Bowe Bergdahl

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Bowe Bergdahl (as Private First Class , 2009)

Bowe Robert Bergdahl (born March 28, 1986 in Sun Valley , Idaho ) is a former sergeant in the United States Army . Bergdahl was released on May 31, 2014 after five years imprisonment in Afghanistan . This was considered to be the "return home of 'America's last prisoner from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan'". In return, the United States surrendered five Guantánamo prisoners to Qatar .

Life

Bergdahl was born in 1986 in Idaho, the son of Jani and Robert Bergdahl. The family has Norwegian roots. His father works as a courier driver. Bowe Bergdahl never went to school but, like his older sister, was tutored at home by his mother. In the fall of 2008 he received a 16-week training course at the Infantry School in Fort Benning , Georgia. He was a member of 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. He was stationed in Fort Richardson , Alaska .

Use in the war in Afghanistan

Bergdahl was in March 2009 asymmetric warfare in the strategy of counterinsurgency (ger .: counterinsurgency (COIN)) on a US military base, the outpost Mest Malak in the city Yahya Khel, in the province of Paktika near the border with Pakistan used. The US Army described Paktika as a 99% rural region of the country with only 6% of households having access to electricity. Bergdahl learned some Pashtun there . Allegedly, he kept coming into contact with the Afghan people and spent more time with them than with his platoon (train).

Investigative journalist Michael Hastings published two long articles in Rolling Stone magazine about this period of war in Afghanistan . The first, The Runaway General , led to the immediate dismissal of the NATO commander in chief in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal , for insubordination and serious changes in the chain of command at the United States Central Command and the commander in chief of the ISAF troops in Afghanistan. The second article, America's Last Prisoner of War , on Soldier Bergdahl, reported missing and captured, was a key report, like the previously published post on General McChrystal. It was discussed that the prisoner exchange of five inmates of the Guantánamo military prison against the prisoner Bergdahl , which was later heavily criticized by the Republicans, was already planned by the US government and already discussed in parliament.

captivity

In June 2009 Bergdahl was taken prisoner of war. A commander of the Haqqani network reported to the AFP news agency on the phone details of Bergdahl's captivity. According to this information, after his abduction in June 2009, Bergdahl was initially hidden in eastern Afghanistan and then by the Haqqani network in the Pakistani tribal area of ​​North Waziristan .

release

The Taliban had made the release of five Guantánamo prisoners a condition for peace talks with the Afghan government. Initial contacts with the Taliban had repeatedly been broken in recent years because the US government refused to release the Guantánamo prisoners. Qatar then played a crucial role in mediating between the Taliban and the US government. In Qatar, the Taliban had an official Taliban liaison office for a long time. Finally, the Obama administration agreed to transfer the five Guantánamo prisoners to Qatar, where they could live with their families. They should initially not be allowed to travel on to Afghanistan for one year. The five men released are:

According to Obama, Qatar issued security guarantees to protect the US against acts of revenge. The Qatari emir Tamim Al Thani agreed to the US government to monitor the five men and not allow them to leave the country for a year. He also described the closure of Guantánamo in Cuba as his stated goal. The German federal government has also been supporting a reintegration project for former fighters of the anti-government forces for years: As part of the five-year peace and reintegration program of the Afghan government (Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program, APRP), the number of reintegrated fighters is now around 8,500. around 3,100 of them in northern Afghanistan. The German government has so far supported the program with over 30 million euros and is the second largest donor after Japan . Germany continued its support in 2014.

On May 31, 2014, Bergdahl was located near the border with the Pakistani province of Chost and taken aboard a helicopter from Bagram Air Base by a special task force of the US Special Forces . 18 Taliban were present when the prisoners were handed over. Bergdahl was flown from a US military base in Afghanistan to Ramstein Air Base and then given medical care at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Kaiserslautern . The clinic is the largest US military hospital outside the United States. There he was also prepared for the meeting with his parents in the USA.

US Security Advisor Susan Rice said immediately after Bergdahl's liberation that he served "with honor and distinction". In his statement in the rose garden of the White House, after Bergdahl's release, US President Obama thanked both the Emir of Qatar and the Afghan government for their mediating work and emphasized that the US government had been looking for years for the release of Iraq's last prisoner. and the war in Afghanistan. Bergdahl's father learned Pashto to communicate with the kidnappers via video messages. He said at a press conference with a long beard in front of the White House in Pashto: “I would like to say only one thing in Pashto to Bowe, who is now probably having difficulty communicating in his mother tongue. I'm your father, Bowe. "

For Obama, the good news of Bowe Bergdahl's return from the war marked the end of a week in which he promised the final withdrawal from Afghanistan in late 2016.

Indictment and verdict

Bergdahl did not appear in public after his return to the USA. In March 2015, it became known that he was charged with desertion and misconduct before the enemy. An investigation had previously come to the conclusion that he had left his post “deliberately and voluntarily”. A military jury should take up the case and, if necessary, refer it to a court martial for the actual trial . If found guilty, Bergdahl faced up to 28 years imprisonment, dishonorable discharge from the army with the loss of his salaries and the dismissal of his military rank.

On June 16, 2014, the US Army announced that it had started an investigation into the Bergdahl case. However, on June 25, she announced that there was no evidence that Bergdahl was engaged in any misconduct during the years of his imprisonment in Afghanistan.

In July 2014, Bergdahl resumed his service at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio , Texas .

In August 2014, a further investigation was announced by Major General Kenneth Dahl. In the process, Bergdahl testified that he left his position in June 2009 to report "misconduct in his unit" and that he intended to return quickly. Bergdahl told his attorney that he believed the only way to raise awareness of his concerns at the time was to take the information directly to a senior officer.

