Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing growing political pressure to boost Germany’s role in the Iraq crisis with her deputy no longer ruling out sending weapons to Kurdish fighters in support of their struggle against the extremist Islamic State (IS).
While Merkel’s spokesman on Monday rejected sending arms to northern Iraq, Germany’s Vice Chancellor and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel opened the door on Tuesday to future weapons deliveries to the Kurds.
Depending on developments in the region, Germany and its European Union partners “must talk about all forms of help” including arms, Gabriel said in Berlin following a meeting with leaders of the Yezidi community in Germany.
Tens of thousands of Yezidis living in northern Iraq have fled into desolate mountain areas in an attempt to escape the brutality of IS forces, resulting in a major humanitarian crisis in the region.
“A genocide is … in full swing,” Ifan Ortac, a Yezidi leader told the joint press conference with Gabriel, who is also head of the left-leaning Social Democratic Party – the junior member of the Merkel’s ruling coalition.
Gabriel said there were no plans for the German army to join a protection zone set up around the Yezidi people in northern Iraq, as proposed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Any protection zone would be policed by US or Iraqi forces, said Gabriel.
He also said that there was a possibility that Germany would “upgrade” the Iraqi army, but failed to give more details.
Gabriel’s comments come in the wake of a growing debate among German lawmakers about the need for the nation to step up military support to halt the advance of IS forces.
“You can only act against this terror militarily,” Hans-Peter Uhl, a senior member of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrat-led political bloc, told the daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday.
In calling on Berlin to send military aid to the Kurds, Uhl added his name to a growing list of German lawmakers – including members of Merkel’s political bloc – who argue that the government needs to rethink its stance on the Iraq crisis.
This is despite Germany’s long-standing reluctance to join military operations in international flashpoints, due in part to the legacy of the Nazis’ military aggression last century.
Those calling for sending arms even included Gregor Gysi, the parliamentary leader of the hard-left Linke Party, which normally takes a strong anti-war stance.
Gysi argued on Monday that the only way to push back against IS fighters was through military action, and that this justified arming the Kurds and the Iraqi government.
The debate in Germany also follows the United States’ decision to send weapons to support Kurdish fighters in their battle against IS militants.
But members of Gabriel’s SPD warned that arming the Kurds could inflame tensions in the region.
SPD foreign policy expert Niels Annen said sending modern weapons to the region ultimately “could lead to the next war.”
The SPD’s views were echoed by the opposition Green Party, whose foreign affairs spokesman Omid Nouripour warned that arming the Kurds could trigger a conflict with neighbouring Turkey and Iran.
In his comments on Monday, Seibert compared the events unfolding in northern Iraq with the massacres in Rwanda as well as those perpetrated against the Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica.
GNA
PDC
