French Redeployment From Afghanistan

Recently posted in "The Bug Pit: The military and securty in Eurasia" blog on eurasianet.org was the post "French Military Begins Withdrawal From Tajikistan." This article was written by Joshua Kucera discusses how a small French air detachment operating in Dushanbe is redeploying back to France. As France continues to withdraw from Afghanistan so does its supply bases in the region. France's Operational Transport Group started redeploying on April 15th of this year and is projected to complete its redeployment by July. 

 

This particular base has been in operation since 2002. "It has hosted between 170 and 230 French soldiers who work on supply and logistics for their compatriots in Afghanistan, and occasionally French multirole fighter jets used for operations in Afghanistan."  This redeployment is not unexpected considering that French forces have been redeploying from Afghanistan for sometime now. What is interesting is that the French are using Shymkent, Kazakhstan as their main logistics hub for shipping military supplies out of Afghanistan. The author states that, "Like the U.S. and other coalition countries operating in Afghanistan, France wants to use the land route through Central Asia to withdraw its equipment from Afghanistan. That route has recently started operating, with the first shipments arriving in France last month, according to another French MoD announcement." Below provides further information on French redeployment and possible courses of action for other coalition partners.

The decision to open a transit center in Kazakhstan is to accelerate the withdrawal from Afghanistan with different exit roads (the same problematic exists for US troops). The opening of a multimodal road from the north of Afghanistan, using the aircraft to Shymkent and the railroad to Latvia, was still in negotiation at the end of 2012. The Kazakh authorities expected some French funds to improve a part of the airport.
But all these agreements (with Kazakhastan, and also with Uzbekistan) are too late (for France, but maybe useful for other coalition members). French vehicles and equipment will be mostly withdrawal by Antonov airplane to the United Arab Emirates and by boat to France. According to the latest news, 80% of the goods withdrawal (armoured vehicles, containers ...) has already been achieved.

 Current French redeployment efforts will allow the United States to look at the French model of redeployment and decide whether or not to follow suit.