Nicolas Sakozy, the President of France, thinks his country should send some more troops to Afghanistan because it’s the real war on terror, and etc. The trick is, the French are almost as bad as the Germans when it comes to the so-called “caveats”—rules that limit where troops can be deployed and how they can be used. So yes, while it is indeed tragic 13 French soldiers have lost their lives defending Kabul from IEDs, sending a few hundred more troops to Kabul (it is extremely unlikely France would either send a significant number or remove its caveats) really won’t do anything to help the mission along.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust