Sarkozy under scrutiny over troop decision
Wednesday 20 August 2008
Latest in Asia
Related articles
On Facebook
From the blogs
Disclosure: We’d never even been to a club when we made our first single
For most of us, reaching eighteen years of age opens up a new world for exploration, spontaneity and...
Top of the posts: Drunken rants, the Western Fail and misogyny pushers
The most read blogs this week, as determined by stats.
Sepp Blatter: Penalty shoot-outs must remain, they’re football’s great leveller
As England supporters, we should scorn at any such deciding factor within football. On so many occas...
Why do some men consider the street as a female meat market?
Pronouncements on sexual inequality in the UK are normally met with an eye roll by my generation. As...
President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision this spring to dispatch hundreds more French soldiers to Afghanistan was extremely unpopular. It was no surprise therefore that within hours of the slaughter in Afghanistan, M. Sarkozy interrupted his French riviera holiday with his wife Carla Bruni to fly to Kabul to support French troops.
It was the deadliest attack on French troops since a 1983 assault in Beirut in which 58 French paratroopers serving in a UN force were killed, and the highest French military death toll in an attack since clashes in Ivory Coast in 2004.
Perhaps out of respect for the dead and injured soldiers, there were no immediate calls for France to pull its 3,000 troops out of Afghanistan. The opposition Socialist party, which called a parliamentary no-confidence vote against M. Sarkozy over his decision to send the extra troops, limited itself to asking foreign affairs committees to meet urgently to ponder "the aims of this war". But the ceasefire is unlikely to last.
"The question now," said Bruno Jeanbart of the polling institute OpinionWay, "is whether public opinion will be reinforced in its feeling of the uselessness of the French presence in Afghanistan or whether the public will rally round their soldiers in difficulty, and become more favourable to it."
When M. Sarkozy was elected last year, he took French foreign policy in a radically more pro-US direction than his predecessor Jacques Chirac. He warned that France could expect casualties when – under pressure from Nato allies – he agreed in April to send 700 combat troops to eastern Afghanistan to serve in a Nato force of more than 40,000 soldiers from 40 nations.
Opinion polls showed that a large majority of French people opposed the move, with many fearing getting bogged down in an unending war whose aims were unclear or unattainable.
The move drew fierce criticism from the socialists and even from within M. Sarkozy's own party. But the President passionately defended his plan, arguing that Afghanistan was the front line in the battle against terrorism. He repeated that line yesterday and said France would not abandon the Nato mission.
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 News in pictures
- 4 Tory chief Warsi failed to declare rent income from flat
- 5 In pictures: The bewildering face of China
- 6 Osborne to face questions over links to Murdoch
- 7 Facebook: The shares shenanigans
- 8 Is Ridley Scott the most macho man in movies?
- 9 Günter Grass attacks Merkel for Athens policy
- 10 Exclusive dispatch: Assad blamed for massacre of the innocents
- 1 Mark Zuckerberg saved $111m by selling Facebook shares before stock slumped
- 2 Brazil rocked by abortion for 9-year-old rape victim
- 3 Fat? Really? Olympic hope laughs off official’s jibe – but others aren’t amused
- 4 Is Ridley Scott the most macho man in movies?
- 5 Postgraduate students are being used as 'slave labour'
- 6 'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...'
- 7 African monkey meat that could be behind the next HIV
- 8 Exclusive dispatch: Assad blamed for massacre of the innocents
- 9 Coke reveals its secret: It may need to carry a cancer warning
- 10 French in uproar over oral sex anti-smoking posters
Experience the Heineken Hub
Get free wi-fi and exclusive i content while you enjoy a tasty pint of Heineken at participating pubs.
Can you imagine a career in teaching?
Be inspired to teach - let real teachers show you how rewarding the job can be.
Playing a game-changing role during the Games
Cisco is providing the solutions for London 2012's complex IT needs.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
Day In a Page
The secret life of the red carpet
Up and away – how '7 Up' went global



Comments