Paris: A French magazine published photographs on Thursday of Taliban fighters with trophies taken from French soldiers killed last month in Afghanistan, setting off a new round of pained debate about France's presence there.
Since 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush on August 18, President Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers have said again and again that France would not falter in its determination to fight the "medieval" and "barbaric" Taliban.
But the pledges ring hollow in the ears of many French people who are suddenly being served blanket coverage of a faraway conflict involving about 2,600 French soldiers that had previously been confined to the inside pages of newspapers.
The weekly magazine Paris Match rekindled emotions with its spread of photos of Taliban fighters displaying French army guns, uniforms, helmets, a walkie-talkie and a wristwatch they said were taken from dead soldiers during the ambush.
"It's a shock to see our children's killers parading their uniforms, their weapons," said Joel Lepahun, the father of one of the dead soldiers, on RTL radio.
'Promoting' the Taliban
Defence Minister Herve Morin suggested the magazine's reporters had done the Taliban a favour in the propaganda war.
"Should we be doing the Taliban's promotion for them?" he said during an interview on France Inter radio. "The Taliban are waging a war of communication with this kind of operation. They have understood that public opinion is probably the Achilles' heel of the international community that is present in Afghanistan," he said.
Eric de Lavarene, the journalist who arranged the meeting with the Taliban fighters, defended himself against accusations that he was manipulated.
"I wouldn't say that. No one talks of propaganda when we set off embedded with Nato troops, yet information is always very tightly controlled on those occasions," he said on i-Tele TV.
