Parliament backs plan to provide support staff and reconnaissance jets, but Germans will not actively engage in combat

Germany’s parliament has thrown its weight behind the European campaign against Islamic State, voting with a solid majority in favour of deploying military personnel to Syria in a non-combat role.

In a heated debate that preceded the vote, members of the Left party argued that the mission was lacking in concept and was taking place too hastily after the terror attacks on Paris three weeks ago.

The majority of the 445 MPs who voted in favour came from the chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition of conservatives and social democrats (SPD). The cabinet approved the deployment on Tuesday.

German forces will not cooperate with troops under the command of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and their role will be strictly non-combative.

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Germany will send 1,200 personnel, six Tornado reconnaissance jets and the frigate Augsburg, to protect the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the Mediterranean. It will also provide refuelling aircraft capable of operating in mid-air, enabling longer offensives to take place.

The deployment will be Germany’s largest anywhere in the world and the most dangerous since the government of Gerhard Schröder sent troops to Afghanistan in 2001.

Reconnaissance planes are expected to be sent to Turkey within the next week. The reconnaissance missions are due to start in January.

Public approval of military intervention is high for a nation that is famous for its post-second world war reluctance to deploy troops and that prides itself on its pacifist stance. Analysts say opinion has been influenced by the way in which Germans have felt the direct impact of the conflict through the large number of Syrian refugees who have arrived since the crisis began.

About 58% of Germans are in favour of military intervention in Syria, and 34% support direct participation in airstrikes. But a majority say they believe the mission will increase the risk of Germany being a target for terrorists.

Out of 598 MPs, 146 voted against the mission and seven abstained. The mandate runs until the end of 2016, when parliament will have to vote again to renew it.

Addressing Germans’ concerns that the mission might contravene international agreements, Heiko Maas, the justice minister, said in an interview with the daily Tagesspiegel that it was completely valid.

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“The German public can be sure that the Syria operation contravenes neither international law nor Germany’s constitution,” he said. “There are three resolutions of the UN security council against IS [Isis], which cover the draft mandate. As well as that France can quite rightly rely on the support obligations of its EU partners.”

Thomas Oppermann, head of the SPDs’ parliamentary group, said in an interview with public television that he was confident the mission had widespread support in Germany.

“The German public has a good intuitive sense that the Islamic State not only threatens France but also the freedom of the whole world and us as Germans,” he said.

But Sahra Wagenknecht, chair of the Left party, said intervention would only worsen the situation in Syria. “It is simply a lie that this military deployment will weaken Isis,” she said. She accused the US of having “created a monster that’s made us scared today”, and said terrorism was “the product of the west’s wars in the world”.

Anton Hofreiter, of the Greens, criticised the speed with which the mandate was being pushed through. “Airstrikes on their own do not amount to a military strategy,” he said.

But Norbert Röttgen, of Merkel’s conservatives and chairman of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, staunchly defended the operation, saying that without military intervention “diplomacy would not stand a chance”. He said the mission had been forced on Germany by the Paris terror attacks.

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The German Armed Forces Association led calls for further clarification of the mission, urging the government to outline its aims more precisely. “War is not an end in itself,” the chairman of the association told German television. “It requires clear goals and a strategy and we’re still waiting for answers to that.”

He said he and military strategists within the association expected the battle against Isis to go on for more than a decade. He said the German military was already overstretched due to its involvement in a range of ongoing foreign missions and would have to be topped up with more personnel.

The defence minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said Germany may have to consider larger armed forces to deal with the more assertive role it was taking in global conflicts. But she rejected the accusation by the Left that the bombing mission would generate more terror.

“It is incredible that they insinuate that the refugees are fleeing because of the airstrikes. The opposite is the case. Refugees are fleeing because they’re running from Assad’s bombs and from Isis,” she told the TV channel n24. “It’s the bitter truth that we have long since recognised that we are in the firing line of the terrorists which is why it’s so important to fight [the terror] at its roots.”

Germany’s first overseas combat mission since the second world war took place in 1999 when Schröder’s SPD and Green coalition agreed to participate in Nato’s intervention in Kosovo. Since then the armed forces have steadily widened their reach and competence to participate in a variety of conflicts and disasters.

A key moment in the country’s foreign policy assertiveness was Schröder’s staunch opposition to the US-led war in Iraq – which Merkel as opposition leader at that time supported – which led to a deep rift between the US and Germany.