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Shockwaves from Afghanistan
Gulfnews: Shockwaves from Afghanistan
09/09/2008 11:25 PM | By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
What are we doing in Afghanistan?" This is the question that has dominated the political debate in France for the past two weeks. Prompted by the death of 10 French soldiers in a Taliban ambush near Kabul, the question has come as a wake-up call to a nation that had forgotten it was at war.
"We didn't even know we were at war," says a woman who lives in the town of Castres where most of the dead soldiers had been stationed before being sent to Afghanistan.
The losses, the heaviest France has suffered since 52 of its paratroopers were blown up in their sleep in Beirut by suicide-bombers in 1982, became more painful when the popular magazine Paris Match published a long illustrated reportage about the ambush.
Organised by the Taliban as a propaganda ploy, the reportage, which includes photos showing trophies taken from the dead soldiers, has been seen by most French as adding insult to injury.
Both President Nicolas Sarkozy and Defence Minister Herve Morin have tried a variety of verbal pirouettes to avoid admitting that France is at war. Instead, they have described the French presence in Afghanistan as a "peace mission" under the auspices of the United Nations. The result has been even more confusion for the proverbial man-in-the-street wonders.
The episode revealed one astonishing fact: the French participation in the Afghan war had never been debated in the parliament. It was only after the news of the massacre hit the nation like a bolt out of the blue that parliamentarians rushed to press the government for a debate. Even then, the debate is more concerned about how the ambush took place rather than what the French are doing in Afghanistan in the first place.
Not surprisingly, opinion polls show that more than 75 per cent of the French support the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan. The war against the Taliban enjoys the support of no more than 12 per cent.
The decision to send troops to Afghanistan was taken by the former president Jacques Chirac in the autumn of 2001 as a gesture of support for the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington.
We now know that Chirac did not discuss the issue even with his prime minister and foreign minister.
It is possible that Chirac did not expect a long war at the time. He seems to have believed that France was taking part in an operation lasting a few weeks at most thus showing solidarity with its American allies and enhancing its prestige as a defender of liberty in the global arena.
Once it had become clear that this was going to be a long war, it was too late for Chirac to withdraw his troops without angering the US and exposing France to charges of cowardice and betrayal of allies. Withdrawing from Afghanistan was made even more difficult when Chirac decided not only to stay away from the subsequent war in Iraq but assumed the leadership of those who opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussain.
In other words, France joined the Afghan war for reasons that smacked of opportunism rather than principle. Chirac needed the Afghan war so that he could oppose the Iraq war without being accused of appeasement.
New era
During his presidential campaign, Sarkozy promised to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan.
However, as soon as he was elected, he announced that he would send 1,000 additional troops there. He needed the gesture to signal the end of Chirac's ant-American gesticulations and the start of what he hoped would be a new era of close ties with Washington.
In exchange, the US threw its support behind a number of Sarkozy initiatives in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In other words, Sarkozy's motives in keeping French forces in Afghanistan, and increasing their number, was as opportunistic as Chriac's initial decision to join the war.
The worst thing for any nation to do is to go to war without acknowledging the nature of the conflict. An authoritarian regime may be able to provoke a war, even win a war, without securing the consent of its own people. In a democracy, however, securing the support of the people is the first step to winning any war. Throughout history, democracies have always won their wars against non-democratic enemies by ensuring their own people's enthusiastic support.
Whenever that support has been absent, democracies have lost to despotic or totalitarian adversaries. In some cases, that lack of popular support rendered military victories meaningless.
In the Algerian war of independence, for example, France had achieved military victory by 1961. However, it had failed to ensure the support of its own people who remained overwhelmingly hostile to France's continued domination of Algeria. It was lack of popular support, combined with the evident desire of the majority of Algerians for independence, which forced France out of Algeria, not military defeat.
The United States had a similar experience in Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive, in which the Americans all but broke the North Vietnamese and Vietcong military machines, the US had won the military aspect of the war. However, that victory could not be translated into political support at home. American public opinion remained overwhelmingly hostile to the war, forcing the US administration to jettison its military victory and, in effect, admit defeat.
What France needs to do is to go through a comprehensive and frank debate about the present state of the world and the role that it should and could play in it. It should acknowledge the fact that the French people are going through what looks like a long war with many fronts spread across several countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
Sarkozy should tell the French why they need to fight in Afghanistan that is one of the many theatres in this war. And, if he is unable to furnish a good reason or does not believe that we are in what amounts to a world war, he should tell them why France should leave.
The lesson of history is simple: do not fight a war in which you do not believe!
