FRANCE:THE FRENCH national assembly yesterday voted to keep some 3,000 troops in Afghanistan, despite growing public and left-wing opposition to the war.
Emotions have run high since 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan on August 18th. Outrage grew when Paris Match magazine published an interview with the Taliban fighters who killed the Frenchmen, and photographs of the dead soldiers' bloodstained uniforms and belongings.
French prime minister François Fillon yesterday denied a report in the Toronto Globe and Mail that the ambushed soldiers ran out of ammunition after 90 minutes and that their radio communications broke down. The report was based on an e-mail sent by a US officer who was with the French troops.
Twenty-four French soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001 out of almost 1,000 military personnel from Nato countries during the same period.
Because the right holds an overwhelming majority in the assembly, the result of the vote was never in doubt: 343 deputies approved of maintaining France's military presence; 210 voted to withdraw. A similar result was expected in the senate last night.
But pressure is mounting on Mr Sarkozy. A poll published on September 16th indicates 62 per cent of French people oppose the French deployment in Afghanistan.
"If we accept an endless escalation of the war, if we continue to get bogged down in a failing military logic, be sure that sooner or later we'll be forced to pack up, less because of the Taliban than our own public opinion," warned Jean-Marc Ayrault, leader of the socialist group in the assembly.
"France Go Home", said the front page of communist daily L'Humanité yesterday.
The newspaper published a letter from the mother of a French soldier, asking whether French mothers must live like American women, in terror of men in uniform coming to their doors to announce the death of their sons.
Mr Fillon told the national assembly that the war in Afghanistan "remains just" and rejected "the thesis of those who think our soldiers died in vain".
It was essential they remained, he said, to ensure "Afghanistan does not become the sanctuary for international terrorism again".
Mr Fillon announced that, because of the August ambush, the government would reinforce French troops in Afghanistan with Caracal and Gazelle helicopter gunships, drones, listening devices, mortars and about 100 more men.
Despite a heated debate, the government and opposition agree that any solution in Afghanistan must be political, not military. The socialists demand a new strategy that concentrates on reconstruction and "nation building".
The government claims such a strategy was adopted by Nato in April, at French instigation.
Mr Fillon's speech bore similarities to the Bush administration's statements about Iraq. He argued that establishing a timetable for a French withdrawal "would play into the hands of our enemies".
Mr Ayrault noted that the Taliban hold close to one-third of the country and are approaching the capital Kabul. The Afghan population has shifted allegiance, he said, and increasingly regards allied forces as "undesirable occupiers".
The West would have to deploy 10 times as many soldiers to win the war in Afghanistan. "Is France prepared or capable of participating in such a commitment?" Mr Ayrault asked. "Are we sure of success, when we remember the wars of Algeria, Vietnam and Iraq?"
Mr Ayrault then quoted Mr Sarkozy during the 2007 election campaign: "If you look at the history of the world, no foreign army has ever succeeded in a country that was not its own."