France has decided more ground troops to Afghanistan for combat missions against Taliban insurgents in the mountainous battle zone close to the border with Pakistan, according to press reports in Paris.

The French commitment, which includes elite special forces, comes at a critical moment for NATO, which it direly needs reinforcements to ratchet up its campaign against guerilla fighters infiltrating eastern Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan.

By sending in fresh combat units, expected to number up to 500 men, President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be acting on his pledge that France wants to work more closely with NATO. With the Bush administration asking European nations for more military help in Afghanistan, a Sarkozy adviser was quoted in Le Monde newspaper saying that “France is the only country that can — if it decides to – make the crucial difference.”

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The brunt of the fighting in southern and eastern Afghanistan has been borne by the United States, which recently decided to move in 3,000 Marines from Iraq to cover the short-fall in European troops. The only other European countries assuming significant combat roles are Britain and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands.

There are also important fighting continents from Australia, which does not belong to NATO, and from Canada, which has said that it will consider withdrawing its contingent unless other allied countries produce reinforcements in troop strength and material, meaning 1,000 men and more military helicopters.

Germany and other European members of the Western alliance have forces in Afghanistan, but their forces are restricted in their operations by “caveats” imposed by their governments to limit their combat roles.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in February that “I worry a great deal about the alliance evolving into a two-tiered alliance in which you have some allies willing to fight and die to protect people’s security, and others who are now.” He said that this pattern “put a cloud over the future of the alliance.’’

Gates has publicly warned that Europeans should see a direct threat of terrorist attacks on their own countries if Islamic militants succeed in gaining control of parts of Afghanistan that can become safe havens for al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups. Currently, the Taliban contols about 10 percent of Afghan territory, U.S. National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell testified to Congress on February 27.

But getting fresh help from Europe has proved hard, Gates said, partly because few EU nations have military units trained for counter-insurgency warfare. Partly, too, he said, “for many Europeans, the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused: many of them…have a problem with our involvement in Iraq and project that onto Afghanistan.”

Offering the first European response to the appeals for help from the U.S., Canada and Australia, the French action is expected to be announced by President Sarkozy at the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest in April.

Already, France has fighter-bombers in Afghanistan and a garrison force in Kabul. The new combat troops and commandos will be assigned to the eastern border areas with the potential for fierce fighting. French special forces fought here until 2007 under American command, and they found that many of the insurgent fighters are foreigners and therefore easier to identify as not part of the local Pashtun population. That problem, of separating guerillas from civilians, has proved more difficult for allied forces in Helmland province and elsewhere in southern Afghanistan, where many Taliban rebels are Pashtuns like the local Afghans.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Europe, France, NATO, Taliban, United States

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