France and the new imperialism
France and the new imperialism
security policy in sub-saharan africa
Bruno charBonneau
Laurentian University, Canada
© Bruno charbonneau 2008
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Bruno charbonneau has asserted his right under the copyright, designs and patents act,
1988, to be identiied as the author of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
charbonneau, Bruno
France and the new imperialism : security policy in
sub-saharan africa
1. national security - France 2. France - Foreign relations
- africa, sub-saharan 3. africa, sub-saharan - Foreign
relations - France 4. France - foreign relations - 1945 i. title
355'.0335'44'0967
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
charbonneau, Bruno.
France and the new imperialism : security policy in sub-saharan africa / by Bruno charbonneau.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-7285-2 (alk. paper)
1. national security--France. 2. France--Foreign relations--africa, sub-saharan. 3.
africa, sub-saharan--Foreign relations--France. i. title.
ua700.c533 2008
355'.0335440967--dc22
2007027816
isBn 978 0 7546 7285 2
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.
contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
vii
ix
xi
1
French security policy in sub-saharan africa
2
the symbolic state, security, and symbolic France
11
3
colonizing the political in africa: underwriting French
hegemony and proscribing dissent
29
authorizing hegemony: French power and military
cooperation, 1960-1994
49
into the twenty-First century: liberal war, Global Governance,
and French military cooperation
73
6
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
93
7
complicity in Genocide: France in rwanda
121
8
hegemonic struggles, hegemonic restructuring: France
in côte d’ivoire
149
conclusion: France and the new imperialism
171
4
5
9
Bibliography
1
175
list of tables
table 4.1
table 4.2
table 5.1
Table 5.2
table 5.3
table 7.1
table 7.2
Table 7.3
military cooperation accords with african countries
French military interventions in africa, 1945-2005
French military forces in africa
Budget for military cooperation (in € millions)
number of trainees by african country, 1999-2004
cieemG approved weapons transfers, 1987-1994
arms transfers authorized by aemG, 1990-1994
Other transfers (sale or donation), 1990-1994
62
68
78
79
81
138
139
140
Acknowledgements
This project is the result of my research at Queen’s University (Canada). Of the
signiicant debts I have acquired there writing this book I must irst express my most
sincere gratitude to my mentor, dr wayne s. cox. his constant and unwavering
support and accessibility were crucial to this project. at too many times, his acuity
felt like he knew more than I about what it was I was trying to do. There are no
words to articulate how grateful I am to have had the honour and pleasure to work
under his supervision. all my gratitude also goes to the chair of the department of
political studies, dr Kim r. nossal. his professionalism, experience, advice, and
unconditional support provided me with the necessary tools and opportunities to
succeed in completing this project.
I am also grateful to the Timothy Franks Foundation for a grant that sent me to
France. my appreciation must also extend to the faculty and staff of the political
studies department at Queen’s university. charles pentland and the Queen’s centre
of international relations always readily helped me to secure funds when i expressed
the need to go abroad. I also need to thank Phil Wood, David Haglund, and Grant
amyot for their teaching and help. For their always enthusiastic assistance, i want to
sincerely thank Barb, Evelyn, Frances, and Karen.
For their passionate responses and constructive criticisms to this project, i
also want to express sincere thanks to Dan O’Meara (UQAM) and Barry Riddell
(Queen’s). Their very insightful comments and their suggested readings participated
in making this book better and more complete.
i want to express gratitude to my dear friends and colleagues with whom i had
many conversations which, in many ways, produced this book. Sincere thanks to
nadine Busmann, siobhan Byrne, eric charbonneau, John Green, todd hataley,
Kris hulme, Bob lawson, charles martin, david sanscartier, John sears, david
thomas, and George wootten.
last but not least, the people close to my heart deserve the uppermost appreciation
for their unqualiied support and patience. I thank my dad, sister, and brother-inlaw. My mom earned special thanks for her “super-extraordinaire” encouragement
conveyed mostly through her actions.
Most importantly, I want to thank Geneviève Parent for always believing and
helping, from beginning to end. Your force and courage are always with me. they
are sources of inspiration, energy, and comfort. more than you can imagine our bond
has led me throughout this project.
list of abbreviations
acm
aemG
aFd
AMT
APD
cdeF
cdes
CEC
CFA
cieemG
cos
cpX
dami
dcmd
dGa
dGse
ecowas
ema
enVr
Fac
Fanci
Far
GiGn
MIPR
mmc
MPCI
PDCI
recamp
rep
rGF
rpF
rpima
sdece
unoci
actions civilo-militaires
autorisation d’exportation des matériels de guerre
agence française de développement
Assistance militaire technique
Aide publique au développement
centre de doctrine d’emploi des forces
commandement de la doctrine et de l’enseignement
militaire supérieur
Commission d’enquête citoyenne
Communauté inancière africaine
commission interministérielle pour l’étude des exportations
de matériel de guerre
commandement des opérations spéciales
command post exercise
détachement d’assistance militaire et d’instruction
direction de la coopération militaire et de défense
délégation générale pour l’armement
direction générale de la sécurité extérieure
economic community of west african states
etat-major des armées
ecoles nationales à vocation régionale
Fonds d’aide et de coopération
Forces armées nationales de côte d’ivoire
Force d’action rapide
Groupement d’intervention de la gendarmerie nationale
Mission d’information parlementaire sur le Rwanda (France)
mission militaire de coopération
Mouvement patriotique de la Côte d’Ivoire
Parti démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire
renforcement des capacités africaines au maintien de la paix
régiment étranger de parachutistes
rwandan Governmental Forces
rwandan patriotic Front
régiment parachutiste de l’infanterie de marine
service de documentation extérieure et de contre-expionnage
united nations operation in côte d’ivoire
chapter 1
French security policy in
sub-saharan africa
You already know enough. So do I. It is not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the
courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions.
Sven Lindqvist (1992)
Those who study or participate in the making of French security policy in Africa
have a clearer picture than others about the rationale and signiicance of the policy.
Whereas “non-experts” on the question would see disorder and chaos, “experts” see
rationality, meaning, and purpose. France might have sometimes gone astray and
experienced blunders, but generally speaking the policy is conceived as rational and
thus observable and understandable. in this view, the policy has since the second
world war generally sought two main objectives. First, it had to serve France’s
national interest and grandeur. in sub-saharan africa, France ensured the defence
of its allies and it maintained stability and order by providing a security umbrella.
according to this security discourse, to have not done so would have been tantamount
to letting chaos roam free in the pré carré (exclusive sphere of inluence). In order
to develop, it is argued, French africa needed the protection of France. in return,
France was given access to strategic resources and markets, and the support France
gave to its allies produced grandeur, power, and wealth as well as african support for
French policy on the international stage.
Second, and intertwined with the irst objective, this discourse asserts that
France has had a historical responsibility, role, and mission to help african states
and societies. as the birthplace of liberty, and as an old colonial power, France has
had the duty to help africa. the civilizing mission might have changed its name and
its image, but to this day it remains implicit when not explicit in France’s african
policy.
This book is a re-examination of both the discourse and policy of the French
security state in sub-saharan africa. French security policy in africa and its discourse
might make sense from a speciic and supericial worldview, but when the “policy,”
its oficial discourse, and its theoretical apology are subjected and compared to the
empirical facts, it tends to lose coherence – or at the very least seems to. one simply
needs to look at the historical record: since decolonization, France has been unable to
bring either peace or development to its former colonies. indeed, some have argued
that the situation is even worse than it was prior to French intervention (Verschave
and Hauser 2004).
it will be argued that it is a fallacy to analyze French security policy in africa in
and of itself. to do so would separate the political, economic, and social dimensions
2
France and the New Imperialism
from policy formulation, and it would further disconnect that policy from global
structures and conditions. Such an analysis needs to take into account at least two
crucial dimensions. First, the policy is much more Franco-african than purely
French. That is, the “policy” is not so much a policy (understood as a set of actions/
behaviours that are the result of rational decision-making by the state), but the
result of the relationships of French and african elites, their mutual interests, their
transnational hegemony over social conditions and the policy discourse, and thus
their mutual objectives in sustaining and reproducing the status quo.
second, French security policy vis-à-vis africa since the end of world war ii has
always been part of a western strategy of national and global domination, control,
and governance. thus trying to examine current French security policy outside the
context of the construction of systems of global liberal governance would result in
misleading and inaccurate analysis.
these two dimensions should be underlined and given their proper importance
because, from this perspective, French security policy can be considered as a
factor of instability and as a reproductive mechanism of systems of dependency,
domination, and subordination. however, they should not undermine the centrality
of the security aspect of Franco-african dynamics. French security policy has always
been, and continues to be, at the core of that “special” relationship. The strategies
of domination, subordination, and control of african populations by african elites,
and indirectly by their French counterparts, might be transforming themselves from
coercive to consensual, from national to regional, and from bilateral to multilateral.
however, the exploitative and dependent relationships remain largely based on the
coercive apparatus of the French military in Africa. Analyses and policymaking that
assume the separation of security (policy) from the socioeconomic oversimplify
the issue. French military presence in africa has never been one of an impartial
arbiter or of an honest broker whose main goal was to favour peaceful resolutions
to indigenous conlicts. France has always been and continues to be partial. That
is, French policy in africa is more than anything else the result of transnational
elites whose main objective is to maintain and to reproduce the social conditions
that privilege them.
In this book, I will argue that this theoretical and practical (and hence political)
separation of security from the socioeconomic upholds the state as the central unit
of analysis and of the practice of security, and thus loads the dice in favour of the
status quo – in favour of French hegemony. It is always implicit (when not explicit)
that the state is both the agent that secures and the object to be secured. in short,
the process of securitization is never questioned, examined, or problematized. From
these assumptions, the French state (to secure itself among other things) must help
in “securing” African states from external and internal threats. But the meaning of
“securing” and what is to be “secured” are questions that are rarely explored. In
other words, the French state must secure a set of ill-deined political institutions
that (supposedly) constitute those African states under the French security umbrella.
the objectives of order, stability, and security are sought to maintain an arrangement
of political institutions that are conceived as legitimate and separate from the
socioeconomic sphere(s). The enormous inequalities and concentrations of power
and wealth in nonpolitical (or private) institutions are, in appearance only, not the
French Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
3
objects to be securitized. however, the empirical evidence suggests that French
security “policy” is time and again about securing the institutions and the social
conditions that ensure the power and wealth of transnational elites.
From my perspective, therefore, the state-as-actor model is not a good starting
point for analyzing French security policy. But, i will argue, this is not only an
analytical and methodological matter, but also political and practical. that is, the
state as the central unit of analysis and practice, and the consequent (and misleading)
separation of security from the socioeconomic, should be understood as strategies of
power and deterrence against analyses and politics that would challenge the social
structures of the special Franco-african relationship. these strategies are part of the
forms and relations of domination and subordination that legitimize and authorize
their own discourses and practices. these strategies must be part of the object to be
studied.
The chapters that follow will construct a threefold argument. In the irst part
(Chapters 2 and 3), I will establish a theoretical framework that aims to explain the
means and the consequences of the construction of social structures and conditions as
well as the creation and reproduction of a hegemonic order. the central assumption
is that social realities and structures are not natural, but rather are the product of
human relationships. These same relationships are shaped, inluenced, and often
determined by social structures, but in the end political authority and legitimacy
are grounded in historical struggles between different and varying groups over the
forms that these social structures should (or should not) take. Therefore, claims to
authority become strategies of power and deterrence against changing the status quo
and not necessarily objective and/or rational responses to social problems. security
“policy” becomes a mode of operation – a strategy of power. To underline this
strategy of power behind security policy, i use the concept of what might be called
the “symbolic state.” In other words, one can differentiate between the state-as-idea
and the state-as-practice to demonstrate that the state itself (the state-as-practice) has
created an image of itself: the symbolic state – which legitimizes and authorizes the
state-as-practice.
In Chapter 3, I will analyze the speciicities of the historical construction of the
“special” Franco-African relationship since the nineteenth century. The main goal
is not simply to provide some historical context. Rather, it is irst to demystify the
history of French colonialism, decolonization, and cooperation in africa in order to
illuminate the socioeconomic structures and relationships that have been transformed
through the years, but that stay at the core of current French security policy.
the aim is also to illustrate how the historical construction of understandings of
the state, security, the self, and the other inform current policy. the common belief
is that the present modern political order has evolved from the era of colonialism
and its related racist apology. i argue otherwise. the international, or in any case
the common understanding of the international, remains to be decolonized. colonial
and imperial assumptions about civilization, progress, barbarism, war, and peace
continue to persist at the core of French security policy in africa.
In short, I will examine the construction of the social forces (groups), the
discourses, and the social structures that authorize and legitimize the present-day
relationship between France and africa. i will examine the historical construction
4
France and the New Imperialism
of an ever-changing French hegemony centered on a discourse of state and security
– a discourse that makes empires benevolent and the use of force enlightening. Postcold war French security policy in africa was transformed to accommodate itself
to the times, but the objective seems always the same: maintaining and reproducing
French hegemony.
In the second section (Chapters 4 through 6), I will concentrate on the post-war
military apparatus that supports the special relationship and on how it has adapted,
and is still adapting to, post-cold war conditions and criticisms. chapter 4 analyzes
the neocolonial arrangements put in place after decolonization to uphold and often
consolidate French power. chapter 5 examines the so-called changes of the 1990s.
it is argued that, while globalization has imposed constraints on French african
policy, the hegemonic neoliberal environment has also offered new opportunities
to re-legitimize French military policy and pre-positioned forces in africa. through
my analysis of an alleged multilateralization of French military cooperation and
the multinationalization of French interests and development policy, i argue that
the merging of French security and development practices and discourses seeks to
reproduce French hegemony at great costs to african countries. military aid is now
deined as development aid because, as the argument goes, security is the sine qua
non condition for development and vice versa. Consequently, the French military
has identiied the promotion of neoliberal principles and market democracy as a
legitimate objective, strategy of war, and as a means to secure peace.
Chapter 6 clariies the argument put forward in Chapter 5 by analyzing the
concept of Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capabilities (Renforcement
des Capacités Africaines de Maintien de la Paix – hereafter RECAMP) and its
associated doctrine of mastery of Violence. in short, chapter 6 illustrates why and
how arguments and policies which assume African conlicts as indigenous in origin,
and further assume French policy as purely responsive to such conlicts, miss the
overall picture. prior to the 1990s, French military cooperation was part of a western
anticommunist strategy. recamp is part of a complex system of post-cold war
global liberal governance that has emerged in response to changing conditions and
the many criticisms. the revamping of French security policy was designed more to
retain the elite-based and undemocratic status quo of the special relationship rather
than encourage the emancipation of african nations. it does nothing to reverse the
enormous inequalities and concentrations of power and wealth in private hands and
institutions.
chapters 7 and 8 analyze French military cooperation and interventions in rwanda
and côte d’ivoire. in many respects, these are the obvious cases to concentrate on. But
their importance goes beyond the obvious for they offer a helpful comparative frame
that illustrates the fundamental continuities in French security policy. in chapter 7,
the case of rwanda stands out as a seminal example of the effects of long-standing
practices of security. in the name of military cooperation and of defending the
conditions for a diplomatic solution, France ended up giving unconditional military
support to a genocidal regime. rwanda seems a clear case of how Franco-african
security dynamics can in fact produce instability, violence, and insecurity. in chapter
8, the case of côte d’ivoire shows important similarities in practices, discourses,
and outcomes, despite the adoption of so-called new security practices prior to the
French Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
5
intervention. But more importantly, the case of côte d’ivoire demonstrates how
hegemonic discourses and practices are transformed and reproduced. the French
intervention points to fundamental continuities, but also to the restructuring of the
(neo)imperial relationship. In other words, after its post-Rwanda “crisis” French
security policy in sub-saharan africa found in multilateralization, africanization,
and other norms of global governance and conlict management an opened “space”
to reposition its power and inluence, and thus to re-legitimize and re-authorize
its practices and discourses. Taken together, both cases demonstrate how French
hegemony survives, albeit in a different form, and is continuously reformulated and
reproduced.
Contributions and Theoretical Assumptions
R. Cox (1986) argues that there are two kinds of theory: critical theory and problemsolving theory. This book seeks to link the critical and the problem-solving. The
critical project has been invaluable in demonstrating the inherent political nature
of so-called objective methods and in illuminating their tendency to promote and
legitimate some political agendas over others. critical theory can re-tell the story of
French hegemony in sub-saharan africa in a different way from the conventional
statist and problem-solving methods that dominate security and strategic studies.
In doing so, critical theory suggests that the problem has been ill-deined, “that
the very terms in which it is posed are suspect” (Edelman 1971, 155). Put another
way, critical theory shows how common assumptions conceived as observations of
the world-as-it-is make the unobservable legitimate and natural, while they often
deny and suppress the apparent and observable. the focus on the state, the nation,
and national security often hides and/or obscures the patterns of political struggles
that are fundamental in world politics. in this way, the politics of global affairs are
romanticized and disguised in order to make them acceptable. This does not mean
that military conlicts are any less real, deadly, or complex. However, it does change
our view, and our understanding of, the problem and its potential solutions.
in global politics, the myths, symbols, and rituals that constitute our understanding
of, and the politics of how the game is played, are crucial. symbolic structures
are the primary means through which we give meaning to social conditions and
through which we interpret social realities. Unlike social constructivist theories
of international relations and comparative politics (for example: Wendt 1999), the
framework developed here is true to R. Cox’s (1986, 207) assertion that “[t]heory
is always for someone and for some purpose.” As a result, symbolic structures and
their concepts have no ontological stability. they are the product of human effort, of
political struggles, of historical traditions, and so on. they are more often than not a
relection of relations of power.
In short, my argument follows Edward Said’s (2004, 871): “history is made by
men and women, just as it can also be unmade and re-written, always with various
silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disigurements tolerated, so
that ‘our’ East, ‘our’ Orient becomes ‘ours’ to possess and direct.” Power is not
only material (that is, the matter of possessing resources to exercise power). Power
6
France and the New Imperialism
is often more subtle and mostly immaterial. it is ingrained in every aspect of life
– in both mind and body. that is, what gives legitimacy and authority to a vision of
divisions, to social conditions, and to a speciic political order cannot be the use and
the threat of force alone. what gives authority and legitimacy to material conditions
is a process of transformation of the “ought to be” into the “is.” It is the naturalization
process by which social forces authorize their authority.
so far, however, critical theory has operated almost exclusively at this level of
meta-theory, deconstructing “paradigms,” “epistemologies,” “methods,” and the like,
having little to say about the so-called real world. Put bluntly, critical theory’s lack of
a fully developed research project has limited its contribution. critical theorists have
largely failed to illustrate how its criticisms and the dominant security discourse
impact real people in the real world. This book acknowledges and embraces the “fact”
that theory is inherently political. Consequently, if it is to be politically meaningful,
critical theory must embrace its normative nature while engaging in the politics of
world affairs. it must live up to its implicit potential of social change by engaging
in empirical research. an argument for the re-conceptualization of our views of the
international system in order to better understand the politics of transformation,
change, stability, acquiescence, and violence must be accompanied by a politics of
change. one of the starting points for such politics is a normative project that, if it
does not offer alternatives, at the very least points to where resistance and opposition
can be effective; that is, by raising consciousness.
The general critique that normative projects have little practical relevance or that
it has little to say about the “real world” has been part of the silencing of France’s
hegemonic aspirations. This book addresses this issue head-on by showing how a
normative research project can have important “policy-relevance” and how the view
of the French security state and the mindset that drives it (the symbolic state) have
profound effects for both France and French postcolonial africa. in a sense, in this
book critical theory deals with a problem – the problem of how the discourse of the
French security state is a key component of the policies of the French state. The
discourse of French security policy in sub-saharan africa is constitutive of the policy
as well as it is relective of an elite worldview that France has attempted to replicate
in africa among selected elites, and in doing so has embedded French dominance in
the postcolonial world. the neoliberal/globalization discourse has done nothing to
alter this – if anything, it is often a mechanism to reinforce it and make it harder to
see through “multilateralism.” The only way to establish this argument is to present
the “facts” in a theoretically informed manner. In other words, I am not engaged here
in deconstructing the security discourse merely for the sake of deconstruction, but
with the purpose to show intent.
critical theory permits us to discuss the myths and symbols of the French security
state that rationalize, legitimize, and authorize its African policy. Consequently,
symbolic power permits the social construction of problems, their explanations, and
their solutions that will relect the material structures and the interests attached to
them. It construes a simpliied version of history. It construes hegemony. Hence, it
can reinforce the prevalent social conditions by constructing social problems and
negating others, by creating authority and authorities for certain explanations and
French Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
7
remedies while denigrating others, by establishing appropriate codes of consciousness
and behaviour, and by discouraging resistance to existing conditions.
It has often been said that International Relations theory (IR) is part of the reality
it seeks to explain. Explanatory theory often embeds its preferences and assumptions
in what it decides is worthy of study, in how it describes the world-as-it-is, and as a
result, in what it claims are the objective structures of the international system (for
example: Walker 1993). It comes as no surprise then that the so-called objective
theories of IR often mirror and relect the aspirations and interests of the most
powerful states in the international system. as such, theories of ir often reinforce
the legitimacy and authority of states and the state system, of those same objective
structures it pretends to analyze.1 security needs to be analyzed in connection with the
institutional practices of the process of securitization because they are determinant
in understanding what becomes “objects” of national security and what does not. We
need to understand the social construction of insecurities, fears, enemies, and so on
for “there is no process of securitisation independent of a ield of security constituted
by groups and institutions that authorise themselves and that are authorised to state
what security is” (Bigo 2000, 195). Security, as a process of securitization, is not
an answer to threats alone, but a practice of authorization to manage and create
insecurity, to afirm an ontology of inclusions and exclusions, of inside and outside
in order to enable a vision of divisions between the legitimate and the illegitimate,
the normal and the exceptional, the political and the nonpolitical (see among others:
Bigo 2000; Neocleous 2000; Walker 1993). In a way, the process of securitization
is a political strategy. it creates a past, present, and future rationale to consolidate
its (quasi) monopoly on the deinition of legitimate threats. It sets the agenda for the
future. It is a strategy of deterrence against those who would want signiicant change
in the ways in which security issues are addressed and change in the character and
location of the political.
By deinition then, as a practice and as a strategy of practice, the ield of security
is replete with symbols, myths, and rituals that constitute it as a science; those who
deliberate about the conditions of system reproduction in order to inluence, shape,
or modify that reproduction, constitute a scientiic community. Positivist theories of
ir give life to theoretical forms, images, and concepts. they construct theoretical
categories, classes, types, divisions, and so on. to give form is the power to give to
an action, a discourse, a policy, and so on, a form that is recognized as acceptable
and legitimate; a form that would be unacceptable if presented otherwise. war, for
instance, is often presented as a necessary evil to liberate the oppressed, to protect
the homeland from unprovoked hostility, to stop ethnic cleansing, to bring peace,
and so on.
In short, the construction of forms about the object(s) to be securitized represents
a political strategy about the past, the present, and the future. it authorizes the
1 However, as Walker (1997, 64) writes: “the dificulty of speaking about security in
any other way is not a consequence of entrenched political and institutional interests alone.
The sociology of knowledge has only a limited purchase on the way we have all become
caught up in habits of speaking that now seem not only dangerously out of touch with times,
but even trite and more than faintly ridiculous.”
8
France and the New Imperialism
legitimate practices and theories while it de-legitimizes alternatives by weakening
critical consciousness about the possibilities of peace and change. as der derian
(2000, 76) puts it, IR is “in need of approaches that study what is being represented.
But it is also in need of a virtual theory which can explore how reality is seen,
framed, read, and generated in the actualization of the virtual by the event.”
the point is that the common sense understanding of security and international
politics gives authority to a speciic vision of the political. At the same time, it
discredits alternative views of the political. in essence, the symbols and the rituals
that are construed give authority to speciic issues, problems, consciousness,
behaviour, and so on. They make clear what is political and what is not; what is
legitimate and illegitimate. They deine Self and Other, inside and outside, included
and excluded, and so on. so, for example, the objective view might suggest that the
tragedy in Rwanda was the consequence of a failed state and a lack of security. It
is natural to expect competing groups to vie for supremacy, and to expect that, had
a more effective security state been in place, this tragedy could have been avoided.
However, such an “objective” view universalizes the assumptions about power and
competition in such a way that more than one hundred years of playing ethnic elites
against one another is ignored, how the securitization of the rwandan state may
have made the situation more (not less) dangerous, how the very deinition of Hutu
and tutsi is embedded with French interests in the region, and how the structures of
security policy helped make a genocide – not prevent one (see Chapter 7).
the distinctions made between war and peace, domestic and international,
economic and political, and so on, represent the symbolic power of the ield of
security. More importantly, these symbols that deine the scope of objects to be
“securitized” command speciic solutions. In other words, to deine a problem as
one of security is typically to assume that the remedy has to be of a military-like
nature. It is to assume that ire must be fought with ire. It militarizes the political.
the process of securitization is thus a self-sustaining and self-reproducing loop that,
by constructing threats as much as responding to threats, can never run out of fuel.
war cannot be eradicated not because of any inherent anarchical nature, but because
as long as war and security are conceived as self-fulilling prophecies, their remedies
will never be appropriate.
Briely then, this book must discuss the myths, symbols, and various social
constructions of French security policy in sub-saharan africa in order to demonstrate
how French hegemony was (and is still) naturalized, legitimized, and authorized,
and thus continuously redeined so as to reproduce itself. The discourse of French
security and hegemony is a key element of the practice of French hegemony.
moreover, i have endeavored to show how policy becomes action through the
case studies of rwanda and côte d’ivoire. Both cases will demonstrate that the
French discourse and agenda cannot escape that these postcolonial african states
are a product of the French colonial republic. Functionally, France is still the only
state with the economic, political, and security links to places like Côte d’Ivoire
that both constructed their current political crisis and that implore France (above
everyone else) to take the lead role in intervention. It is the ideational mindset of
most postcolonial African leaders and military elites to both use French thinking
and play on France’s consciousness to further their individual interests. in short, the
French Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa
9
myths, symbols, and various social constructions of French security policy in subsaharan africa obscure the role of France and other international actors in african
crises. it also re-legitimizes and re-authorizes French hegemony. it constructs new
zones of political immunity and impunity.
chapter 2
the symbolic state, security, and
symbolic France
Security, as a ield of study and as a set of practices, is replete with symbols, images,
myths, and rituals. the symbolic power of security and the process of securitization
construes, in part at least, the authority and the legitimacy of the dominant discourse,
the dominant political order, and the dominant structures. this political process
tends to naturalize social problems, social conditions, the constructed enemy, the
Other, and so on. It also neutralizes, sanitizes, and trivializes abuses, inequalities,
and violence in the name of state security. the most powerful symbol on which
defence, foreign, and security policies are based upon, and from which most other
security symbols and rituals are derived, is the symbolic state or, more speciically,
an unproblematic and ahistorical conceptualization of the state.
to examine the symbolic state is not to argue that the state does not exist or that
it is merely a fabrication of the mind. it is to analyze the state’s deceptive nature
which largely generates the state’s authority and legitimacy. that is, it is to examine
the idea of the state for the state is as much an idea as a set of practices. however,
while it is the elites that are engaged in the practice of the state, it is also the elites’s
historically-constructed conceptualization of the state (or their version of the idea
of the state) that forms the dominant discourse. And this discourse is often designed
and transformed to suit their interests. it does not matter whether or not the concept
corresponds to reality. what matters is who believes it, how it affects their actions,
and, in some cases, who rejects it. in short, the legitimacy and authority of the stateas-practice are to be found, in part at least, in the symbolic state. the latter gives
to social structures an appearance of the world-as-it-is when its image is confused,
consciously or not, both politically and intellectually, with the state-as-practice. put
another way, the state has no ontological stability. therefore, it lends itself painlessly
to manipulation and to the organization of collective action and policymaking. In the
same way, the practice of security cannot be the pursuit of “securing” a pre-formed
state. From this perspective, security “policy” becomes intensely involved in the
production, transformation, and reproduction of the political order.
The Symbolic State
it is axiomatic that the state has no ontological stability. the state, as object of study
and like all social objects, is concept-dependent; as an imagined political community,
it is vulnerable to the meanings attached to it. and yet, the state possesses its own
“mode of objectiication” that grants it legitimacy, authority, and stability as an
12
France and the New Imperialism
ordering principle for human societies. The state’s mode of objectiication has both
an ideological and a material dimension. the former is the concept of the pre-formed
unitary state that i call the symbolic state. the latter dimension is represented in the
symbols, myths, and rituals of the imagined state: the territorial map, the national
lag, the national anthem, the state’s governing institutions, its bureaucracies, its
military and security apparatuses, its law, and so on. Both forms, both dimensions,
are mutually conirming and constitutive of the state-as-practice.
this dialectical relationship between the state-as-idea and the state-as-practice
has fundamental consequences for the analysis of French security policy. The
state-as-practice is not a unitary actor, an institution, an ensemble of institutions,
or even a space at all. it operates to legitimize and authorize the dichotomies its
image (the symbolic state) commands. Thereby, it continuously reinstitutes itself
as the legitimate and natural political order and ordering principle of modern
human societies. the symbolic state is a mode of operation – a strategy of power
that produces, transforms, and reproduces that political order. the discourse of the
symbolic state also neutralizes, sanitizes, and trivializes the actions of the state-aspractice, the exercise of power, and the actual practices of otherwise unacceptable
and objectionable relations of power.
the symbolic state ensures its legitimacy through its simple assertion and logic,
and through its free historical development. As a symbolic form like any other, the
symbolic state can be used by all parties to promote contradictory policies. these
reversing capabilities come from the invariable reversibility of images and symbols
(Girardet 1986, 17). However, despite the ideological splits or interpretations within
the image that can seem decisive, we can always ind a homogeneous totality with
constant speciicity. Through the examination of the language, the images, the
symbols, and the emotional repercussions, we ind that the permanent factors are
easily identiiable. Therefore, the image exists in its speciic logical discourse and
it is in this somewhat immutable symbolic “code” that we will ind its message and
importance (Girardet 1986, 3-14).
however, the symbolic state should not be understood as a product and/or
instrument of the hegemon alone. It is by deinition a product of human history
(mostly European history and its encounter with the Other and with the Orient).
Kertzer (1988, 4) argues that to make sense of complex realities, human societies
create systems of symbols, and through them, “we confront the experiential chaos
that envelops us and create order. By objectifying our symbolic categories, rather
than recognizing them as products of human creation, we see them as somehow the
products of nature, ‘things’ that we simply perceive and recognize.”
Cassirer goes further. According to him, “myth gives us a unity of feeling” and
begins with “the awareness of the universality and fundamental identity of life.”
myth is above all a deep human emotion:
it is a deep and ardent desire of the individuals to identify themselves with the life of the
community and with the life of nature … this is not a causal but an emotional bond. what
matters here are not the empirical relations between causes and effects, but the intensity
and depth with which human relations are felt.
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
13
myth is not merely an emotion, but the expression of that emotion which can be
translated into political action.
myth does not arise solely from intellectual processes; it sprouts forth from deep human
emotions. Yet on the other hand all those theories that exclusively stress the emotional
element fail to see an essential point. myth cannot be described as bare emotion because
it is the expression of emotion. the expression of a feeling is not the feeling itself – it is
emotion turned into an image. this very fact implies a radical change. what hitherto was
dimly and vaguely felt assumes a deinite shape; what was a passive state becomes an
active process (Cassirer 1946, 37-43).
Symbolic expressions of social realities lead to an objectiication of feelings and
social experience. in other words, it is a social process by which social conditions
become natural. it is a inherently political process for it is one by which historically
constructed sociopolitical concepts and practices are often de-politicized and
hence made natural, rational, and unproblematic. it is a process by which political
communities and their systems of inclusion and exclusion are rendered nonpolitical
(Cassirer 1946).1 it is a process by which historicity is often rejected and denied to
the beneit of a universal and evolutionary history.
therefore, the most powerful symbol is the one that is not regarded as such, but as a
“fact” of life that cannot be rejected, opened to interpretation, or criticized and that
has to be passively accepted (Cassirer 1946, 47). The symbolic state becomes the
dominant understanding of the state-as-practice when the state’s contingent nature
is forgotten. the state becomes a given – a fact of life – regardless of how well
it corresponds to social conditions and practices. As Said (1978, 19) writes about
authority, the symbolic state is “formed, irradiated, disseminated; it is instrumental,
it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of taste and value; it is virtually
indistinguishable from certain ideas it digniies as true, and from traditions,
perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces.” Our comprehension
of state power and security changes accordingly for “the uses of all such terms
[political concepts] in speciic situations are strategies, deliberate or unrecognized,
for strengthening or undermining support for speciic courses of action and for
particular ideologies” (Edelman 1988, 11). Concepts are forms of domination, but
they also express as much as they perpetuate social conditions.2
As Walker (1997, 71) puts it, “claims about national security can be read as
expressions of the legitimation practices of modern states more readily than as
empirical explanations of the practices of such states.” The symbolic state is a
strategy of power in order to determine what is problematic and what is not in world
politics. It champions speciic explanations and remedies. As a result, it creates a
self-reproducing logic that portrays the state as having an invariable and necessary
nature caused by the immutable anarchical nature of the international system. any
1 on the historically constructed nature of political communities and their need for
systems of inclusion and exclusion, see Linklater (1998).
2 For a classical examination of the relationship between the ideological and the
material, of how ideologies and material conditions are interdependent facets of the same
social order, see Marx and Engels (1947).
14
France and the New Imperialism
solution that identiies the state as part of the problem is dismissed and de-legitimized.
In short, because the state is objectiied and taken as given, political problems of
global politics are very often articulated in such a way as to never undermine the
dominance, the hegemony, and the legitimacy of the state and its extended apparatus
as the modern form of political community.
The Symbolic State in International Relations Theory
the symbolic state is best represented by the non-conceptualization of the state
in ir theory – its eurocentric immutable code. the symbolic state is also relevant
to the practice of politics for the state’s symbolic nature is instrumental to many
political projects. the symbolic state is, simply put, a political strategy of power
and legitimation, the founding pillar, and the principle upon which our modern
global social order is based and maintained.3 But more importantly, it draws its
powerful status from its mostly un-criticized acceptance because it is more often
than not confused and intertwined with, consciously or not, and both politically and
intellectually, with the state-as-practice. in order to assess critically French foreign
policy (or the foreign policy of any other country for that matter), we must irst and
foremost address the question of legitimacy and authority.
the symbolic state should be understood as a product of history that assumed a
life of its own through the formation of the european state system. the modern state
is almost impossible to deine in a way that captures its entirety. Symbols and ideas
have an elusive quality, subject to change and contradictory interpretations. In any
case, as a symbolic form, the truth or the falsity of the state-as-idea is irrelevant for
its function is to give meaning to a given reality. the common image of the state
is a widespread belief through which political events and actions are interpreted.
The question is not whether an objective account of facts is possible. Rather, it
is about which facts are selected, which facts are given signiicance, and perhaps
more importantly, which facts are ignored. This selection of “facts” is intrinsically
political in nature. As Kaufman (2001, 28) puts it: “Facts, from this point of view, do
not matter – either they are redundant, conirming the myth; or else they contradict
it and are rejected.” Nonetheless, I identify four aspects that constitute the symbolic
state: 1) personhood; 2) rationality; 3) nation/nationality; 4) hegemony/universality.
it should be noted that these characteristics are interconnected and that they reinforce
each other.
The conceptual boundary between “state” and “society” is an appropriate starting
point. Mitchell (1991) argues that the dificulty in deining the state comes from
the elusive, porous, and mobile characteristics of this boundary. Consequently, the
solution is not to endlessly redeine the state and society and to try to come up with
some universal concepts, but to take the elusiveness of the state-society boundary as a
sign of the nature of the phenomenon. Mitchell (1991, 88) criticizes statist approaches
for their unsatisfactory answers to the uncertain boundary and to the penetration of
the state by societal elements “by giving the state a narrow deinition, personiied
3 This does not exclude the fact that the state-as-idea, like all forms, is subject to
alternative interpretations and projects.
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
15
as a policy-making actor.” The state-as-actor becomes an object that stands outside
society and the international system. It acquires an essential unity and a personhood
that can intervene in society. However, as Mitchell (1991, 88-90) argues, the line
between state and society that creates the state-as-actor does not relect a real exterior
nor does it separate two distinct realms or entities for it is drawn internally, “within
the network of institutional mechanisms through which a certain social and political
order is maintained.” The elusiveness of the state-society boundary does not suggest
that it is illusionary, but that “producing and maintaining the distinction between
state and society is itself a mechanism that generates resources of power.”
the symbolic state constructs the autonomy of the state-as-practice in the
political sphere by forming a public space apart from civil society, but also a
domestic space apart from the international. the state can thus claim nothing short
of universality, for it distinguishes itself from the singular (social forces). Ashley
argues that neorealist IR offers a “‘state-as-actor’ model of the world” that leads to
“an ideology that anticipates, legitimizes, and orients a totalitarian project of global
proportions: the rationalization of global politics.” In short, the understanding of
the state as a unitary actor produces, maintains, and reproduces the authority of the
modern state and the (Western) international system as the legitimate, universal, and
natural political order (Ashley 1986).
ashley argues that the neorealist commitment to positivism leads to a metahistorical faith in technical rationality and scientiic progress which cannot be
questioned. The actor is simply assumed as inhabiting the domain of the “is” and,
thus, does not need to be defended. Consequently, the agent’s actions are restrained
by a set of external constraints from below (society) and from above (international
system). The historical constitution of the agent is taken as given and unproblematic
and its actions are reduced to a rational-economic action where meaning has
disappeared:
[where] meaningful action is merely motivated action … thus, for purposes of theory, the
state must be treated as an unproblematic unity: an entity whose existence, boundaries,
identifying structures, constituencies, legitimations, interests, and capacities to make selfregarding decisions can be treated as given, independent of trans-national class and human
interests, and undisputed (except, perhaps, by other states) (Ashley 1986, 268).
in this view, state theory is excluded: the state-as-actor model is assumed, needs
no defence, and deies criticism (for example: Wendt 1992, 397). The state is
objectiied, transformed into an observable entity/object for positivist science to
analyze. Therefore, politics is denied because the objectiied state becomes the
object of, and is subject to, the techniques of positivist science. And, hence, it “lends
itself wonderfully well to becoming an apologia for the status quo, an excuse for
domination, and an invective against ‘utopian’ and ‘maladjusted’ heretics who would
question the given-ness of the dominant order” (Ashley 1986, 289). This personhood
quality given to the state is the irst element of the symbolic state from which the
other elements follow.
The state-as-actor relects the state-society-boundary understanding of social life.
as an actor, the state is conceptualized as existing outside society and as being an
16
France and the New Imperialism
autonomous entity that is constrained by the structure, but not necessarily constituted
by it and incapable of changing its fundamental characteristics. Actors are taken as
unproblematic objects who are not the makers of their own circumstances and who
exist in a society made up of many such actors. all are assumed to be rational. they
know their interests (or ordered preferences) and the means to maximize their utility
as deined by those interests. And because the world is outside, taken as given, and
characterized by scarcity, choice becomes no more a matter of emotion and meaning,
but simply of instrumental rationality. the state becomes a rational individual/actor
with a rational intellect. it becomes an entity that has given interests and the ability
to assess the means to maximize them. the ultimate state interest is, of course, the
national interest.
the national interest is always vague and somewhat incoherent when put into
words. there is a simple reason for this: it appears only when one puts on the lens of
the state-as-actor model. when the state, its identity, its nature, its structures, and its
complexity are conceived as unproblematic and as simply assumed, the discourse of
the national security state afirms, to paraphrase Walker (1997), how reality “ought
to be” far more clearly than how it “is.” To portray the state as a unitary actor that
stands outside society, that is autonomous vis-à-vis socioeconomic interests and that
therefore only aims at maximizing its own individual interest, is to legitimize and
reinforce the status quo. It is to create areas of immunity for so-called strategic state
actions that are often the actions of other and various social forces.
these elements that constitute the symbolic state – personhood, rationality,
national interest – would seem irrelevant or illegitimate to many if it was not for the
nation. the nation brings to life, in discourse as well as in practice, the symbolic state
by giving it legitimacy as a natural ordering principle of modern human societies. all
political communities are exclusive and accentuate the differences between insiders
and outsiders (Linklater 1998). The state is no different and the concept of nation is
crucial in this respect: “nation-ness is the most universally legitimate value in the
political life of our time” (Anderson 1991, 3).
According to Anderson (1991, 6), the nation is the modern imagined political
community: “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in
the minds of each lives the image of their communion.” Yet, this does not mean that
it is an invention and relects a falsity. Anderson insists that all large communities
are imagined and, therefore, they “are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/
genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.” The nation should be
understood as a historical construction, as a unique product of our time, and not as
the natural political community. For anderson, it is, in part, a cultural form:
the century of the enlightenment, of rationalist secularism, brought with it its own modern
darkness. With the ebbing of religious belief, the suffering which belief in part composed
did not disappear. Disintegration of paradise: nothing makes fatality more arbitrary.
Absurdity of salvation: nothing makes another of continuity more necessary. What then
was required was a secular transformation of fatality into continuity, contingency into
meaning … few things were (are) better suited to this end than an idea of nation. If nationstates are widely conceded to be ‘new’ and ‘historical’, the nations to which they give
political expression always loom out of an immemorial past, and, still more important,
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
17
glide into a limitless future. it is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny
(Anderson 1991, 11-12).
The symbolic state inds most of (if not all of) its legitimacy, authority, and popular
support in the idea of nation. The national interest, however deined, is often
expressed, explicitly or implicitly, as protecting the nation-state. however, the idea
of nation does not support the idea of state per se as the organizational model of
political life, but the modern idea of the political order and its legitimate actors – of
the political. in other words, as is often clear in separatist movements, the idea of
nation is often necessary to sustain the idea of the unitary state (at the very least, it
reinforces it) for without it, the state would lose its status as the legitimate political
centre of modern politics.
the last element is to be found in the power of the ideology of the nation-state
as the legitimate political community. that is, to the extent to which it is accepted
as the natural order of things by most: the nation-state is portrayed and conceived
as universality true in time and in space. it was, is, and will be the legitimate
political entity to strive toward. the power of the symbolic state in part comes
from its mastery of the political vocabulary that sanctions political practice and
with which it legitimizes itself. this can be observed, on the one hand, with the
experiences of the Kurds and the Palestinians, to name but the best known groups,
which demonstrate that without a state to represent it, a political community will
encounter great dificulties in being respected by other communities, in promoting
its interests, and in insuring its own survival. on the other hand, the hegemony of
the statist political vocabulary de-legitimizes alternatives to the state to organize the
political community. the statist discourse of sovereignty, territoriality, nationality,
and national security is the dominant discourse both in theory and in practice. hence,
the discourse of the symbolic state universalizes, naturalizes, and de-politicizes the
state as the modern political community. It “secures” both the state-as-idea and the
state-as-practice by de-legitimizing alternatives to both.
the symbolic state can be summarized with the state-as-actor model. it is this
eurocentric construction that was, and still is, formed, disseminated, and persuasive,
and that establishes, transmits, and reproduces the norms and rules of political
behaviour and consciousness. it is both a political strategy of power and a political
project. It engenders conformity and acquiescence to predominate over protest and
resistance, and thus it promotes the status quo both domestically and internationally.
in a sense, the sociopolitical status of the dominant social forces is protected from
the challenge of resistant social forces. on the one hand, the role of the dominant
social forces (corporations, elites, military, and so on) in maintaining their privileges,
the political order, and the apparatus and practice of the state is (partly) hidden (or at
least transformed in such a way as to legitimize it) from view by the dissemination
of the idea of the unitary state. on the other hand, the interests of the dominated are
often de-legitimized, inluenced, shaped, and/or determined by the symbolic state. In
short, the symbolic state construes, legitimizes, and reproduces the dominant vision
of divisions, the dominant vision of the political, and the rule of the hegemon as the
world-as-it-is.
18
France and the New Imperialism
Security Policymaking and the Symbolic State
IR theory very often opposes the state-as-actor to the international system. Like
the distinction created between state and society, the one construed between state
and international system also generates resources of power. this is how the stateas-actor can “intervene” in the international system. But this view is seriously
lawed for, in assuming that the state existed prior to the system, it rejects their
mutually constitutive nature and the well-documented history of how the state and
the european state-system were constructed in tandem (for instance: Badie 2000;
Giddens 1987; Hardt and Negri 2000; Ruggie 1993; Tilly and Blockmans 1994). To
reject the opposition between the state and the state system has major consequences
for how one analyzes global politics. First, our view of interstate relations is
completely transformed. states do not only compete, but dominant states can also
cooperate in maintaining the system. More speciically, the dominant social forces
that proit most from a political order based on state sovereignty might compete for
resources and power within the system, but they can also cooperate to sustain and
reproduce it. Second, the separation masks the transnational forces working within
and through the system. the separation creates misleading dualisms of forces,
actions, and conditions. the divide between inside and outside, agent and structure,
and so on, hides the interdependent development of dominant social forces, their
relationships and their interactions, and the structures that beneit, constitute, and
maintain them all. Last, it authorizes interventions into so-called failed/failing/weak
states by portraying them as outside modernity, and thus in need of development for
integration into the so-called modern state system (see Chapter 3).
therefore, the security dependency that is at the core of the relationships between
France and african states is not simply a matter of France imposing its will and
power. From the perspective presented here, dependence becomes a political strategy
to maintain “special” relationships between French and African social forces from
which they acquire power, wealth, legitimacy, and authority. In this light, competition
and disagreements between France and african governments can be interpreted as
competition over short-term beneits and disagreements over method, but these states
also cooperate over the perpetuation of systems of dependency, domination, and
subordination. in this light, French military intervention and cooperation in africa
are not about building “stronger” African states and about promoting development.
French security policy in sub-saharan africa becomes a mechanism to sustain and
reproduce systems that are mutually beneicial for various Franco-African (but
limited to elites) social forces.
the symbolic state is a theoretical construct, but one with empirical referents. it
inds its expression irst in political discourse. It is also represented and reproduced
by symbols, rituals, and social practices such as the practice of law, the army, the
lag, the national anthem, the architecture of public buildings, political parties,
elections, the marking of borders (on the ground as well as on maps) and the
policing of frontiers, the celebration of national holidays and national heroes, and
so on. these are not the state, but rather representations of its power and status and
manifestations of its alleged functions. they give it a coherent, solid, and discernible
form that evokes emotions; and from these emotions meanings originate and thus
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
19
lend it legitimacy. They give the community a “unity of feeling.” Therefore, in the
minds of many, the state exists as an object and as a “fact of life” that cannot be
disputed because the state per se is transformed into an object through symbolic
discourse and practice: through the promulgation of its own image. But the state is
not the image. Consequently, social realities and our modern political order are often
misrepresented.
the social construction of the symbolic state opens spaces of authority, legitimacy,
and impunity. Because the state-as-idea produces such spaces, security must be reproblematized.
the history of security is not the pursuit of a universal value by pre-formed subjects,
individual or collective. Given the foundational signiicance of security to all established
formulations of politics, throughout the political tradition of the west, the history of
security is a history of the changing problematisation of what it is to be a political subject
and to be politically subject. thus it is always deeply implicated in the ways in which the
task of government itself is problematised and political order conceived … Thus conceived
security analysis takes the form of the genealogy of dynasties of power relations and
the critical analysis of the discursive conditions of emergence of contemporary security
regimes (Dillon and Reid 2001, 51; see also D. Campbell 1995).
From this perspective, security must be re-problematized because it is more than an
answer to threats, but a strategy of power that also constructs insecurity and claims
to authority.
Neocleous argues that when an issue claims “security status,” it somehow renders
it more important. security has become one of the essential categories in the selfunderstanding of modern society. But the claim to “securitize” is a political act and
a mechanism which de-politicizes the issue to be “secured”:
As a political technique, securitizing an issue simultaneously homogenizes and mobilizes
social and political forces by highlighting an existential threat in the form of an enemy,
justifying actions outside the normal bounds of political procedure. in the process the
disruption of normal liberal politics under the exercise of emergency powers is legitimized
… moreover, labelling an issue a security problem enables the state to curb criticism,
shut off debate, undermine civil liberties and, if necessary, destroy those individuals
and groups which offer political opposition to the system that produces the insecurity
in the irst place – groups, that is, which try to politicize rather than securitize the issues
(Neocleous 2000, 12).
Security lends itself to the greater exercise of state power. To “secure,” then, is a
fundamental and powerful strategy and ideological instrument to secure the existing
forms of social domination and subordination. It equates to a technique for grounding
political legitimacy and authority, to protect the desirable political order, and to give
“the state virtually carte blanche powers to protect it” (Neocleous 2000, 13). To
sum it all up in one sentence: the symbolic state and its associated security discourse
create spaces of legitimacy, authority, immunity, and impunity for the practice of
security and state power.
Before going any further, it should be noted that this is not to argue that threats do
not exist. nazi Germany was certainly threatening to France, for example. rather, the
20
France and the New Imperialism
point is that the ways in which the discourse of the state and security are formulated
make it dificult to critically examine the sources of threats and of the object that is
supposedly threatened and thus secured. security policy is conceived as the rational
response to threats to a pre-formed state; it is rarely conceived as constitutive of the
political order or of the object it securitizes. In the irst case, the source of the threat
is always theorized as external to the object to be secured. From this perspective, it
is impossible to conceive of security policy as constitutive of the threat. the same
logic applies to the threatened object that needs to be secured – in our case the
state. to assume a priori that the state is the securitizing agent and the object to be
securitized amounts to obscuring the actual structures and relations of power that
are (usually) being secured – that it is the political order and the status quo that are
being secured. it also amounts to neglecting the role of the state in the construction
of its own threats.
this a priori assumption also translates itself into the analysis of the “new
wars” of the 1990s, of the discourse of the West-versus-the-rest, and the global war
on terror. implicitly and sometimes explicitly, abstract ideas about the state and
security celebrate western civilization and exceptionalism. the liberal peace is the
assumption that states and cultures that attain a certain degree of scientiic, political,
and cultural achievements will prosper and live peacefully. the corollary is that
war and instability are the result of the lack of such achievements. They are the
product of barbarians, savages, terrorists, and other unnamed uncivilized hordes.
this logic reduces the possible range of policy responses to a choice between two
options: preserving the status quo (or building a wall on the borders of civilization)
and civilizing the world. As Said (2004, 872) argues, “[t]here is, after all, a profound
difference between the will to understand for purposes of co-existence and humanistic
enlargement of horizons, and the will to dominate for the purposes of control and
external dominions.”
Symbolic France
France is often regarded as the quintessential nation-state. In my view, it is instead
an excellent example of the imagined state. i will demonstrate that, even though the
French state and French society are functional realities, the myth of France hides the
particularities of both. In our speciic case, the myth of France – “a certain idea of
France” – exerts a strong inluence on French foreign policy. But it is an elitist idea
that camoulages sectional interests. Symbolic France opens spaces of legitimacy,
authority, and immunity for the abusive and sometimes destructive practices of
French security policy in sub-saharan africa.
