Afstan: Dutch reinforcing/French may keep special forces

When the going gets tough...

The Dutch cabinet agreed the deployment of a further 130 ground troops to southern Afghanistan to bring total strength there to 1,530, during the weekly cabinet meeting in The Hague Friday.

Defence Minister Henk Kamp described the decision as 'fine tuning' and said there was no need for parliamentary approval...

From November 1, when the Dutch take over the lead role in southern Afghanistan from the Canadians, a further 200 Dutch troops are to be deployed.

The defence ministry also announced that the six Dutch Apache helicopters [my emphasis - MC] in Afghanistan had been moved Friday from Kandahar airfield to the Dutch headquarters at Tarin Kowt in Uruzgan Province.

The eight Dutch F-16s [my emphasis - MC] currently based at Kabul are to be moved to Kandahar in mid-November with the aim that they will be able to react more quickly to requests for support in southern Afghanistan.

The French, for their part, may not remove their special forces from Afstan after all.

"Our special forces have always continued to combat terrorism side by side, for example, in Afghanistan," she [Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie] said, though recently there has been some question as to whether France will pull its special forces out of the country.

Alliot-Marie told the AP that France is in the midst of discussions regarding the continued presence of French special forces, which are under separate command from the NATO troops [actually under US Operation Enduring Freedom - MC], in Afghanistan...