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German peace missions abroad

Friedens Einsatz im Ausland

German troops in Afghanistan
German troops in Afghanistan - flag painted on trucks

See also:

Flags of the Armed Forces (Fahnen und Kommandozeichen der Bundeswehr)
Germany

German troops in Afghanistan

image sent by Jens Pattke, 22 Sep 2002

I found this image somewhere on the internet. It is a soldier of an elite unit of the Bundeswehr with a curious cloth in his hands. For identification purposes the German troops on a UNO-mission in Afghanistan use the German flag with black inscription "German" translated into Pashtu on red.
Jens Pattke, 22 Sep 2002

There is a spelling error.... It is written "alman ya" instead of "Almanyah".
Dov Gutterman, 23 Sep 2002

Actually looks to me like alman-ha rather than -ya.
Dov may well be correct that this is a misspelling, but keep in mind that this is Pashtu and not Arabic. The word could be different, although I must say I have no idea why it would be.
Joe McMillan, 23 Sep 2002

While in India the past several days, I checked this with a colleague who is a South Asian linguist. She said the word as spelled on the flag is Dari for the plural "Germans."
Joe McMillan, 28 Sep 2002

For those who may not know so much about Central Asia, Dari (Court) Persian is also the administrative language of Afghanistan.
John Ayer, 29 Sep 2002

I have asked my mother in law and she confirmed that almanya (one word) is Germans in farsi, Dari being a dialect of it, it would sound logical that it would be the same.
Marc Pasquin, 29 Sep 2002

My friend Jürgen Weidhüner has studied Iranistics for four years. He doesn’t believe that the inscription is Pashtu. The characters seem to be like those in Farsi. He therefore concluded that the inscription is Dari, which is said to be very similar to Farsi and Dari is an official language in Afghanistan. Jürgens transliteration of the four “characters” is as follows: aah – naa – ml – aa, that is reversed “aalmaanhaa “(=Germany).
I have chosen double vowels for I don’t know whether everybody could read diacritics. Furthermore “characters” might be improper. I know at least that in Perso-Arabian script the dots make the difference.
Klaus-Michael Schneider, 26 August 2008

German troops in Afghanistan - flag painted on trucks

image by J. Patrick Fischer, 15 Sep 2004

Yesterday, German TV ZDF showed a report about German troops in Faisabad/Afghanistan. In the background were some tucks with the German flag painted on the doors. On the red field was written in white Arabic letters the word "Germany", just like on the flag which was reported here some time ago.
I tried to draw the car flag, but my writing is not the best. It gives an idea of the looking of the flag.

By the way: At the camp of the Germans in Faisabad, someone fly a Brandenburg-flag on the top of one of the container, where the soldiers are living.
J. Patrick Fischer, 15 Sep 2004

The picture shows a black inscription, while the GIF shows it white. Am I missing something?
Santiago Dotor, 15 Sep 2004

Odd...but the insciption say: Alman'ha while,IIRC, it is supposed to be written Almani(a)h.
Dov Gutterman, 15 Sep 2004

Could be the Dari (or some local dialect) way of writting it.
Marc Pasquin, 15 Sep 2004

Flag on picture had black letters, flag painted on trucks had white letters.
Hmm..., maybe is the Paschtu word for Germany "Alman'ha " and Arabic is "Almani(a)h" ?
J. Patrick Fischer, 15 Sep 2004