Afstan: Less to any NATO surge than meets the eye

Further to this post,

NATO/US "surge" in Afstan?

the latest:

U.S. Seeks 10,000 Troops From Its Allies in Afghanistan
...
Germany [see Upperdate here] and France have balked at committing any more forces to a war that has so little public support that they can barely maintain current troop levels.

The Netherlands and Canada have begun discussing plans to pull out. Canadian defense officials told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in Halifax last week that they had no intention of sending troops in the future, and that they remained committed to withdrawing by the end of 2011.

Even if the allies make commitments for 5,000 or more new troops after the president’s address on Tuesday at West Point, NATO officials say, those commitments will include troops already in Afghanistan to provide security for recent elections and trainers for the Afghan Army and the police.

And it remains unclear whether several thousand NATO and other foreign troops are really the equal of a similarly sized American force in terms of military capacity. Some countries may continue to restrict how their forces may be employed. In addition, a force that is cobbled together from too many nations — a few hundred here and a thousand there — might not have the unit cohesion of an American force, military analysts said.

Washington has not yet made formal troop requests to allies, but there have been diplomatic and other conversations seeking commitments in principle, carried out by senior American officials; the NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen; and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain...

...

Mr. Brown said Wednesday that he was “now optimistic,” after canvassing allies, that a number of countries “will indeed make available increased numbers of troops, and more police trainers and civilian support.” He said he hoped the figure would be 5,000 troops.

Other NATO officials said that figure was roughly accurate, even low. With new contributions expected from Poland, Italy [more here and here] and Britain, the major exceptions for the moment are Germany and France, the officials said...

France, however, is standing firm on its refusal to consider sending more troops beyond the 3,750 now in Afghanistan. It increased its troops by a battalion of 800 last year, added 200 more this year, and plans to send 150 more gendarmes to help train the Afghan police, said Christophe Prazuck, a spokesman for the French military.

From Nov. 1, France has also redeployed its troops out of Kabul [the Turks are now in command there] into a new task force with 2,500 troops based east of the capital [emphasis added, more on the French here]. But President Nicolas Sarkozy told the newspaper Le Figaro in mid-October, “France will not send a single soldier more.”..

Update: Here's story noting French mentors in the field with the ANA, good on them (and other mentors, including ours).