Near 3,000 men (and some women) serve in Afghanistan under the French flag. Frédéric Pons went to meet them, in Kabul and in the eastern part of the country, to better understand their mission, to listen to them and to testify to their total commitment to serving their country in a task not always easy to understand.
These soldiers risk their lives every day. This is especially true for those who patrol on the ground, in Kabul and around the capital, in the Surobi district and the valleys of Kapisa, on the road to Kandahar and in the province of Oruzgan, integrated into battalions of the Afghan National Army. It is also true for helicopter crews who multiply missions at a frantic pace, facing the furnace and dust of the terrible Afghan summers, as well as the freezing cold that hits the country from December.
Frédéric Pons, born in 1954, is a French journalist and officer. A former peacekeeper notably active in Lebanon, he is now a reserve colonel in the Marine Troops paratroopers and teaches at the Joint Defense College (CID), as well as at the École Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr.
Frédéric Pons is also a journalist at Spectacle du Monde, editor-in-chief of the “World” department of the weekly Valeurs actuelles, and president of the Association of Defense Journalists (AJD). In 1996, he received the Erwan Bergot Army literary prize for his book “Les Français à Sarajevo.”
Colonel Jacques Aragones, commander of the 8th RPIMa, led the Inter-Armed Forces Tactical Group (GTIA) Kapisa from July to November 2008.
