From Alice Baghdjian, Reuters:  Voluntary military service has exceeded expectations in Germany, which continues to struggle to define its international and military role in the historical wake of past aggression.

Since its introduction in July 2011, around 9,000 Germans are estimated to have volunteered in the scheme - almost double what the government had estimated.

At the Hans-Joachim von Zieten barracks in Beelitz, a run-down east German town whose asparagus harvest is hailed as the highlight of the municipal calendar, all 140 places for volunteers have been filled every quarter.

Fears that scrapping the decades-old draft for male school leavers would leave the army desperately understaffed have proved unfounded, said Lt. Col. Boris Nannt, commander of Beelitz and the logistics battalion based there.

Despite a shaky start - the national drop-out rate was 24 percent in the first six months - Nannt said he had not experienced any recruitment problems.

“I think it’s fair that if people come to the army voluntarily they should be able to leave. But the people who stay - the larger percentage - are tip-top,” he said.

“The big difference is that they want to be here and that’s more important to me as a commander,” he said… .

Under the last version of the draft, first introduced in West Germany in 1957, young men had faced compulsory service of six months. Now, as then, recruits who decide to extend their period of service to 18 months or more open themselves up to the possibility of serving in war zones.

With over 5,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, Germany is the third largest contributor of troops to the NATO-led force there, and has suffered 52 deaths since 2001.

Beelitz will send 300 soldiers to Afghanistan in October - the third time the battalion has deployed troops to the country.

Hassan Ahmad El-Hassan, 20, rings his mum every Thursday to ask what she will be cooking when he comes home at weekends.

As a Muslim, El-Hassan cannot eat the meat served in the mess, but he said this was a minor inconvenience.

Not only is he planning to extend his stay in the army, he would also be willing to serve in Afghanistan.

“They (the Taliban) are dragging my religion through the mud. That’s why there’s no question that I’d go out there because freedom should be the same for everybody,” he said.

El-Hassan, who was born in Berlin to Lebanese parents, said his decision to sign up stemmed from his gratitude to the country that had helped his family.

“Before, I thought I would go away for a year after school, travel around and go to America or Australia,” he said.

“But this country took my parents in when they fled Lebanon and gave us the chance to lead a normal life, and I really wanted to give something back,” he said.  (photo: Reuters)

From Aida Cerkez, the AP:  “Safe havens” for civilians in Syria? Think twice, Bosnians would warn.

With the U.N. unable to agree how to protect civilians against Bashar Assad’s forces, Western officials are discussing creation of safe corridors to deliver aid to Syrians trapped by the crackdown.

Similar measures failed badly during the war in Bosnia two decades ago that killed over 100,000 people and left millions homeless. The lesson of Bosnia is that without all sides honoring the agreement — and without a robust military response in case they don’t — such measures may have little effect and could actually prolong the misery.

In 1993, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that declared six cities in Bosnia as “safe havens” for civilians and deployed military observers to monitor the situation.

The U.N. protected zones in places like the capital of Sarajevo or the eastern enclave of Srebrenica in effect became prisons, subject to relentless shelling by Bosnian Serb forces that often denied they were responsible. The U.N. never managed to get enough aid through the corridors and smugglers made fortunes… .

Those safe havens actually lengthened the 1992-95 war.

Instead of stopping the bloodshed, they simply reduced it to a politically acceptable level. It enabled both the attackers and the resistance to continue fighting.

Without a quick political settlement, neither side could achieve victory and both staved off decisive defeat. It was not until Serb forces overran Srebrenica in July 1995 that the West could no longer sit and watch and deployed troops to stop the carnage.

The enclave fell after senior U.N. commanders rejected a request by a few hundred Dutch peacekeepers deployed in Srebrenica for air strikes and its Muslim Bosnian residents swarmed a U.N. military base, still believing the Dutch would protect them.

But outnumbered and outgunned, the U.N. peacekeepers allowed the Serbs to separate women and children from men and execute some 8,000 males in what later became known as the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Hans Blom, who oversaw a Dutch government-commisioned investigation into the Srebrenica massacre, said he is “very pessimistic” about what the international community can do in Syria. He voiced skepticism over the U.N.’s concept of “safe zones” or “safe areas,” calling it a very vague notion and difficult to enforce… .

Blom said that for now he doesn’t see a role for international peacekeepers in Syria because there is no peace to keep and any humanitarian workers who were to enter the country would face massive violence. Only a massive military intervention could stop the violence, he argued.

“Only if there is a very determined outside force willing to use military means, it’s maybe possible,” he said. “Interventions are a very complicated thing. And the terrible thing, of course, is that doing nothing is as bad.”

From Fatos Bytyci, Reuters:  Germany will oppose any partition of Kosovo, its foreign minister said Thursday following a warning by Kosovo Albanian leaders that Serbia wants its former province divided along ethnic lines.

Guido Westerwelle said the map of the Balkans had been decided and the issue of territorial changes was closed.

“For us it is clear that the situation and territorial integrity in this region is decided; this means this is out of discussion for us,” Westerwelle said at a news conference with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian premier during a visit to Pristina.

Westerwelle said German Chancellor Angela Merkel will pass on the same message during a visit to Serbia later this month.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, nine years after NATO bombing halted a Serbian military crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanians. But 60,000 Serbs in north Kosovo rejected the breakaway and still deem Belgrade their capital.

Some Serbian officials have floated the idea of partitioning Kosovo, effectively hiving off its northern Serb enclave… .

With 1,023 troops, Germany has the biggest military contingent in Kosovo’s NATO peacekeeping mission (KFOR). It is sending another 500 after the recent violence.  (photo: Reuters)