France to Speed Troops’ Withdrawal from Afghanistan

PARIS — President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday that France would break with his allies in NATO and accelerate the French withdrawal from Afghanistan. He said saying combat troops would leave a year early, by the end of 2013.

He increased this year’s withdrawal of troops from 600 to 1,000, and said that French troops would hand over security responsibility in one of its main areas of responsibility in Afghanistan, Kapisa Province, northeast of Kabul, beginning in March. He also said that he would press for NATO to accelerate its handover of primary security responsibilities as well.

Mr. Sarkozy’s announcements, including a statement that the level of Taliban infiltration in the Afghan Army “has been underestimated,” came after a meeting here with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Mr. Sarkozy said that he and Mr. Karzai agreed to ask the NATO alliance to complete its handover of primary security responsibility to Afghan troops by the end of 2013, instead of the end of 2014, as NATO had agreed at its last summit meeting in late 2010.

The moves followed an attack a week a go by a rogue Afghan soldier who opened fire on unarmed French troops embedded with Afghan forces on a training mission in Kapisa, killing four soldiers and wounding another 15, eight of them seriously. The case was a major blow in France, and came as Mr. Sarkozy faces a tough reelection campaign. His main rival for the presidency, the Socialist François Hollande, has promised to pull all French troops out by the end of this year, arguing just last Sunday that “our mission there is finished.”

Standing next to Mr. Karzai at a news conference, Mr. Sarkozy said he had informed President Obama of the proposal to speed NATO’s handoff and would discuss it with him over the weekend.

“We have decided in a common agreement with President Karzai to ask NATO to consider a total handing of NATO combat missions to the Afghan Army over the course of 2013,” Mr. Sarkozy said. France intends to broach the proposal first at a NATO defense ministers meeting next week, he said.

A senior NATO official, who would only speak anonymously because of the sensitivity of the situation, said that the French decisions were bound to create problems for the alliance, since they would give encouragement to anti-Afghan government forces, supporting the idea that attacks on NATO and coalition troops would push their governments to leave Afghanistan sooner than planned. France has the fifth-largest contingent of foreign troops in Afghanistan, officially with 3,600 troops.

Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Karzai cited changing circumstances in Afghanistan, but the appeal for all of NATO to change its calendar for handing over combat responsibility to the Afghan government seemed to be a cover for the reversal in the French position.

After the attack on the French soldiers in Kapisa, Mr. Sarkozy suspended its combat training work in Kapisa and said he would consider an early withdrawal. He sent his defense minister, Gérard Longuet, to Afghanistan to investigate. But earlier this week, French officials had said that alliance solidarity was important, that security must be reassessed, and that France would not accelerate its withdrawal this year. On Friday, they insisted that the early French withdrawal would be orderly, not hasty.

Mr. Sarkozy said that “President Karzai has assured us that Kapisa Province, where the French contingent is based, will pass under Afghan responsibility from March.” To that end, Mr. Sarkozy said, French troops would resume their training of Afghan forces immediately.

“Continuing the transition, and the gradual transfer of combat responsibilities will let us plan for the return of all our fighting forces by the end of 2013,” Mr. Sarkozy said. A few hundred soldiers would likely remain in Afghanistan to perform purely training exercises with the Afghan forces under a cooperation treaty the two presidents signed on Friday.

Mr. Sarkozy insisted that the acceleration was not due to the deaths of the French soldiers but due to “the outstanding job our soldiers have done” training the Afghans.

There is a general weariness among European allies with the Afghan war after 10 years of allied intervention, and doubts about the stability of Mr. Karzai’s government. Europeans who have been working to create democracy and gender equality in Afghanistan are also disappointed with a lack of sustained progress.

As soon as NATO announced at the Lisbon summit at the end of 2010 that it had agreed on the end of 2014 for handing over combat responsibility to Afghan troops, European public support for the Afghan war has been waning quickly, even in Britain, the second-largest contingent of troops after the United States. Germany and Italy follow in troop numbers, with France fifth.

Since 2001, 82 French troops have been killed in Afghanistan.