For Afghanistan veterans, the war is not over

SSince his return from Afghanistan 14 years ago, Martin Weber hasn’t been able to rest, even when he’s asleep. This year is particularly bad. Since February he has been constantly confronted with images of the war in Ukraine, most recently again with images of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was the anniversary of the summer and is now being processed in the Bundestag. “It tears everything up again. You’re constantly on this alert, in this vigil mode,” he says. “Like on the job.” Weber is in his mid-40s, a master vehicle builder and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, a hand injury from Afghanistan has not healed to this day. Weber has a disability card and is entitled to care.

When Weber, who actually has a different name, talks about the current situation in Afghanistan, his quiet voice gets a little louder in the Saxon dialect. “It’s a real disaster for me. First and foremost with regard to the population, which had been promised a prosperous future for years. In the second place with regard to everyone who lost their life there.” At some point he himself will appear: “I wasted my health, physically and mentally, gambled away my professional future, I left my light-heartedness in this country. For what?”

Many returnees from Afghanistan ask themselves the question of meaning, as David Hallbauer from the Association of German Veterans knows. 93,000 German soldiers were deployed in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2021. It is estimated that up to 20 percent of them are mentally impaired. For many, the chaotic withdrawal over a year ago was another low blow. Hallbauer still remembers those days well. He was away on vacation at the time, calls to the office phone were forwarded to his cell phone. “I actually phoned through the two weeks on family vacation,” he says today. “There were a lot of people who were re-traumatized by the way the deduction was made.”

“Administrative war after the war”

Dealing with them after their return is also traumatic for many. It is sometimes difficult to prove that someone was traveling in Kunduz with a specific association years ago. Applications are sometimes rejected, traumatized people have to go to court. Hallbauer knows of cases in which more than a decade passed before the pension claims were approved. He speaks of the “administrative war after the war”. That’s how Martin Weber experienced it. He received an official diagnosis of his PTSD three years after his return. Two more years passed before a so-called military service impairment was recognised.

Weber tells his story as if it weren’t his own. About a particularly heavy rocket fire, he says: “You really watched your whole life pass by.” And about the first week after his return to Germany: “Half of the brain is always awake, massively sensitive to all sounds and smells that somehow sound or smell like what you experienced in Kunduz.”

When Weber sees images of war, hears a door slam or the engines of an airplane, he relives the worst moments of his mission. Most often the evening of February 19, 2008. It was cold, the sky was clear, when he walked through the dusty camp on his way back from the fitness room and sat down briefly with his comrades at a fire barrel. He heard a loud whistle – then a rocket hit, shrapnel flying through the air. Weber stood there petrified, unable to make a decision, unable to move. “The worst part was deciding quickly: Where am I running to? If I run to the right, I’m dead, if I run to the left, I’m dead too.”