The Myth of France: One and Indivisible
In 1846, Jules Michelet wrote: “The day when she remembers that she was and that
she must be humanity’s salvation, France will surround itself with her children and
will teach them France as faith and religion, and then she will become vigorous and
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
21
as solid as the globe” (quoted in: Citron 1991).4 michelet implied an idea of France
as one and indivisible whose origins can be traced all the way back to the beginning
of time. it is an idea that very much constitutes the myth of France. the crusades,
the wars of conquest, the Revolution, the colonial expansion, and all the memorable
episodes of “French” history are interpreted as a natural (and almost divine) series
of events leading to modern France. France always was, is, and will be. according
to this view, France has no beginning, since it has always existed, preigured by a
mythical Gaul, given concrete expression by the capetians, and transformed by the
revolution. France is given an entirely linear history told as a logical succession of
events and as, so to speak, the expression of an immutable French people. Moreover,
French history is understood in terms of political space only, of a territory within
which speciic actors and their actions are construed as French history. In sum, French
history is territorialized. the post-revolution French territorial state becomes the
reference point for what is French history.
Michelet’s quote has at least two other implications. First, as one and indivisible,
France is objectiied and personiied. It becomes a person with all the emotions, states
of mind, physical attributes (the Hexagon), and the interests that people experience.
It lives, wins, loses, suffers, wants, and needs. Consequently, personiied France
exists independently of the French people. It is by deinition perfect for France’s
special status, or exceptionalism, was granted irst by God who chose its kings and
then, after the Revolution, by history when it became humanity’s irst and last hope
for civilization. France’s mission, grandeur, and power are not to be earned for they
have been granted. hence, France has not a right, but a duty to spread its culture,
its civilization, its liberty, its fraternity, its human dignity and rights. By deinition,
French wars, interests, and actions are just. the second implication of michelet’s
citation is that this story has to be taught to French people. French children must be
taught the religion of France for, if France is to be strong and if it is to accomplish its
mission, they must become “believers.” Therefore, the irst duty of every Frenchman
is to serve and protect France.5
this statist and territorial perspective on French history has three important
consequences that need closer examination. First, French history can be understood
as a state project. second, this history is totalizing for, in the name of French unity,
it excludes from memory the voices of the vanquished and persecuted. Finally, and
as a result of the irst two effects, it promotes a view of the political and sectional
interests, and thus it maintains consensus on the workings and politics of the French
state.
History as a State Project
the slogan of the party, in George orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949, 260), is
particularly germane to the argument made in this section: “Who controls the past
4 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine throughout the book.
5 the literature that touches on mythical France is enormous. see among many others:
Chuter (1996), Citron (1991), Lebovics (1992), Rudorff (1970), Weber (1991), Weber (1976),
Wesseling (2002), and Wirth (2000).
22
France and the New Imperialism
controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” The French nation
was, in large part, a political construction of the French state. Before the revolution,
the monarchy was legitimized by the “fact” that French kings were chosen by God.
The kings of the Capetian dynasty (987-1328) created a royal religion which was
constituted by numerous symbols and the manipulation of ancient texts. The kings’s
main aim was to support and give legitimacy to their authority vis-à-vis internal and
external forces (mainly the pope and the empire). Their blood became holy, heroes
were transformed into saints, sanctuaries were built, and the kings of France became
the object of the royal religion, closely involved with the catholic faith, and they
were celebrated and venerated as such (Citron 1991). The king was not the leader of
France, he was France: “L’Etat, c’est moi!” as Louis XIV allegedly said. In short, so
to speak, religion was the patriotism of the day.
through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, a slow cultural
evolution swept France and europe and transformed the ideological and political
spectra. The Reformation, the (re)discovery of, and the now possible distribution of,
ancient Roman and Greek texts, the appearance of modern science which shattered
the old understanding of the universe and which challenged the teachings and hence
the power of the church, affected all europeans, but mostly the intellectuals, the
aristocrats, and the bourgeoisie. In France, the kings suffered from a legitimacy
deicit. God’s choices were contested, as were the symbols and the origins of political
power. Consequently, the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century would lead to the
French Revolution. The king, who was once the centre of all power, who was once
France, had to face the rising nation.6 In the words of Chuter (1996, 18), with the
coming of the Republic “the soldier of God simply became the soldier of Humanity.”
the revolution is, in part, the basis of French nationalism. it is the foundation for
the worship of the Patrie (homeland).
historians might disagree on the particularities of the how and when the people
of France actually became French, but they seem to agree that it was fundamentally
part of a conscious, organized, and planned effort, especially by the third republic,
to transform them in such a way. As Weber (1976) puts it, many residents of France
lived “in different historical time-zones until the late nineteenth century.” Many,
concentrated in the south and in the countryside, did not even speak or know
French, the metric system, or the franc. the revolution had brought the ideology
of national unity, but the reality of rural France was diversity. this diversity became
an imperfection that had to be remedied. Peasants who did not know, agree, or even
care about the unity of France (as deined by Paris for “civilization” was deeply
urban) were dismissed as savages, barbarians, and uncivilized. There was to be only
one, true, French identity and therefore the peasants had to be made into civilized
Frenchmen and Frenchwomen (Weber 1976; see also Weber 1991; Wirth 2000).
As Weber (1976, 98) shows, patriotism was an urban ideology that was often
exploited “for an urban conquest of the rural world that looked at times like colonial
exploitation.” The Revolution had proclaimed that national unity was the expression
of the “French to be French” in order to establish a historically foreordained nation6 on this transformation of political power and sovereignty and the rise of the nation in
Europe, see Hardt and Negri (2000).
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
23
state. However, as Weber (1976, 113) well puts it, a “lot of Frenchmen did not know
that they belonged together until the long didactic campaigns of the later nineteenth
century told them they did, and their own experience as conditions changed told
them that this made sense.” Indeed, the “French” were many different people: the
people of Brittany, of Provence, of Gascony, to name but a few, did not speak French,
which was perceived by many peasants as a foreign language.7 there was force,
but also policies which were implemented to inculcate French-ness. roads and a
communication network were built to bring the city, its goods, culture, values, and
politics to the countryside. the army and military service had enormous impact on
the construction of French-ness by preaching a sense of national pride and duty visà-vis France. most importantly, schools had a crucial role in indoctrinating France’s
history (Weber 1976).
Citron examined and analyzed the content of history books from the Third
Republic on. The myth of France is omnipresent. The textbooks are imbued with the
myth of immemorial and immutable France, unique, united, and superior, destined
to lead humanity and to spread civilization: France as dogma and legend. the holy
blood of old kings was transformed into the mythic Gallic blood of the French
assuring racial and cultural national homogeneity. mythic Gaul and past wars were
taught as the consolidation of a French patrie which existed prior to its formation.
students were taught to love, cherish, and serve France. during the third republic,
these teachings were thought to be, among other things, the solution to the egoism
of the rich and the envy of the poor. even the defeat of 1871 was explained as the
failure of French education! But before we think that this was merely the propaganda
of the past, it should be noted that in 1991 Citron showed clearly that the textbooks
of the entire Cold War era (1945-91) maintained this idea of immemorial France.8
according to her, the logic of this pre-determined history of France has always been,
and continues to be, to legitimize the party in power (Citron 1991). Weber (1991,
5) puts it succinctly: “The French, who did not much relish fantasy in mainstream
literature, found room for it in history.”
territorial France was no more natural than its nation and French-ness.
historically, France was indeterminate, imprecise, and unclear. territorial France
was more a dream than real, for its borders were not natural, but the product of
history and a geopolitical view of the world which could justify military expansion
(Wirth 2000). The history of the annexation of Brittany (1532), Metz, Toul, and
Verdun (1648), the Catalan regions of Roussillon, Conlans, and Cerdagne (1659),
Lille and Tournai (1668), Flanders (1795), Corsica (1768), Savoy and Nice (1860),
Algeria (1830) demonstrate that much of “Old France” has not been part of it for
7 According to the oficial igures of 1863, about 25 per cent of the population, and
almost 50 per cent of the children, spoke no French at all. According to Weber (1976), these
igures should probably be much higher for the Ministry of Public Education had every reason
to boost its success and to hide its failure.
8 Indeed, on 23 February 2005, a law was quietly adopted which invited French
curriculum to “recognize the positive role of French overseas presence.” After intense public
pressures from teachers, scholars, activists, and other citizens, the French government retracted
the law in the summer of 2006. As Chrétien (2005) comments, the nostalgia of the good old
colonial days endures.
24
France and the New Imperialism
long.9 According to Weber (1991, 57-66), the republicans of the Third Republic
recognized the need for symbols in order to strengthen the national myth and the
sense of national identity: the lag, Marianne, the map of France. The Hexagon and
its natural frontiers became such a national symbol which few used prior to world
war ii, but which is commonly utilized today and symbolizes the very image of
France.
the twentieth century did not see the third republic slow down its project of
national unity:
the idea of an exclusive identity of France was the chief strategy, the hegemonic project,
of conservative cultural thought and practice from the time of the dreyfus affair to the
end of world war ii. the left upheld, albeit differently, this same cultural imperative …
the idea of a true France was cultivated and disseminated in political rhetoric, in public
monuments, in the arts (especially literature), in academic philosophy, in historical works,
and throughout all levels of French schooling. it saturated all the ‘places of memory’
(Lebovics 1992, xiii).
The French myth of the nation-state was (is) based on the belief that the political
entity should be itself based on a unity of culture. as lebovics argues, in a very real
sense there has always been an old France for the various cultures of French regions
are ancient. it is the political structures that are more modern. Yet, cultures are everchanging and can, in some cases, transform themselves greatly and rapidly. hence, it
seems inaccurate, even odd, to qualify them as “old” (Lebovics 1992, 4).
changing social conditions demanded the transfer of French sovereignty from
its kings to its nation. In short, the formation of the nation-state preceded the French
nation for which a history was needed. indeed, before the revolution, at the height
of louis XiV’s power, France’s history began with clovis and the Gauls were the
subjects of the Franks. After the Revolution, the story changed for the emancipation
of the subjugated Gauls from the oppressive Franks. The new regime needed to
legitimize itself. in the words of weber:
there are so many versions of French history that it is hard to say just what France may
be or French history should be. Yet there clearly is a France, there evidently is a French
history – aggregations of variants and of ininite detail, creations of imagination, of faith,
and of ininite effort. France and the French testify to the power of history – I mean the
history that historians write – to forge the realities it imagines (Weber 1991, 17).
he adds:
[T]he new nation state determined to abolish particular local identities had to replace
them with a new national identity, substitute its version of national memory for venerable
older versions that did not it its end. Memory is what we make of it. We are the sons
and daughters of our history, but national history, the national heritage, had to be forged
by debate, research, invention; had to be acclimatized, inculcated, catechized, made to
compel belief, take hold of minds, until it was sanctiied by habit. Historians were the
9 Born in 1769 in corsica, napoleon Bonaparte would not have been France’s emperor
if he had been born a year earlier.
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
25
clerisy of the nineteenth century because it fell to them to rewrite foundation myths;
and history was the theology of the nineteenth century because it provided societies cast
loose from the moorings of custom and habit with new anchorage in a rediscovered – or
reinvented – past (Weber 1991, 23).
This new history rationalized and legitimized the efforts to “civilize” nineteenth
century France as well as the regime per se.
Totalizing History
the hegemonic project of national unity was/is one of inclusion and exclusion. it is a
project that rejects diversity for raison d’état. even though all political communities
are systems of inclusion and exclusion, the modern state distinguishes itself from
other forms in having developed unprecedented powers that sustain its logic of
inclusion and exclusion. According to Linklater (1998, 27), the modern state’s
“totalizing project” accentuated the differences between insiders and outsiders,
between citizens and aliens, in order to legitimate itself and to meet the challenge
of interstate war. Furthermore, he argues that the state as a never completed and
ever-changing entity mobilized suficient power “to prevent the reconstitution of
political community.” In fact, more than de-legitimizing other forms, the state is
perceived as the ultimate (civilized) solution to the problem of political community.
Linklater (1998, 215) argues that the hegemonic discourse of neorealism in IR
theory is testimony to the success of the state project: “By denying the possibility
of establishing new forms of life on the moral foundations which developed in the
struggle against the state monopoly power, neo-realism has legitimated conventional
beliefs that the problem of community has been largely resolved.”
the mythic history of an immutable and immemorial France is totalizing in the
sense that it is constituted almost exclusively by the memory of the French state.
excluded are the regional cultural, social, and religious memories, the memories and
the voices of the vanquished, the persecuted, the opponents, and the colonized. The
Dreyfusard problématique is not recognized. That is, in the struggle between Truth
and raison d’état, the former loses most of the time for, in the words of charles
de Gaulle himself, “Nothing is more important than the legitimacy, the institutions
and the functioning of the State” (quoted in: Gordon 1993, 9). French history forms
a unitary entity independent of the French, it testiies to French greatness, and its
militaristic quality connects the destiny of France to the destiny of its army which
it gloriies (Wesseling 2002, 119-27). The key consequence is the removal from
history of non-state and marginalized social forces. it reinforces the hegemonic, or
totalizing, project of a true France. the project of true France might have failed, as
Lebovics (1992) suggests, in creating a uniied and homogeneous French community,
but its practice and usage in common sense, social sciences, and social practices
remain very much alive. and as it will be made clear in the following chapters, this is
especially true of French security policy in africa for symbolic France is prominent
in both its discourse and its practice.
