Italy was bribing the Taliban but didn't tell the French, French troops killed and mutilated

by Robert Spencer



The Italians forgot to mention to the French that they were playing Aethelred the Unready, and so the French were ambushed and killed. "French troops were killed after Italy hushed up 'bribes' to Taleban," by Tom Coghlan in The Times, October 15 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):

When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified.

Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated -- and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims' flak jackets and weapons. The French had been in charge of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, for only a month, taking over from the Italians; it was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan.

What the grieving nation did not know was that in the months before the French soldiers arrived in mid-2008, the Italian secret service had been paying tens of thousands of dollars to Taleban commanders and local warlords to keep the area quiet, The Times has learnt. The clandestine payments, whose existence was hidden from the incoming French forces, were disclosed by Western military officials.

US intelligence officials were flabbergasted when they found out through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italians had also been buying off militants, notably in Herat province in the far west. In June 2008, several weeks before the ambush, the US Ambassador in Rome made a démarche, or diplomatic protest, to the Berlusconi Government over allegations concerning the tactic.

However, a number of high-ranking officers in Nato have told The Times that payments were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.

Western officials say that because the French knew nothing of the payments they made a catastrophically incorrect threat assessment.

"One cannot be too doctrinaire about these things," a senior Nato officer in Kabul said. "It might well make sense to buy off local groups and use non-violence to keep violence down. But it is madness to do so and not inform your allies."...

Madness all around.