As French planes bomb jihadist bases in Mali, LSE’s Nabila Ramdani analyses this uncharacteristic action by France President, Francois Hollande. This article originally appeared in UAE newspaper, The National.
Taking France to war against the scourge of global terrorism was not something anyone would have expected from a François Hollande presidency. The mild-mannered Socialist had pledged before coming to power last May to enact a few radical policies. But most were concerned with taxing the rich to the extent that many would end up leaving the country, in the manner of film star Gerard Depardieu.
As far as foreign policy was concerned, Mr Hollande always portrayed himself as a dove – an isolationist with far more interest in the redistribution of domestic wealth than anything that was happening abroad.
Yet here we are, just eight months since the electoral defeat of the far more aggressive president Nicolas Sarkozy, and Mr Hollande has taken on the mantle of the most unlikely warmonger in recent European history.
The president’s determination to send considerable military resources to the blighted West African state of Mali – a former French colony – is a truly astonishing one. Not only does it contradict Mr Hollande’s earlier commitment to scale down involvement in France’s former colonies, but it also flies in the face of his decision to withdraw troops from the 12-year struggle by the western allies against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
With barely a word to his own parliament – let alone electorate – Mr Hollande has attacked Al Qaeda-backed fighters in both Mali and Somalia. On Friday, French fighters started to bomb jihadist bases in Mali, from where the rebels were threatening to advance on the country’s capital, Bamako. At the same time, French commandos launched an attempt, which failed, to free a compatriot held captive by similarly ferocious Islamist insurgents in neighbouring Somalia since 2009.
The ultimate aim as far as Mali is concerned, according to the French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, is to crush the development of “a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe”. Just as Afghanistan is viewed as a hotbed of radical activity, providing training camps and a place to stockpile weapons, so Mali is potentially a base for carrying out politically-motivated atrocities all over the world.
Mr Hollande credits his mandate for war to the interim Malian president, Dioncounda Traoré, who has declared a state of emergency. The Islamists have, for the past nine months, controlled vast desert swathes of northern Mali, but recently captured the strategic city of Konna, just over 640 kilometres from Bamako.
Beyond the Malian government’s desperate calls for assistance, France has its own reasons for taking action. It was Mali’s colonial master until 1960, and maintains strong trading links. There are French garrisons in neighbouring countries like the Ivory Coast, Chad and the Central African Republic containing up to 5,000 troops in total – all involved in the long-standing security commitment to French-speaking Africa which Mr Hollande had actually promised to reduce.
The trouble, as far as Mr Hollande is concerned, is that the history of his country’s involvement in its former colonies is a dark one. Former president Jacques Chirac was one of many who meddled and muddled, to the extent of destroying much of the Ivory Coast’s air force in 2004 because of alleged treaty breaches. France launched more than 50 military operations in its old African empire since 1960, viewing the area as its exclusive sphere of influence.
It is an open secret that France has regularly propped up controversial African leaders for its own gain. It is all part of a “Françafrique” policy stretching back to the presidency of Charles de Gaulle, which involved France maintaining both its political influence and its strategic grip on oil- and mineral-rich countries.
The same cynically pragmatic approach to world affairs might well be in evidence this week; Mr Hollande was in the UAE yesterday to attend Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week, but was expected to discuss a possible sale of 60 Rafale fighter jets and to support French oil giant Total’s position in the Emirates. “We are not ashamed about backing our companies,” said Mr Hollande, following criticism that an international arms dealing session might appear mistimed given what is going on in Mali.
Remember that Mr Hollande is not a very popular president in France at the moment. He has bungled domestic policies, including the vaunted 75 per cent top tax rate on those earning more than €1 million (Dh4.9 million) a year. The move was deemed unconstitutional, although further attempts are being made to get it through parliament. Meanwhile, both unemployment and the cost of living rise as the economy stagnates.
Foreign policy adventures are invariably used by struggling presidents to try to lift their electoral ratings at home. Look at the way Mr Sarkozy turned on his former friend, Muammar Qaddafi, using French fighter jets to help topple the Libyan despot at the height of the Arab Spring in 2011. So it is that Mr Hollande thinks that a short spell of intense military activity in a former colony may help him out.
This is all very well if everything goes right, but there is every possibility that it will not. The official terrorist risk assessment across France has already been stepped up to its highest level, while on Friday a downed French helicopter pilot became the first casualty of what could turn into a long, bloody and hugely unpopular war.