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
Gulfnews: Shockwaves from Afghanistan
09/09/2008 11:25 PM | By Amir Taheri, Special to Gulf News
What are we doing in Afghanistan?" This is the question that has dominated the political debate in France for the past two weeks. Prompted by the death of 10 French soldiers in a Taliban ambush near Kabul, the question has come as a wake-up call to a nation that had forgotten it was at war.
"We didn't even know we were at war," says a woman who lives in the town of Castres where most of the dead soldiers had been stationed before being sent to Afghanistan.
The losses, the heaviest France has suffered since 52 of its paratroopers were blown up in their sleep in Beirut by suicide-bombers in 1982, became more painful when the popular magazine Paris Match published a long illustrated reportage about the ambush.
Organised by the Taliban as a propaganda ploy, the reportage, which includes photos showing trophies taken from the dead soldiers, has been seen by most French as adding insult to injury.
Both President Nicolas Sarkozy and Defence Minister Herve Morin have tried a variety of verbal pirouettes to avoid admitting that France is at war. Instead, they have described the French presence in Afghanistan as a "peace mission" under the auspices of the United Nations. The result has been even more confusion for the proverbial man-in-the-street wonders.
The episode revealed one astonishing fact: the French participation in the Afghan war had never been debated in the parliament. It was only after the news of the massacre hit the nation like a bolt out of the blue that parliamentarians rushed to press the government for a debate. Even then, the debate is more concerned about how the ambush took place rather than what the French are doing in Afghanistan in the first place.
Not surprisingly, opinion polls show that more than 75 per cent of the French support the withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan. The war against the Taliban enjoys the support of no more than 12 per cent.
The decision to send troops to Afghanistan was taken by the former president Jacques Chirac in the autumn of 2001 as a gesture of support for the United States in the wake of the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington.
We now know that Chirac did not discuss the issue even with his prime minister and foreign minister.
It is possible that Chirac did not expect a long war at the time. He seems to have believed that France was taking part in an operation lasting a few weeks at most thus showing solidarity with its American allies and enhancing its prestige as a defender of liberty in the global arena.
Once it had become clear that this was going to be a long war, it was too late for Chirac to withdraw his troops without angering the US and exposing France to charges of cowardice and betrayal of allies. Withdrawing from Afghanistan was made even more difficult when Chirac decided not only to stay away from the subsequent war in Iraq but assumed the leadership of those who opposed the overthrow of Saddam Hussain.
In other words, France joined the Afghan war for reasons that smacked of opportunism rather than principle. Chirac needed the Afghan war so that he could oppose the Iraq war without being accused of appeasement.
New era
During his presidential campaign, Sarkozy promised to withdraw French troops from Afghanistan.
However, as soon as he was elected, he announced that he would send 1,000 additional troops there. He needed the gesture to signal the end of Chirac's ant-American gesticulations and the start of what he hoped would be a new era of close ties with Washington.
In exchange, the US threw its support behind a number of Sarkozy initiatives in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In other words, Sarkozy's motives in keeping French forces in Afghanistan, and increasing their number, was as opportunistic as Chriac's initial decision to join the war.
The worst thing for any nation to do is to go to war without acknowledging the nature of the conflict. An authoritarian regime may be able to provoke a war, even win a war, without securing the consent of its own people. In a democracy, however, securing the support of the people is the first step to winning any war. Throughout history, democracies have always won their wars against non-democratic enemies by ensuring their own people's enthusiastic support.
Whenever that support has been absent, democracies have lost to despotic or totalitarian adversaries. In some cases, that lack of popular support rendered military victories meaningless.
In the Algerian war of independence, for example, France had achieved military victory by 1961. However, it had failed to ensure the support of its own people who remained overwhelmingly hostile to France's continued domination of Algeria. It was lack of popular support, combined with the evident desire of the majority of Algerians for independence, which forced France out of Algeria, not military defeat.
The United States had a similar experience in Vietnam. After the Tet Offensive, in which the Americans all but broke the North Vietnamese and Vietcong military machines, the US had won the military aspect of the war. However, that victory could not be translated into political support at home. American public opinion remained overwhelmingly hostile to the war, forcing the US administration to jettison its military victory and, in effect, admit defeat.
What France needs to do is to go through a comprehensive and frank debate about the present state of the world and the role that it should and could play in it. It should acknowledge the fact that the French people are going through what looks like a long war with many fronts spread across several countries from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
Sarkozy should tell the French why they need to fight in Afghanistan that is one of the many theatres in this war. And, if he is unable to furnish a good reason or does not believe that we are in what amounts to a world war, he should tell them why France should leave.
The lesson of history is simple: do not fight a war in which you do not believe!
Amir Taheri is an Iranian writer based in Europe.
