and now German "peacekeepers in Afghanistan.
Source: Agencies and AlJazeera
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