Hamburg / Muenster (Germany)
4 September 2009
Greetings for your party conference
Dear colleagues,
The German Gruene Friedensinitiative send their greetings
to your party conference and wish success, good discussions,
decisions, and resolutions. We are sure that the Afghanistan
war is one of your main topics and we would like to encourage
you to send a powerful anti-war-signal from your conference.
The job of the international Green movement is to delegitimate
the war. In the last years even many Greens have pressed
for a so-called strategy change in Afghanistan. The strategy
change came every year with a higher dose of military personnel
and equipment – resulting in more and more victims
on all sides. And finding the development aid workers as
servants and partners of the military. Accompanying the war
by more civilian personnel is not the solution.
In 2009 more than 100,000 Western soldiers are stationed
in Afghanistan – including ISAF, OEF and personnel
plus the mercenary soldiers. Although the number of the Soviet
Afghanistan troops is already reached, we can expect upto
40,000 more US troops in 2010, other NATO countries will
follow with troop increases.
Afghanistan is the Vietnam of our days. The regime change
in Afghanistan has completely failed, corruption and drug
productions prosper. The Western troops should withdraw short-term,
e.g. meaning in the next 6 months, not in 40 years time.
Even the US president has conceded that the war cannot be
won.
The learning of German debates is that the cry for strategy
change is a political dead end. Green parties in Europe should
be war denier, not war supporter. Changing the military strategy
is not our business. Demanding and implemting a short term
exit strategy is the responsible political step to take.
War does not end if opinion polls show majorities against
the war. In Germany, that has been the case for years; and
that could not stop the annual parliament decisions to increase
the number of German soldiers for Afghanistan. Policy changes
need political movements. Therefore, Green parties and their
members should engage in the peace movement against the Afghanistan
war. This movement should never forget its international
character. The end of the war not a national or nationalistic
British or German decision. The withdrawal of all NATO and
other international troops is the goal, national withdrawal
decisions can only pave the way for the overall Western withdrawal.
Good luck for your party conference!
Uli Cremer (Hamburg)
Wilhelm Achelpoehler (Muenster)
The “Gruene Friedensinitiative (GFI)” (Green
Peace Initiative) was founded in 2007. The GFI wants to save
the peace-political heritage of the Greens and follow up
the numerous peace-political ideas and concepts generated
within the Greens. The GFI acts as peace-political think-tank
and initiates debates about non-military alternatives. The
GFI rejects the current dominating military political orientation
of the German Greens. The last GFI appeal against committing
more German soldiers to Afghanistan in September 2008 (published
in the newspaper “tageszeitung”) was signed and
financially supported by 150 party members.
Contact:
Uli Cremer +49-160 / 81 21 622
cremer@gruene-friedensinitiative.de
Wilhelm Achelpöhler +49-171 / 17 17 392
achelpoehler@gruene-friedensinitiative.de
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