France's threat Friday to withdraw early from Afghanistan after an Afghan soldier killed four French troops and wounded 15 is a setback for the U.S.-led coalition's efforts to build a national army and allow foreign troops to go home.
The deadly shooting — the second against French forces in a month — is the latest in a rising number of disturbing attacks in which Afghan security forces or infiltrators have turned their guns on coalition forces.
Said President Sarkozy:
"The French army is not in Afghanistan so that Afghan soldiers can shoot at them," Sarkozy said in Paris. "From now on, all the operations of training and combat help by the French army are suspended."
If security for the French troops is not restored, "the question of an early withdrawal of the French army would arise," he said.
Not very nuanced, if you ask me. Afghanistan is a violent place. It's like going in to build security forces in Los Angeles and you are recruiting gang members. Violence is their way of life, and if they perceive insult, they resort to violence--with the weapons you provided and trained them to use. If there is any arrogance on display by the Frenchmen in dealing with the Afghans, watch out. Violence-prone armed Afghans is the main source of these incidents and not Taliban infiltration. That's the price of doing business there.
The French army isn't in Afghanistan to fight. We knew that. (Few Europeans are there to fight.) And now we know they aren't there to face the same occasional dangers that anyone else training Afghans must face. So they'll run if the local reality isn't suspended for them. NATO troops are there in order to create a good security situation. Sarkozy turns the mission on its head and says the security situation is the condition to keep French troops there.
And the Taliban know what to do to get the French to run. Infiltration may not be the main cause of these incidents, but the next one might be, no? The Taliban certainly want the French to think the Taliban are already targeting them:
The Afghan Taliban said on Saturday they had recruited an Afghan soldier who shot dead four French soldiers a day earlier, raising fears the militant group had managed to deepen its infiltration of the country's struggling security forces.
Still, I won't taunt the French too much. The French military is decent if underfunded--and sent into action by insufferable louts. So the conditions of their service isn't up to the troops who will fight if allowed to. Besides, our own president--hardly French even if he aspires to European levels of sophistication--is also eager to answer the question of an early withdrawal of the American army.
Ten years ago in response to 9/11, the French declared that we were all Americans, now, united in outrage over the terrorism attacks that day on American targets.
Today, we are all Frenchmen, now, in our determination to find excuses to leave Afghanistan before the mission is accomplished.
UPDATE: Strategypage raps the French for their lack of knowledge:
The French are ignoring the fact that Afghanistan is a very violent place and always has been. When someone gets angry and has a weapon handy, there will often be blood. The French government could consult their own medical aid teams, which treat Afghan civilians, and discover the extent of casualties among civilians. When it comes to the law and order Westerners take for granted back home, Afghanistan is a different world.
Simplisme is rampant these days. Once upon a time, the European attitude was that it was better to take occasional civilian dead in your streets rather than fight back against terrorists. Now they can't accept occaional military dead overseas as the price of defeating the terrorists. I guess we know how Sarkkozy would run a cruise ship if it runs aground.
