Italian soldiers have long been distinguished by a commendable reluctance to get themselves killed unnecessarily. Thanks to John for drawing this to my attention but I’m reluctant to believe that a man who has been acquitted as many times as Berlusconi would ever contemplate bribery.

Silvio Berlusconi today denied that his government authorised secret Italian payments to Taleban fighters that left French soldiers exposed in Afghanistan, amid a furious reaction to the details published in The Times.

The Italian Prime Minister said that he was also unaware of any such action undertaken under the previous Government of Romano Prodi.

The Times has learnt that when French soldiers arrived to assume control of the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, in mid-2008, they were not informed that the departing Italians had kept the region relatively peaceful by paying local Taleban fighters to remain inactive.

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

Within a month, ten French soldiers had been killed in an ambush by the insurgents. It was one of the biggest single losses of life by Nato forces in Afghanistan. The French public was horrified to learn that the soldiers had been mutilated and photographs were later published showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ flak jackets and weapons.

In a statement this morning, the office of the Italian Prime Minister said that The Times report had made “totally baseless accusations”.

“The Berlusconi Government has never authorised any kind of money payment to members of the Taleban insurrection in Afghanistan and has no knowledge of initiatives of this type by the previous government,” it said.

“It should be highlighted that in the first half of 2008, Italian contingents in Afghanistan came under attack numerous times, including one in the Sarobi district, on February 13, 2008, which cost the life of Lieutenant Francesco Pezzulo.”

Mr Berlusconi, defeated Romano Prodi at elections in April 2008 and had been in power for about three months when the handover of Sarobi was completee.

Mr Prodi also firmly denied the allegations.

He told The Times: “This is this first time I have ever heard such accusations, and I can say there is no base for them. I know absolutely nothing of this.”

Mr Prodi resigned in January 2008, and his centre-left government was replaced by Mr Berlusconi’s right-wing coalition in a general election three months later.

The Italian Defence Minister, Ignazio La Russa, joined in the denials saying that the story was “absolutely rubbish and we take it as such”.

The Times report, he said, was “offensive to the deaths we have suffered in Afghanistan, to our injured ones and to the daily level of commitment of our soldiers”.

Mr La Russa repeated his condolences to the French but said that the loss “can in no way be connected to the behaviour of our soldiers.”

US intelligence officials discovered through intercepted telephone conversations that the Italian secret service had been buying off militants in other areas, 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.

Several high-ranking officers in Nato have now told The Times that payments by agents were subsequently discovered to have been made in the Sarobi area as well.

“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.”

Mr La Russa added that a benevolent attitude toward the Italians who serve in Afghanistan had nothing to do with alleged bribes, but was due, instead, to “the behaviour of our military, which is very different compared to that of other contingents”.

“They have always shown they are close to the people and they get the same in return,” Mr La Russa said of the Italian soldiers. “To connect all of this with the death of the French soldiers . . . seems an absurdity to me.”

On August 18, a month after the Italian force departed, a lightly armed French patrol moved into the mountains north of Sarobi town, in the district of the same name, 40 miles east of Kabul. They had little reason to suspect that they were walking into the costliest battle for the French in a quarter of a century.

Operating in an arc of territory north and east of the Afghan capital, the French apparently believed that they were serving in a relatively benign district. The Italians they had replaced in July had suffered only one combat death in the previous year. For months the Nato headquarters in Kabul had praised Italian reconstruction projects under way around Sarobi.

When an estimated 170 insurgents ambushed the force in the Uzbin Valley the upshot was a disaster. “They took us by surprise,” one French troop commander said after the attack.

A Nato post-operations assessment would sharply criticise the French force for its lack of preparation. “They went in with two platoons [approximately 60 men],” said one senior Nato officer. “They had no heavy weapons, no pre-arranged air support, no artillery support and not enough radios.”

Had it not been for the chance presence of some US special forces in the area who were able to call in air support for them, they would have been in an even worse situation. “The French were carrying just two medium machine guns and 100 rounds of ammunition per man. They were asking for trouble and the insurgents managed to get among them.”

A force from the 8th Marine Parachute Regiment took an hour and a half to reach the French over the mountains. “We couldn’t see the enemy and we didn’t know how many of them there were,” said another French officer. “After 20 minutes we started coming under fire from the rear. We were surrounded.”

The force was trapped until airstrikes forced the insurgents to retreat the next morning. By then ten French soldiers were dead and 21 injured.

The French public were appalled when it emerged that many of the dead had been mutilated by the insurgents— a mixed force including Taleban members and fighters from Hizb e-Islami.

A few weeks later
French journalists photographed insurgents carrying French assault rifles and wearing French army flak jackets, helmets and, in one case, a dead soldier’s watch.

Two Western military officials in Kabul confirmed that intelligence briefings after the ambush said that the French troops had believed they were moving through a benign area — one which the Italian military had been keen to show off to the media as a successful example of a “hearts and minds” operation.

Another Nato source confirmed the allegations of Italian money going to insurgents. “The Italian intelligence service made the payments, it wasn’t the Italian Army,” he said. “It was payments of tens of thousands of dollars regularly to individual insurgent commanders. It was to stop Italian casualties that would cause political difficulties at home.”

When six Italian troops were killed in a bombing in Kabul last month it resulted in a national outpouring of grief and demands for troops to be withdrawn. The Nato source added that US intelligence became aware of the payments. “The Italians never acknowledged it, even though there was intercepted telephone traffic on the subject,” said the source. “The démarche was the result. It was not publicised because it would have caused a diplomatic nightmare. We found out about the Sarobi payments later.”

In Kabul a high-ranking Western intelligence source was scathing. “It’s an utter disgrace,” he said. “Nato in Afghanistan is a fragile enough construct without this lot working behind our backs. The Italians have a hell of a lot to answer for.”

Haji Abdul Rahman, a tribal elder from Sarobi, recalled how a benign environment became hostile overnight. “There were no attacks against the Italians. People said the Italians and Taleban had good relations between them.

“When the country [nationality of the forces] changed and the French came there was a big attack on them. We knew the Taleban came to the city and we knew that they didn’t carry out attacks on the Italian troops but we didn’t know why.”

The claims are not without precedent. In October 2007 two Italian agents were kidnapped in western Afghanistan; one was killed in a rescue by British special forces. It was later alleged in the Italian press that they had been kidnapped while making payments to the Taleban.