Paris blog: France agonizes over Afghan war

The French opposition yesterday withdrew its support for the country's military deployment in Afghanistan and accused President Sarkozy of sending under-equipped troops into an unwinnable "war of occupation".

The Socialists broke with the cross-party consensus that has backed the Nato intervention since 2001 as the Government faced public anger over a disastrous ambush by Taleban fighters that nearly wiped out a French patrol last month.

The Taleban are fast regaining territory and the allies are losing the support of the Afghan people because of poor American tactics, said Jean-Marc Ayrault, the Socialist parliamentary leader. "We do not accept this slide towards a war of occupation," he told Parliament. "Our troops are manifestly lacking in equipment," he added

Helped by the defection of several Socialist MPs, the Government was nevertheless certain to win a vote in support of Mr Sarkozy's decision to bolster the French contingent in Afghanistan this summer. After the arrival of 700 more troops, France now has 2,700 personnel stationed there.

Defending the unpopular French deployment, François Fillon, the Prime Minister, told Parliament that new equipment and about 100 more personnel would be sent within weeks to give better protection to the force.

"We have learned the lessons of the murderous ambush", he said. Ten soldiers were killed and 21 wounded in the 10-hour battle east of Kabul on August 18. "Caracal and Gazelle helicopters, drones, listening devices, and supplementary mortars will be sent," Mr Fillon said.

Opposition to the deployment has sharpened with a stream of reports of failures by the military in the August ambush. Reinforcements arrived late, no reconnaissance was been carried out in a dangerous zone, air cover did not work and ammunition ran out, according to reports from survivors.

Mr Fillon angrily denied the truth of the latest account, from an after-battle report by a US Special Operations officer whose men had been with the French patrol. Leaked to a Canadian newspaper, this said that the French paratroopers ran out of ammunition only 90 minutes after they were pinned down on a hillside by a better-armed and better-trained Taleban force. They were unable to call in air support because their main radio was knocked out, it said.

This was all all false, the Prime Minister told Parliament. "The reality is sufficiently cruel not to add lies and disinformation to it," he said. French generals said the American report was partial, misinformed and e-mailed in the heat of the moment. Its tenor, however, was in line with accounts that have leaked from survivors of the action in the French media.

Mr Fillon said that there was no alternative to staying in a war against a source of terrorism that threatened France as much as anywhere else. "Not to stay in Afghanistan would be to leave the Afghans in the hands of their executioners," he said.

The Socialists stopped short of demanding an immediate pull-out, calling instead for a sharp change of strategy towards aid for rebuilding Afghanistan and strengthening its institutions. "To fight this needs an army ten times bigger and even then we would be bogged down," he said.

The opposition accused Mr Sarkozy of taking orders from the United States and betraying election campaign promises last year to end France's Afghan deployment.

Public opinion was against Mr Sarkozy's decision to send more combat troops last spring. Emotion over the August ambush has raised demands for an immediate pullout, an option now backed by more than 60 per cent of the public, polls show.

Soldiers' families have been stirring passions with public attacks on the President and the military for sending young soldiers to their deaths. Wives of soldiers complained that they could not stand the strain of knowing that their men were in possible combat. "If he doesn't phone by 8pm I start worrying myself sick," said one.

Wives also reported that their husbands were poorly equipped to fight. One has to take off his body armour to shoot because it is too big, she said. The media have been full of reports of low morale in the French Afghan contingent.

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