France Is Withdrawing Its Special Forces From Afghanistan
    By Adrien Jaulmes
    Le Figaro

    Monday 18 December 2006

Mich le Alliot-Marie has announced a redeployment of French troops in Afghanistan and a change of methods in the struggle against the Taliban.

    Officially, everything is going well in Afghanistan. At the foot of the white peaks of the Hindu Kush, two spanking-new Caracal helicopters with their motors running alight at the summit of a rocky cliff that overlooks the Djalalabad road, about 60 kilometers east of Kabul.

    Behind the battlements of a little camp perched in the desert heights of Sarubi, [French Defense Minister] Mich le Alliot-Marie inspects a unit of French soldiers. With an air as relaxed as for an ordinary visit to Mourmelon, the minister reminds them of the importance of their mission and poses all-smiles with the soldiers who crowd in to be photographed at her side.

    In reality, nothing is going right any more in Afghanistan. The 1,200 French soldiers deployed since 2002 in the heart of Central Asia have not been engaged in the violent battles against an insurrection that competes with the Afghan government for control of entire provinces in the south and east of the country. But the French military are nonetheless busy reinforcing the defenses of Camp Warehouse, where NATO troops are billeted at Kabul's eastern entry. Their vehicles have been equipped in all haste with supplementary armor and IED-jamming mechanisms. This formidable guerrilla tactic, the IED, perfected by the Iraqi insurrection and imported at the same time as suicide bombing by the Taliban, has already cost the lives of several dozen NATO soldiers.

    And Paris - more and more worried about the military logjam into which NATO is allowing itself to be drawn, as it increases military "clean-up" operations in southern Afghanistan, heavily supported by aerial bombardment and its associated cortege of civilian victims - is discreetly pushing for a change of direction in method.

    Thus, Mich le Alliot-Marie announced a "general reorganization" of the French presence in Afghanistan during the course of her ninth visit there.

    The most symbolic of these measures is the withdrawal of French Special Forces from Afghanistan. This detachment of about 200 COS [French special forces] commandos has operated since 2002 under American command in the Spin Boldak region, on the very delicate southern border with Pakistan where a large part of the insurgents' armaments come from. Redeployed last September to Djalalabad, where the minister visited Saturday, these commandos "will withdraw in January 2007," she announced.

    Unchanged Number of Soldiers

    "We are not withdrawing," noted Mich le Alliot-Marie, who added that the number of French soldiers - around 2,000 - would remain unchanged. "We are going to launch a training program for Afghan Special Forces. It seems important to us that the Afghans see that it's their own forces that assure the stabilization and security of their own country," she explained.

    To allay the criticism from other NATO members who reproach France for having refused to send reinforcements last summer to the south of the country, where their own troops were suffering significant losses, Mich le Alliot-Marie also confirmed the concession made by Jacques Chirac at the last NATO summit in Riga, when he agreed that "French troops could be used as reinforcements" outside their area of activity in Kabul - according to the situation and with Paris' agreement. An aerial detachment will also be permanently stationed in Afghanistan.

    "The solution is not to substitute militarily for the Afghan authorities," people in Mich le Alliot-Marie's entourage explained, "but to allow them to recover control of the situation."

    This French attempt to pull NATO in Afghanistan out of the quagmire is accompanied by a proposal to coordinate the country's reconstruction under the aegis of a "contact group" that brings together Afghan institutions and organizations from the donor countries.

    But Paris must succeed in imposing its views on its NATO partners very quickly to obtain the changes in method that are necessary. The Taliban are making no secret of their intentions to conduct their next spring offensive against Kabul. And then French troops could find themselves back on the frontlines.