Von der Leyen: Battle IS, dissaude recruits
January 11, 2015
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen began a visit to Iraq on Sunday, including talks with Iraqi President Fouad Massoum by linking Berlin's supplies and training for Kurdish forces with the past week's terror attacks in France.
The news agency Reuters quoted von der Leyen as saying during her flight into Baghdad that it was crucial to "break the mythos of the invincibility of the IS."
Last Wednesday's fatal terror attack on the Paris satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo was an indication of the importance of Germany's arms deliveries to the Kurds and a planned Bundeswehr training mission in Kurdish-run northern Iraq, von der Leyen said.
No evading threat, says von der Leyen
"The more successful the IS is; the more attractive it is for young people," von der Leyen said. "The longer the IS remains strong and attractive the more the threat rises for us at home."
"One cannot evade it by saying we keep ourselves out of it," she added.
Security analysts estimate that some 3,400 would-be jihadist recruits from Europe, including 550 from Germany, have set out over the past year to join the IS in parts of Syria and Iraq.
Since its seizure last April of a swathe of northern Syria and western Iraq, the Islamic State (IS) militia has been stalled by US-led multinational air raids.
Germany as a member of the coalition formed in Wales in September has not sent warplanes but limited its input to arming and equipping 10,000 Kurdish fighters in northern Iraq.
Baghdad has begun a process to rebuild Iraq's national army.
German training mission planned for northern Iraq
Last month, the German cabinet endorsed a plan to send up to 100 German armed forces - Bundeswehr - personnel to the Iraqi Kurdish hub of Irbil on a one-year mission to train kurdish forces for the battle against the IS.
Germany has already sent weapons and vehicles worth 70 million euros ($87 million). The German parliament is to debate the planned training mission late this month.
On Saturday, the German news magazine der Spiegel reported in its online edition that Iraqi Kurdish leaders had officially asked the German government for more assault rifles and ammunition.
Von der Leyen's arrival in Baghdad on Sunday was not preannounced - for security reasons - and began late.
Her Bundeswehr transport plane was delayed for two hours during its stopover in Amman, Jordan, by an overnight snowfall.
The eastern Mediterranean is currently in the grip of freezing weather that has left war refugees from Syria at camps in neighboring countries in miserable conditions.
ipj/bw (dpa, Reuters, AFP, AP)