26
France and the New Imperialism
Symbol, History, Hegemony, and Power
The intent here was to establish what the consequences of symbolic France are.
the myth of France is summarized, in short, in the mythical history of the French
state. if we connect past and present-day France, we realize that social conditions
and discourses are inseparable constructions of power. mythic history becomes
oficial discourse. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the historical experience that
deines our Eurocentric views of the military, national security, and the use of force.
The political process leading to security policy is not one of necessity as realism(s)
suggests, but irst and foremost a struggle over the meanings of social realities and
national security.
structural realists tell us that the role of the state is to protect society from
external and internal threats. however, such statist discourse omits a crucial aspect.
the state has an educating role. not only does it demand consent, it creates it through
“education” and through the promulgation of its image. Antonio Gramsci assigns to
the state this function of promoting a single and totalizing concept of a given reality.
in other words, the state is much more than its coercive apparatus. it constructs its
own legitimizing rules and norms. therefore, state hegemony is both a relationship
between included and excluded, between dominant and dominated, and a process in
the exercise of “reality control” (Gramsci 1971). Consequently, we must insert into
our analyses of global affairs an assessment of the state’s legitimacy and authority
in making foreign policy, in constructing social realities, and in representing the
political community. as said wrote in reference to orientalism:
there is nothing mysterious or natural about authority. it is formed, irradiated,
disseminated; it is instrumental, it is persuasive; it has status, it establishes canons of
taste and value; it is virtually indistinguishable from certain ideas it digniies as true, and
from traditions, perceptions, and judgments it forms, transmits, reproduces. above all,
authority can, indeed must, be analyzed [my emphasis] (Said 1978, 19).
Said’s quote applies well to an analysis of the French state. Symbolic France became
authority. It legitimizes a discourse and a framework and has thus gained public
conidence. The French state’s mythical history becomes the a posteriori legitimation
of the nation-state. it is based on the idea that war is often necessary and inevitable,
and justiies war in the name of the state’s survival and necessary expansion. It creates
consent around the threat of the outsider, of the ancestral enemy, of the inescapable
international anarchy, and of the French mission and grandeur. if the critical project
has to have any meaning, we must examine the institutions and the social forces that
not only make foreign policy, but that shape, transform, and reproduce the symbolic
state and thus the legitimacy and authority of the state-as-practice.
Conclusion
The French symbolic state is unique to the extent that the French have taken it – to
the extent that it pervades so thoroughly French security policy. it is not unique in
that the same symbolism is present in all “modern” states. The Canadian, American,
The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France
27
German, australian, and Japanese states to name but a few are all constituted in
part by symbols, myths, and rituals which give a “unity of feeling” to the imagined
political community.
I argued that the symbolic state has crucial political consequences and that the
French state is based upon, and its actions are legitimated by, such an image. in fact,
i argued that the state-as-actor assumption limits the practice and the possibilities
of politics by establishing the political and what “is”: “a myth does not analyze or
solve problems. it represents them as already analyzed and solved; that is, it presents
them as already assembled images” (Said 1978, 312). Nothing should strike us as
particularly unique for the story of mythic France is well-documented and similar
analyses regarding the politics of security have lourished in recent years. However,
so far at least, this well-documented history of the symbolic French state has been of
little interest to mainstream, statist, ir theory, because as ashley has demonstrated,
the state is a given – it is conceived as an unproblematic entity.
my deconstruction of symbolic France shows intent, but it is incomplete without
taking into consideration the colonial Republic. That is, France and French-ness
were and are being constructed and reproduced in opposition to an other. the other
was often European (British, German, and so on), but this Other remained civilized.
The most signiicant Other was the one that was silenced by imperial France: the
Barbarian. only then will we be able to apprehend completely the underpinning
assumptions and ideological mechanisms that legitimize and authorize French and
hegemony in sub-saharan africa. only then will this deconstruction be able to show
legitimizing and authorizing practices – and thus to demonstrate purpose. chapter 3
completes this deconstruction and is followed by the demonstration of intent.
chapter 3
colonizing the political in africa:
underwriting French hegemony and
proscribing dissent
symbolic France has a different history than France; French collective memory can
differ from factual events. as we saw in chapter 2, the history of symbolic France is
one of a unitary entity with human qualities, emotions, values, needs, and interests.
it is a history that more often than not legitimizes and sustains the dominance of the
hegemonic political order. it also transforms those social problems and solutions
that could challenge that order into the nonpolitical. Consequently, many peoples,
groups, individuals, and events are left “outside history.” Their stories, and thus
their part in the construction of France, are brushed aside, dismissed as irrelevant, or
regarded as mundane. they are often discarded because they tell another story and
expose relations of power, possibly de-legitimizing the political order.
the history of France is one that cannot be contained within borders, a spacetime universal French culture, or within the state. the France and the French
citizens of the twenty-irst century were imagined, construed, and formed by the
interrelationships of various cultures and peoples that were never limited to French
borders and frontiers. on the contrary: French colonialism and colonies constructed,
transformed, and imagined France as much as France constructed, transformed, and
imagined its colonies (Bancel et al. 2003, 12).
symbolic France does more than oversimplify French history. it creates social
realities that relect, enact, and reify power structures. It is a strategy of deterrence
that proscribes dissent and that construes the dominant and current conception of
the political as legitimate and natural. history is a powerful instrument to project a
vision of divisions and to naturalize that vision of the political order.1 colonialism
was appropriated by the French state late in the nineteenth century and was
transformed into imperial colonialism in the 1880s. French actions in sub-saharan
Africa were (and remain today) the results of social forces that are attached to the
French state in varying degrees. there is little doubt that the state has had a powerful
say in Franco-African dynamics since the 1880s, but the assertion begs to deine its
meaning(s). That is, if we begin our examination of French security policy in subsaharan africa with the assumption that the state is a unitary actor which is at the
centre of the “policy,” we will be led astray. The facts disagree with the assumption
1 See Chapter 2 and Orwell (1949). As Said (1978, 55) wrote, “there is no doubt that
imaginative geography and history help the mind to intensify its own sense of itself by
dramatizing the distance and difference between what is close to it and what is far away.”
30
France and the New Imperialism
and should thus not be made to it the theory. French colonialism was (and remains)
about diverse social forces with different and sometimes conlicting agendas. It is no
coincidence either that imperial colonialism started at approximately the same time
as the consolidation of the French state and a period of growing nationalism. it is the
too common distinction made between the domestic and the international that often
conceals this concurrence. the history of French colonialism is the construction of,
and the struggles for, legitimacy and authority over the deinition of the political,
both nationally and internationally.
in short, French security policy in africa cannot be understood properly without
an examination of the historical development of the political, the self, and the other
that today underwrite French hegemony in africa and marginalize the struggle of
Africans for equality and justice. From this point of view, French security policy
was never decolonized because the policy becomes the rationalization (portrayed
as strategy) for transforming the political, the Self, and the Other in such ways as
to maintain the power, wealth, and interests of those who prefer the status quo over
change. moreover, the symbolic power of the French state obscures the role of the
structures of French hegemony that are often or rapidly becoming multinational and
regional. The result is the disappearance of governmental accountability, the masking
of transnational power networks, and the disempowerment of national movements
(more on this in the next chapters). From this perspective, the so-called paradoxes and
ill-conceived policies which mainstream IR theorists ind fault with take on a whole
new meaning. what we discover is an amalgam of agents and structures that have
yet to be decolonized, that guarantee the marginalization of sub-saharan africa, that
adapt continuously the instruments of dependency, domination, and subordination,
and that pursue strategies often contrary to oficial goals of peace and development.
the Franco-african security complex2 has little inherent interest in peace, security,
and development, but much if not only in African acquiescence.3
this chapter provides a brief historical account of how the political, the French,
and the african were constructed in order to authorize and legitimize French
hegemony in africa. to understand the current changes in French security policy
in africa, we need to reveal and analyze the agents and their interests who have
always been at the core of systems that favour French and african elites; systems
of sociopolitical dependency that rely upon, and that could not survive without, a
coercive apparatus that is the French military. more importantly, this chapter will
hint at what the next chapters will show: the production of the kind of “barbarians”
spoken of by Hannah Arendt (1951, 182), mostly by sustaining social conditions
which are those of Arendtian “savages.”
2 I will use the term “Franco-African (security) complex” to describe the French and
African actors and institutions that deine the political in regard to French security policy. The
term does not imply coherence and complicity among the members; rather, it implies only a
mutual interest in sustaining the status quo.
3 this is not to say that there was no honest humanitarianism or that the civilizing
mission was all hypocrisy. many believed, and still believe, in France’s mission and
responsibility toward africa. however, the fact that believers believe does not change the
ultimate consequences of their actions.
Colonizing the Political in Africa
31
From Colonialism to Imperial Colonialism
colonization, colonialism, and colony are ambiguous words which represent
different realities from different eras (Brunschwig 1960b). During the Old Regime,
France did not really have colonies in africa, but trading posts. colonization was
essentially commercial. political and moral motives were negligible. commerce
was the preponderant incentive for colonies were supposed to enrich the kingdom.
They were to be founded only to proit Paris. They were to be entirely dependent
upon and under the protection of France while all trade was to be exclusive to the
metropole. the colonial pact can be summarized by the following four mercantilist
rules: 1) colonies could sell their products only in France; 2) navigation between
colonies and between colonies and France was the preserve of the French navy; 3)
colonial markets were closed to foreign goods. Only French products could be sold
to colonial markets; and 4) colonial products were guaranteed access to France’s
market. This colonial pact and its associated mindset survived, albeit transformed,
into the irst decades of the twentieth century. In short, colonies were founded to
favour commerce and the development of the French continental economy (ageron
1978; Amin 1988, 54-62; Brunschwig 1960a; Meyer et al. 1991).
in 1830, France was still recovering from the defeat of napoleon in 1815 that
crushed French dreams of empire. humiliating treaties assured the loss of its great
power status: territorial amputations, suppression of the colonial empire, englishdominated seas and oceans, and loss of its Grande Armée. the unpopular (at the
time) conquest of Algiers of 1830 was the conclusion of a series of suspicious
motives and events, a political operation for domestic prestige, and an improvised
military expedition (Meyer et al. 1991, 327-40), but also the beginning of debate
over a new meaning of colonization (Ageron 1978, 14).
Between 1830 and 1860, the concept of colonization as a means of serving state
power started to take hold. To justify the occupation of Algiers, the French military
argued for a new colonial system which would serve the interests of the French
state. In this view, French civilian and military settlers needed to “inundate” Algiers
and the surrounding region because colonization was not to be about mercantilism
anymore, but about the French empire in africa. From then on, colonies were to be
part of France. deputy thomas-simon Jouffroy wrote in 1838:
algiers is an empire, an empire in africa, an empire on the mediterranean, an empire two
days from Toulon … The submission and paciication of Algeria are obviously one of the
greatest affairs in which the nation can embark upon … Even if dificulties are great, the
goal is greater and it is worthy of a great people to face the former in order to accomplish
the latter … at the end, there is an empire; and for those who do not want it, the only
alternative is the abandonment of Africa (quoted in: Ageron 1978, 17).
the civilizing mission was already being tied to patriotism, and with France’s
interests and grandeur. Garnier-Pagès wrote: “colonization is the most laudable form
of conquest; it is the most direct means to propagate civilization” (quoted in: Ageron
1978, 19). Commercial colonialism was slowly being transformed.
And yet, at irst this version of French colonialism was limited to Algeria. In the
old colonies, mercantilism was expanding. new trading posts and military outposts
32
France and the New Imperialism
were created, but many were now being established for political and strategic reasons
instead of purely commercial ones. For military oficers of the army of Africa, the
navy, and the ministers of the navy and colonies, colonialism was becoming after
1850 a military tradition and a necessity for France’s prestige and power. scholars
were starting to synthesize the goals and ideas of politicians and military oficers:
With its generous and philosophical spirit, France is not only called to be irst in shedding
light and life on the most savage and remote lands, but the signiicance of its sea power
and of its inluence on the rest of world makes it France’s indispensable duty. Essentially,
France needs colonies not so much for the prosperity of its commerce but for its
independence between nations [1850] (quoted in: Ageron 1978, 22).
in short, French colonialism, which was once grounded in mercantilist principles,
was being slowly but surely redeined according to imperialist principles. Throughout
the nineteenth century, the processes of the French state and european state-system
consolidation, and the transformation of the european political economy (the
Industrial Revolution and the rise of liberalism and free trade) inluenced, shaped,
and determined the formation of the discourse, practices, and structures of French
imperialism.