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Well, there was nothing less Mr Hollande could have done for a former colony. If we put foreign policy calculations aside, the exigencies of the moment required a military intervention. However, what is worrisome, in my view, is France’s decision to put boots on ground. They could have been at the background providing logistical support, while the ECOWAS forces do the mop-up. Anyway, I hope the plan works out well. We need peace in the world, especially in Africa.
It seems to me that the writer is unaware of the long term plans of the “Islamists” while the French President is very much aware and wants to help an African country save itself from disaster.
Colonial ties and business interests have little to do with this, it is about helping Africa to go forward, not backwards. Is the writer aware that the same Islamists want to destroy the pyramids of Egypt as they consider them to be “heathen monuments?”
The writer should be ashamed for writing such an ill-informed and badly-researched article.
“Former president Jacques Chirac was one of many who meddled and muddled, to the extent of destroying much of the Ivory Coast’s air force in 2004 because of alleged treaty breaches.”
“alleged treaty breaches” as you call them involved primarily former Ivory-Coast president Laurent Gbagbo ordering the aerial bombing of the French peace-keeping base in Bouaké, killing 9 french peacekeepers, 1 american NGO worker and injuring 37 other soldiers.
France had been involved since 2002 in Ivory-Coast trying to maintain the peace between Gbagbo’s forces and northern rebels as a result of
1) French commitments to Franco-Ivorian military treaties (calls from Gbagbo who feared to loose Abidjan),
2) demands from the international community (that feared exactions from Gbagbo troops in the North and against minorities) and
3) the incapacity of ECOWAS forces to intervene in time (sounds familiar?).
Between 2002 and 2004, President Gbagbo repetitively breached international peace treaties and protocols signed in Marcoussis (off-Paris) and Accra. Furthermore, he purposely attacked and discriminated northern Muslims and southern minorities in an attempt to unite the larger part of the country behind his “ivoirité” nationalist program.
The destruction of Ivory-Coast’s air-force in 2004 and the subsequent battle between French and Gbagbo’s forces in Abidjan for the control of the city and its airport had for result to allow us to organize the evacuation of more than 15,000 french expatriates and 10,000 other Europeans, Lebanese and North African civilians who were being threatened, attacked and sometime killed by Gbagbo’s partisans.
It took the French another month to stop all subsequent attacks on peacekeepers in the country and to effectively terminate hostilities between the rebels and loyalists until South Africa’s president Mbeki manages to gather rebels and loyalists and draft a peace treaty agreement. I thank the author for reminding us what could have happened would the rebel have controled Abidjan or Gbagbo the North. Even-though hostilities would start again between 2005 and 2007 among Ivorians.
You think 5000 thousands troops in French-speaking Africa is a lot? Yet, you fail to mention that almost 250,000 french citizens live in Africa and I am not even counting other Europeans who rely on France for both protection and potential evacuation.
Your words on Sarkozy’s “turning on his former friend” Quaddafi have both the intellectual quality and research legitimacy of one of Dan Brown’s conspiracy book.
The day the UAE will produce its own planes, its own nuclear centrals, its own oil-exploitation facilities and have sufficient military power not to ask a foreign country (France, surprisingly, – thank you for mentioning it again – in a region it which she has not historical links) to open an air-base we will talk about cynicism.
By the way, I am surprised to see that you don’t seem to consider the opening of “The Louvre Museum” in Abou-Dabi and a “Sorbonne University” as other proofs of France’s cynical neo-colonial ambitions?
Perhaps is it time for you to explore the full-potential offered by the LSE’s wonderful library?
I am completely unaverse to the French intervention in Mali. One can see that the intervention is at the request of Bamako against an insurgency that has been infiltrated by an Islamic fundamentalist Alqeda military struggle in the North of Mali.Though,the view at the AU is colonial borders remains. However, I see a connecting thread between what is happening in Mali to Somalia to Northern Nigeria and Boko Haram’ mayhem in sectarian violence. Good intentions in Foreign Policy can easily be construed by subverting opportunists as extending beyond the realms of permissible in foreign relations; identity, loyalty, self-determination. Only with historical perspective can we understand current relationships between global politics, nationalism and West/Africa historical political interractions. The war on terror marked by the end of the cold war clearly saw Bin Laden and his alqeda terror network show distaste for globalization. Bush administration though it wise to abandon containment strategy against terrorism. The French action in Mali in my view is the prevalent confronting world order beckoning.