Afstan: French come through--as do Americans

Earlier worry about French unit seems wrong, seems like it will be a real battalion--to the east with US troops shuffling south as anticipated for some time:

France announced at a NATO summit on Thursday it would send 700 troops to eastern Afghanistan as part of efforts to bolster the Western military alliance's force fighting Taliban insurgents.

U.S. President George W. Bush welcomed the move and said it would allow some U.S. troops to move from the east to the south of Afghanistan, scene of the worst violence, where Canada has demanded reinforcements to remain in the mission.

"France has decided to send an extra battalion to the east," French President Nicolas Sarkozy told the summit in the Romanian capital Bucharest...

A senior French official said the battalion of 700 soldiers would take France's contingent in Afghanistan to 2,300.

The French commitment was another sign of the warm relations Sarkozy has cultivated with the United States since he took office in May last year...

From a Canadian (CTV) story:

Canadian troops will continue their frontline role in southern Afghanistan after the February 2009 deadline, following the commitment of additional troops by France, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Thursday.

Speaking from a NATO meeting in Bucharest, Romania, Harper said the troop commitment by France is not enough overall, but is a vital step in the right direction...

Harper said France's troop commitment falls short of what is needed overall in Afghanistan, but it is important for two reasons.

He said France's commitment will encourage other nations to also step up to the plate, and though he doesn't expect it to happen over night, he believes the number of troops and the number of nations participating will begin to increase.

Harper also said the move represents a "historic re-engagement of France in NATO which we have seen coming since the election of President Sarkozy."..

Harper has also called for more equipment, such as drones and helicopters. CTV reported Tuesday night that Canada will also lease aerial drones from the U.S. at a cost of $165 million, and procure between four to six Chinook helicopters and an unspecified number of light-armoured vehicles from the U.S. army...

Update: A good story by Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star that concludes:

...
Harper's 90-minute panel session – titled Afghanistan: Success not in Sight, Failure not an Option – came at the Bucharest Conference, a gathering of global security experts running parallel to the NATO summit. His invitation to the event, sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of America, was heralded as a gesture of recognition for the disproportionate weight carried by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan.

At the outset, moderator Doucet asked for a show of hands from the 250 international opinion-leaders gathered at the Cercul Militar, a century-old neoclassical palace in central Bucharest. A smattering raised their arms in the belief Afghanistan was headed for success, a similar number indicated the opposite. The majority reached skyward for a third option, that NATO is neither winning nor losing.

Karzai, sandwiched on the panel between Harper and NATO's secretary general, was in no mood to bite the hands that feed. Instead, the Afghan president painted a rosier picture of his country than most indicators would suggest, going so far as to say "the tough part is over." He offered thanks, once again, for the Canadian blood spilled on his soil. He called for more help.

De Hoop Scheffer set the tone for the discussion with a keynote address, emphasizing the unified message he hopes the world will draw from Bucharest – that NATO intends to make progress in Afghanistan with a far more comprehensive, co-ordinated approach, working more closely with the Afghan government, the UN, EU and the willing portion of the aid donor community to emphasize development and reconstruction over military force.

Harper, who said Canada was one of the first countries to awaken to the need for a strategy shift that NATO leaders are expected to sign off on at a key meeting today, went so far as to admit a huge miscalculation in Afghanistan – albeit one, conveniently, that does not bear his fingerprints as it happened on the previous government's watch.

"If there really has been one NATO failure in Afghanistan – and I'm supposing this because it was before my time – 2001, 2002, 2003 – it appears to me that, early on, NATO concluded the job was much easier than it was actually going to be," said Harper.

It was not until 2005, that the alliance "fully grasped the nature of the security problem, and the problem it would present in terms of developing governance. We were slow in understanding that."