The Formative Years of Imperial Colonialism
the doctrine of imperial colonialism emerged between 1860 and 1882 (ageron 1978,
27; Meyer et al. 1991). This “birth” was in fact the convergence into a coherent
conceptual whole of fragmentary and scattered colonial theories. the doctrine
comprised three pillars or arguments: economic, political, and moral (or civilizing
mission). The key objective was simple: to convince and to promote a political
agenda of imperial colonialism. colonialism had its intellectuals and now French
imperial colonialism had a doctrine (Girardet 1972, 37-9).
The economic rationale well before imperial colonialism, French geographers
and economists had argued for a militant colonialism in order to accomplish the
terrestrial task of humanity. The globe represented for them an immense uncultivated
garden, rich in unexploited resources, opened for “human,” paciic, and intelligent
expansion. Colonization was thus understood as the mastery of nature by humankind;
it was the organization of savage and untamed nature in order to eliminate human
misery (Girardet 1972, 18-23).
in 1874, paul leroy-Beaulieu published De la colonisation chez les peuples
modernes in which he argued for the crucial importance of investing in French
colonies. he revised the arguments of economists and geographers for a period of
liberal economics while giving it a humanitarian lavour. For Leroy-Beaulieu, the
“emigration of capital” was vital for the economic, social, intellectual, and moral
progress of contemporary societies. it produced wealth through the creation of new
markets, new businesses, increased production, and a general increase in proits and
wages. But even better, this “development” would be in the end beneicial to all of
humanity because it would expand the reaches of civilization.
Colonizing the Political in Africa
33
colonization is a nation’s expansionist force, it is its power of reproduction, it is its
expansion [dilatation] and proliferation across space, it is the submission of the universe
or a large part of it to its language, its morals, its ideas, and its laws. a nation that colonizes
is one that lays the foundations of its future grandeur and supremacy … [Notwithstanding
where one stands intellectually and philosophically] here is an indisputable truth: the
nation that colonizes the most is the foremost nation; if it is not today, it will be tomorrow
(quoted in: Girardet 1972, 27-8).
Beyond the theory, French colonies became increasingly important economically for
the metropole. colonial expansion was to guarantee access to essential raw materials
for French industry and to offer new commercial opportunities. colonialism was also
perceived as a necessity for all of europe. it was widely regarded as an economic law
inseparable from the evolution of civilization. increasing investments and competition
and expanding industrialization presumed new markets. After 20 years of economic
growth, France and other european industrial nations experienced an economic
slowdown starting in 1873-74. The French domestic market was restrictive and
showing weak potential for growth. French colonial possessions therefore presented
attractive economic opportunities for a capitalism in need of new markets. Marseille
(1984) demonstrates how colonies rapidly became a privileged place of expansion
for private investments and French capital because the colonial investment offered
two major advantages: high proitability and the security provided by direct political
domination.
The colonial market offered and guaranteed important opportunities for most
French industrialists and small and medium entrepreneurs. and the wider French
empire played an essential role in the metropole’s economic expansion. it rapidly
became France’s third commercial partner behind Britain and Germany while often
stealing Germany’s second place between 1900 and 1914. Before 1914, the imperial
market regularly absorbed 40 per cent of French exports of reined sugar, 56 per cent
of its rails, 85 per cent of its cotton, 73 per cent of its locomotives, and 80 per cent of
metallic goods. the empire also supplied France with a variety of foods and primary
resources, including 70 per cent of its peanuts, 73 per cent of its cork, 60 per cent
of its vegetables, almost 90 per cent of its wines, 79 per cent of its phosphates, 95
per cent of its rice, and 58 per cent of its lead ore (igures represent ordinary years,
Marseille 1984, 154).
Two remarks need to be made at this point. As Marseille argues, between 1880
and 1930, the development of French colonies embodied a stage in the development
of French capitalism and not the stage of Marxist theorists like Lenin. It must be
emphasized that the French colonial experience was not necessarily very proitable
except to a few. however, it helped jumpstart the French economy between 1880
and 1930 – a period when France was modernizing its economic structures. after
the 1930s, and particularly after the second world war, French capitalism very
much retreated from the colonial market, but public investments gradually replaced
private ones. second, it should be noted that the economic expansion and importance
of the empire for French capitalism did not apply to sub-saharan africa. rather,
investments and commerce were mainly made in north africa and in indochina.
34
France and the New Imperialism
Both annotations do not undermine the argument made here because for the
moment what is fundamental is the image of colonialism, its means and ends that
inform today’s French security policy. the facts of French colonialism have no
intrinsic values but for what they are believed to mean and to suggest in terms of
current policy and historical “lessons.” In other words, French colonial experience
both in general and in speciicity has constructed, informed, and continues to inform
the assumptions, the institutions, and the agents that are involved in French security
policy in africa.
The political rationale according to this view, the nature of european politics
dictated colonialism. France had been humiliated in a short war against Germany in
1870-71, and the French government had a duty to maintain France’s grandeur and
power in order to defend its territorial integrity. For many, the empire represented a
solution to the territorial amputation of 1871. For example, Jules Ferry, a passionate
proponent of colonialism, argued that France would fall into decay if it refused to
follow other European powers in the conquest of the earth. He argued that while
european powers were creating a new balance of power and pushing outward the
frontiers of civilization, opposition to progress and change would be equivalent to
deny the necessities of power politics, to repudiate France’s past, and to endanger
its future:
To shine forth [rayonner] without acting, without getting involved in the affairs of the
world, by keeping away from all European schemes, by looking at all expansion in Africa
and the Orient as a trap or an adventure; for a great nation to live like that, believe it, it is
to abdicate; and in a shorter time than you can imagine, it is to fall from irst rank to third
and to fourth (quoted in: Girardet 1972, 49).
From Ferry’s point of view, the economic factors of colonialism had to be
understood from the perspective of european power politics. the formation of a new
economic order and the competition it engendered were dominated by the european
competition for power. For Ferry and others like him (especially in the military),
political considerations of national power and prestige needed to be prioritized over
all else. it was not nationalist agendas that promoted capitalist expansion in the
colonies, but economic theory that legitimized nationalist projects (ageron 1978,
71-84; Brunschwig 1960a; Girardet 1972, 46-53; Meyer et al. 1991, 611-23).
the distinction between the economic and political rationales is somewhat
misleading however. after the defeat of 1871, French imperial colonialism was a
response to dramatic changes at both the domestic and international levels. Both
capitalism and modern state institutions were being consolidated and becoming ever
more dominant in France as well as in western europe. modern France was imagining
its national history (see Chapter 2). The construction of a coherent colonial policy
of expansion was in line with the construction of a French character. in other words,
French nationalism and colonialism were reinforcing and supporting each other:
the Other helped in deining the Self.4 the necessities of industrial and commercial
4 As Hardt and Negri (2000, 103) put it: “The construction of an absolute racial
difference is the essential ground for the conception of a homogeneous national identity.”
Colonizing the Political in Africa
35
expansion in the colonies were to be subordinated to the necessities of French power
and grandeur; that is, to the necessities of Symbolic France. A “French-ness” was
being in part imagined and strengthened by the colonial experience and in turn that
construction was used to authorize and legitimize the consolidation of the modern
French state.5 in fact, imperialism was often seen as a method toward French social
cohesion and social development for the so-called “lower classes.” Ernest Renan
articulated it perfectly:
Colonization is a political necessity of the irst order. A nation that does not colonize is
irrevocably condemned to socialism, to the war between rich and poor … The conquest
of an inferior race’s country by a superior race that settles it in order to rule it is nothing
shocking … The regeneration of the inferior or degenerate races by the superior races is
part of the providential order of things for humanity. with us, the common man is nearly
always a declasse nobleman, his heavy hand is better suited to handling the sword than the
menial tool (quoted in: Ageron 1978, 52-3).
in short, the political development of a new French imperial colonialism was
largely connected to the reactions and to the sociological, political, economic,
and emotional consequences of the changing structures of capitalism and of the
European state system. Worthy of mention, however, was that we ind the same
reactions and consequences in an anti-colonialism which was founded on the same
“necessities” and loyalties toward France (Girardet 1972, 66). For now, what must
be understood is that while the different rationales for imperial colonialism might
sometimes have appeared contradictory (especially in regard to the France of liberty,
equality, fraternity), they were becoming more and more intertwined in a coherent
doctrine. the civilizing mission provided the ideological means to attenuate these
intrinsic contradictions.
The civilizing mission As Rosenblum (1988, 3) writes, “France did not colonize, it
civilized.” Conklin argues that the French civilizing mission explains the peculiarities
of French colonialism as well as the limits it set to obscure the fundamental
contradictions between republican France and imperial France, “between democracy
and the forcible acquisition of an empire.” The mission did not originate under the
Third Republic, but “it nevertheless acquired a particularly strong resonance after the
return of democratic institutions in France, as the new regime struggled to reconcile
its aggressive imperialism with its republican ideas” (Conklin 1997, 1-2).
French imperial ideology consistently identiied civilization with one principle more than
any other: mastery. mastery not of other people – although ironically this would become
one of civilization’s prerogatives in the age of democracy; rather, mastery of nature,
5 First, it should be noted that this nationalism of global expansion was battling another
nationalism of continental retraction. After 1871, France was debating whether to attack
Germany and liberate its lost provinces or to compensate that lost with colonies. however, both
nationalisms agreed on the ultimate objective: France’s prestige and grandeur. second, even
though French colonialism was of secondary importance to a majority of French people, there
can be little doubt that it was crucial for the construction of the French state and imagination,
especially in the interwar years. This will be explored below. See Girardet (1966).
36
France and the New Imperialism
including the human body, and mastery of what can be called ‘social behavior’. to put it
another way, to be civilized was to be free from speciic forms of tyranny: the tyranny of
the elements over man, of disease over health, of instinct over reason, of ignorance over
knowledge and of despotism over liberty (Conklin 1997, 5).
The inevitable opposite to civilization was of course barbarism. In the “heart of
darkness,” the above forms of tyranny were considered strong in Europeans’s minds.
France was the soldier of Humanity and of the Ideal. This special status had irst
been granted by God, and then by history. thus, in this view, France would lead
barbarians toward the light – and the barbarians would be happy to follow (see
Chapter 2; Chuter 1996, 13-19, 340). For many like Léon Gambetta and Jules Ferry,
colonialism was the mission and the duty of the third republic because France’s
grandeur was essential to humanity’s progress.
this civilizing project could already be found in the colonies of the sixteenth
century. The expression “mission civilisatrice” became the predominant one for
colonial France after 1789 (Ageron 1978, 62). The “superior races” had a duty
to educate, scientiically and morally, the “inferior races” whose peoples were
dominated by ignorance, superstition, fear, and the oppression of man by man. on
18 may 1879, delivering a speech to commemorate the abolition of slavery in 1848,
Victor Hugo spoke of the obligation of civilized societies to colonize and thus to
civilize Black Africa:
africa has no history … africa matters to the universe; such repression of movement
hinders life, and human progress [la marche humaine] cannot put up any longer with
a ifth of the globe paralyzed … This wild Africa has only two aspects: inhabited, it is
barbarism; deserted, it is savagery … what will be civilization’s response in front of this
unknown lora and fauna? … this world that scared the Romans attracts the French …
Seize this land. Take it. From whom? No one. Take it from God. God gives the earth to
men. God offers Africa to Europe … Where kings would bring war, bring harmony. Take
it not for the gun, but for the plough; not for the sword, but for commerce; not for battle,
but for industry; not for conquest, but for fraternity. Pour out your excesses [trop-plein]
into this Africa, and with one stone solve your social problems, transform your workers
into owners. Go ahead! … [Colonize] so that the divine spirit asserts itself via peace, the
human spirit via liberty! (quoted in: Priollaud 1983, 109-11).
in these few words, hugo said it all: the tyranny of barbarism must be exterminated
and replaced by the enlightened projects of civilized Frenchmen and europeans.
Moreover, he legitimated war and conquest over ahistorical savage peoples.
the three rationales for the French empire were intertwined, often overlapped,
and ended up converging over the overall objectives. what should be prioritized
was debated, but in the end the key objective always remained the same: domination
over barbarians. (It might sound like a truism, but many scholars fail to mention
that racism was at the core of every European empire. I return to racism below.)