Another hearing took place in Fort Sam Houston in September 2015 . There Dahl testified that he had not found any evidence suggesting that Bergdahl sympathetic to the Taliban or that he wanted to desert. Furthermore, no soldier died trying to bring Bergdahl back. Detention would ultimately be an "inappropriate" sentence for Bergdahl.

On November 3, 2017, he was fined a total of $ 10,000, demoted, and dishonorably discharged from the military.

Reactions

The Taliban spokesman Sabihullah Mujahid warned against interpreting too much into the release of the Guantánamo prisoners. It was only about "an exchange of prisoners of war". As things stand at the time, 149 prisoners remained in the controversial US camp in Cuba, including twelve Afghans.

The Afghan government in Kabul protested vehemently against the extradition of the five Guantánamo prisoners to Qatar. The Afghan Foreign Ministry stressed that this was illegal and that the men had to be released immediately. According to international law, “no government may extradite the citizen of a country as a prisoner to a third country”. President Hamid Karzai was outraged by the prisoner exchange and accused the United States of no longer supporting the peace plan. He asked how the prisoner exchange with the US could have gone so smoothly if, at the same time, the peace process did not make progress.

In the United States, there has been heated controversy between the White House, Democrats and Republicans over the government's arbitrary negotiations that led to the release of the five Guantánamo prisoners. Republican Party officials criticized the prisoner exchange as a precedent that could create incentives for further kidnappings.

Former comrades of Bergdahl doubted that he was kidnapped by the Taliban. They suspected that he had deserted.

The second season of the successful podcast Serial from the producers of This American Life and the radio station WBEZ Chicago is about the story of Bowe Bergdahl.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bowe Bergdahl Fast Facts - CNN.com
  2. ↑ Bowe Bergdahl, returning from the war - Better, he's a hero FAZ.net from June 1, 2014
  3. ↑ Brief Narrative << Sgt Bowe Bergdahl ( Memento from June 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ^ The Runaway General - The Rolling Stone profile of Stanley McChrystal that changed history , Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010
  5. ↑ President Obama had General McChrystal flown into the White House one day after the article on the report from Kabul appeared, forcing him to resign and it was also the end of his entire staff. At McChrystal's resignation, Obama said: “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe that it is the right decision for our national security. The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan ”; quoted from Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone on the Story that Brought Down Gen. McChrystal , Democracy Now! from July 1, 2010.
  6. ↑ Obama fires General McChrystal , Deutsche Welle, June 23, 2010.
  7. ↑ Michael Hastings : America's Last Prisoner of War . In: Rolling Stone, June 7, 2012.
  8. ↑ http://www.lessentiel.lu/de/news/story/15754402
  9. ↑ Ansgar Graw: High Treason ?: Bergdahl case becomes uncomfortable for Obama. In: welt.de . March 26, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  10. ↑ FAZ.net: War returnees Bowe Bergdahl - Better, he's a hero from June 1, 2014.
  11. ↑ Cleveland.com: Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl freed from captivity in Afghanistan June 1, 2014.
  12. ↑ http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/guantanamo510.html ( Memento from June 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Progress report on the situation in Afghanistan 2014 including an interim assessment of the Afghanistan engagement. Reconciliation and reintegration , German Bundestag, November 20, 2014.
  14. ↑ Former Taliban hostage in Afghanistan: Bergdahl accused of deserter at tagesschau.de, March 25, 2015 (accessed March 26, 2015).
  15. ^ Army Begins Probe Of Bowe Bergdahl's 2009 Disappearance . In: The Huffington Post . Retrieved March 25, 2015.
  16. ^ Dion Nissenbaum: No Evidence of Misconduct by Bergdahl While Captive, Army Says . In: The Wall Street Journal , June 25, 2014. Retrieved July 15, 2014. Todd Lopez: Official: Initial Bergdahl Investigation Was Inconclusive . In: Army News Service , United States Department of Defense, June 25, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2014. 
     
  17. ↑ Bowe Bergdahl Set To Return To US Army Active Duty: Reports . In: Huffington Post , July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 15, 2014. 
  18. ^ Maggie Ybarra: Army extends investigation into Bergdahl case . In: Washington Times , August 19, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2014. Investigation into Bergdahl disappearance extended . In: KSAT , Graham Holdings, August 16, 2014. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014 Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved August 22, 2014. Kristina Wong: Army extends Bergdahl probe . In: The Hill , News Communications, Inc., August 17, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2014. 
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  19. ^ A b c Robert A. Oppel Jr., Bowe Bergdahl Should Not Be Imprisoned, Army Investigator Says (September 18, 2015).
  20. ↑ a b Ralph Ellis, Faith Karimi & Chris Lett, Bowe Bergdahl investigation leader says GI should not face jail time , CNN (September 21, 2015).
  21. ↑ a b Josh Rogin: Bergdahl's Defense Is He Was Planning to Come Back . Retrieved March 27, 2015.
  22. ↑ Krishnadev Calamur, The Case of Bowe Bergdahl: The Army sergeant will be in court for a preliminary hearing into whether he deserted his post in Afghanistan , The Atlantic (September 17, 2015).
  23. ↑ tagesschau.de: US deserter Bergdahl remains a free man. Retrieved November 3, 2017 .
  24. ↑ tagesschau.de http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/bergdahl108.html ( Memento from June 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  25. ↑ sueddeutsche.de http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/vater-des-us-soldaten-bowe-bergdahl-mit-der-sprache-des-gegners-1.1982319-2
personal data
SURNAME Bergdahl, Bowe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergdahl, Bowe Robert (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American soldier and prisoner of war
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1986
PLACE OF BIRTH Sun Valley , Idaho , USA