Colonialism, and its imperial version in particular, was, as Conklin writes “as much
a state of mind as a set of coercive practices and system of resource extraction.”
nevertheless, the civilizing mission and its intrinsic racism was at the heart of it all:
“If one does not know the content of France’s civilizing mission or the ways it served
Colonizing the Political in Africa
37
to justify French actions, the acquisition, evolution, and endurance of the empire in
Africa cannot be fully explained” (Conklin 1997, 248).
the point is reinforced by the evolution of French public opinion vis-à-vis the
empire. From the formulation of its doctrine to its implementation, French colonial
imperialism never much interested the French public (ageron 1978, 235-9; aldrich
1996, 234-6; Girardet 1972; Thobie et al. 1990). French public opinion changed
after decades of propaganda and after the Great war. the civilizing mission would
more than anything else persuade French public opinion as a compelling rationale to
promote both colonialism and French nationalism.
Imperial Colonialism in the Interwar Years
By 1914, France had acquired an empire of ten million square kilometres. The
Great war was a test for the depth of imperial sentiment. would the various parts
of the empire support the metropole’s war effort with soldiers and resources like
the colonial proponents and propagandists had claimed? As it turned out, they did:
French colonies provided between 535,000 and 607,000 soldiers and approximately
220,000 workers (Thobie et al. 1990, 77-9). After the war, the French public colonial
consciousness grew considerably. The propagandists’s campaign had inally returned
dividends, but the colonies’s role during the war was the main factor in the increasing
interest and attachment to the French empire.
Girardet (1972, 117-24) argues that the Great War produced a feeling of solidarity
toward the empire. at the very least, the empire was no longer contested in regard to
the national interest. It might be immoral, but it provided France with unequivocal
resources and power that were essential on the european continent. the propaganda
effort was stepped up considerably and colonial education became a necessity for
the colonial party. Nevertheless, it is hard, as Ageron (1978, 247-59) points out, to
grasp fully the scope of the effort to promote the colonial consciousness because
it merged with the same efforts and processes to construct French nationalism and
republicanism.
the paris colonial international exposition of 1931 was illustrative of the efforts
to create a colonial consciousness and to join it with a “true” French national identity.
the exposition organizers had very explicit goals and intentions. the exposition
“was to intensify the loyalty of the metropolitan population to the colonial empire so
that the French visitors, and eventually the nation, would arrive at a deep realization
that they lived in a new greater France with hometowns (petites patries) all over
the globe” (quoted in: Lebovics 1992, 53). The radiant and beautiful displays, as
Lebovics (1992, 56) argues, transformed aesthetic forms into political ontology:
“the show became a token of the worth of the colonial effort and of a new grander
vision of what it was to be French.” The violent forms that colonialism took in
practice were left out. the exposition was intended to propagate the colonial myths
of technical and moral progress (Thobie et al. 1990, 213-25) and an exercise in
identity construction. the exposition was the typical example of the effort to promote
a sanitized imperial consciousness as well as a strong French nationalism. But it was
above all, “an effort to promote a French identity as a colonial people, a people
whose genius lay in assimilating peoples so that they both kept their petit pays and
38
France and the New Imperialism
yet partook of the universal identity of a French-deined and French-administered
humanity” (Lebovics 1992, 93).
in short, the construction of symbolic France implied an inside and an outside,
a self and an other. the project of a true France failed and yet, as lebovics (1992,
191) indicates, “the triumph of multiplicity in life has not automatically eliminated
True France from common sense, social sciences, and social practices.” Put another
way, the nonexistence in practice of the unitary state – of true or symbolic France
– outside its symbols and representations does not prevent the practical effects it has
on social conditions and social practices. in fact, this has contributed greatly to the
durability of French hegemony in sub-saharan africa.
lastly, it should be noted that, while French imperial colonialism and French
capitalism lived in relative harmony until 1930, marseille argues that after 1930
France experienced the divorce of its imperialism and its capitalism.6 Just as French
people were beginning to believe in keeping and preserving the empire, the colonial
economic crutch was turning into something more akin to an economic millstone.
the beginnings of a mass consumption economy made colonial outlets less and
less useful. New techniques of production, increasing international competition,
and the related construction of an increasingly globalized economy necessitated
enormous investments and restructuring. the actors and agents of this economic
transformation thought it obligatory to put an end to wasteful expenses of public
resources into the empire. according to marseille, it was this divorce of the political
and the economic that largely explains the drama of decolonization. that is, when
France was becoming “more French” and thus more conscious and proud of – and
feeling favourable toward – the empire and the idea of “Greater France,” French
economic forces were retreating from the colonies and were being replaced by
the French state and public funds (Marseille 1984, 159-85, 370-3). Just as French
security policy in Africa would be transformed by global inluences in the 1990s, so
too did French imperialism start its decline with the changing conditions of european
political economy.
Who Colonized Whom?
So far, I have not been speciic in regard to French colonialism in Black Africa
nor have I discussed the colonizers and the colonized. “Who colonized whom?”
might sound like a bizarre question with an obvious answer, but I argue that the
answer is not as self-evident as it sounds. On the contrary: this question is crucial
to understanding current French security policy in sub-saharan africa. First, French
colonialism was always (and remains today) the construction and the domain of
a minority of adventurers, explorers, soldiers, and sociopolitical elites. second,
French colonialism was as much an act of africans as the act of French. the relative
easiness, long duration, and peaceful decolonization of the French experience in
6 the distance between France’s economic and military interests/policy seems to have
continuously increased to this day (Hugon 2007).
Colonizing the Political in Africa
39
sub-Saharan Africa can only be properly understood if these two points are taken
into account.
The Agents of Empire
France acquired an empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries without any
clearly established plan, with the result that French imperialism featured the
separation of national and colonial administrations. As Chipman (1989, 4) puts
it: “The French Empire in Africa was constructed by adventurers and justiied by
propagandists. The acquisition of African colonies in the late nineteenth century
was by and large an operation in which the state eventually acquiesced, but which
was in no sense centrally directed.” In 1905 the new minister of Colonies, Etienne
Clémentel, was reported to have said: “The colonies…I did not know there were so
many of them!” (quoted in: Ageron 1978, 297). The propagandists included Catholic
missionaries, economists, geographers, publicists, all types of social doctrinarians,
and politicians like Jules Ferry and Eugène Etienne. The enthusiasts of empire formed
the French colonial party. it was not a party in the modern sense, but individuals and
groups led by members of parliament who tried to promote their political agenda
of colonialism. the party was the formation centre of colonial myths, ideas, and
images that would educate and enroll France into their colonial project (ageron
1978; Brunschwig 1960a).
The existing colonial oficer corps had a special vision of itself that made the
propagandists’s effort much easier. in algeria, a new French soldier was born. since
1830, Africa had let many oficers escape the monotonous life of provincial barracks.
Colonial oficers made contact with new peoples, languages, and cultures. They had
more freedom, initiative, responsibility, and authority. Their African ield experiences
translated into faster promotions and generally better career opportunities. more
importantly, these colonial experiences were different from those in the metropole
and thus the mentality of the average colonial oficer changed accordingly. The acts
of colonization and paciication led, among other things, to confusion between the
oficers’s military and administrative duties. Consequently, the soldier became more
than a warrior. he became a tutor, a negotiator, an administrator, and an empire
builder. As Girardet (1972, 12) writes: “His mission, as he conceives it, is to arbitrate
and manage, to administer justice, to open roads, to set up markets, to create new
sources of wealth” (see also: Chipman 1989, 37-44; Clayton 1988; Kelly 1965).
Furthermore, as Girardet (1972, 13) argues, while parts of the French army were
being colonized, it was also the colonial idea that was largely militarized. the
colonizer wore the uniform more often than not.7 indeed, this colonization of the
military and this militarization of colonialism have retained their importance into the
twenty-irst century as we will see.
a common assumption is that the French colonial administration was a centralized
system. in practice, the colonies were not deemed important enough to occupy a
single ministry. until the creation of a ministry of colonies in 1894, the colonies
7 For graphic examples, see Bancel et al. (1997); Bancel et al. (1993); Marseille
(1986).
40
France and the New Imperialism
were the responsibility of various ministries and services (mainly those of the navy
and commerce). But even after 1894, the system stayed so decentralized that it gave
nearly full authority to the French oficials who administered the colonies.
many projects, expeditions, and diverse decisions were often planned and carried
out before the government in paris was even informed. the French government
was left with approving and legitimizing a posteriori the actions of its agents, with
the result that the administrators were the actual rulers of the empire. as a former
governor put it:
in my thirty years in the colonial administration, i never received an instruction from
the ministry of colonies. we were the real rulers of the empire; no one told us what to
do. in theory, the ministry of colonies had control over everything, but in practice, it did
not care to exercise this authority. Its only real function was to receive our requests and
recommendations and transform them into decrees. Besides, the minister of colonies was
a rather weak character; no one really cared what he thought or what he did. We were the
ones who had the authority (quoted in: Cohen 1971, 61).
This extensive freedom of action was the consequence of the decentralized nature
of the colonial administration, the geographic distance, the relative dificulties of
communication, and the wide-ranging powers given to the “rulers of empire.” The
administrators were the governor’s oficial representative in all business, in charge of
collecting taxes and assuring the growth of the local budget, in charge of education,
expected to take a census, to map the region, to supervise the construction of public
works, and to assume the functions of the executive and the judicial (Cohen 1971,
67-71).
However, even though colonial oficials enjoyed almost unlimited authority and
responsibility, the colonial service more often than not attracted individuals who
were unqualiied, poorly educated, and usually unsuccessful in the metropole. Even
the establishment of the Ecole Coloniale did not solve the problem properly. as
hubert lyautey wrote in 1902 of the graduates:
They … seem to become increasingly bureaucratic; everything in their behavior takes on
the form of a circular … regulations have become dogma for them, and those which they
themselves created seem after a few months to have the authority of divine revelation.
Finally and primarily they think abstractly … and it is only through our mentality that
they understand the native. certainly … they are better morally and professionally than
the irst group of colonial functionaries; they are irreproachable, but worse (quoted in:
Cohen 1971, 30).
Racism and arrogance were deeply ingrained in both the colonial oficer corps and the
colonial administration in africa, where being white meant something. as a colonial
administrator and active member of the Socialist party wrote in 1931: “We leave
[France] to become kings. And soon because of the development of revolutions, we
shall be the only kings on earth. And not do-nothing kings, but sovereign artists,
enlightened despots, who organize their kingdoms according to maturely relected
plans” (quoted in: Cohen 1971, 106). Brunschwig (1983, 20-26) argues that while
the rulers of empire were different in origin, professional training, and function,
they understood each other because they were all animated by some sort of secret
Colonizing the Political in Africa
41
complicity. they shared common values and individual interests of wealth and power
that, added to a relative professional and personal security, brought them together
into some new form of aristocracy. this cohesive social force, albeit transformed
continuously over the years, has had enormous impact on current French security
policy.
The Black Rulers of Empire
the white rulers of the French empire in sub-saharan africa had their indigenous
black counterparts. In fact, it would seem that the former could not have done without
the latter. In French Black Africa, whites were always few in numbers (especially
before 1914). According to a 1908 census, the French population for all of French
West Africa was 7,390. Of that number, the army had 2,010 (27 per cent), 2,102 were
in commerce (28 per cent), and 500 (7 per cent) worked for the local administration;
and an overall total of 4,229 (57 per cent) were in Senegal (Brunschwig 1983, 61).
Many French oficials who went out to colonize did not do so with the intention of
remaining in Africa, but rather with the intention of coming back as soon as possible
to the metropole. others went because of individual interests or to civilize. the
colonizers were often divided. Administrators, settlers, and merchants frequently
disagreed and did not enjoy an overly peaceful relationship.
So how could so few rule so many? Brunschwig argues that the limits of French
colonialism were those of african collaboration. a mutual dependency existed
between French oficials and the local elites who cooperated with them. Whites
depended on the évolués. these were interpreters, local leaders, masters of the
inland areas where French administrators tended not to venture. French soldiers
were lost and powerless (especially inland) without interpreters, guides, and other
évolués who informed them on local politics and executed their decisions. the same
was true of administrators who stayed close to the capital city and rarely (if ever) go
inland. Black leaders could be loyal, active dissenters or passive revolutionaries and,
especially in the latter case, have enormous inluence with both whites and locals.
these leaders might have feared French might, but the reverse was almost as true for
French administrators needed them to maintain order and to provide for the working
and police forces. French administrators and military oficers, and African leaders,
interpreters, and rule enforcers constituted the heart of French colonization in Black
Africa (Brunschwig 1983).
the fundamental characteristic of the évolués was not their education or their
mastery of the French language. they had made a choice: they wanted to accelerate
the integration and the expansion of Western civilization and its “superior” techniques
within their own societies. some wanted to become French, others wanted to learn
from the French, and others still were only interested in the personal advantages that
collaboration provided. Between 1880 and 1925, as the colonial system improved
and stabilized and as the education of évolués progressed, the colonized turned into
the colonizer. the coercive practices and relationships of colonization developed
into Franco-African collaborative alternatives (Brunschwig 1983, 162-8, 209-15).
My original question – who colonized whom? – has permitted us to explore the
historical formation of social groups: the formation of a colonial elite. one group
42
France and the New Imperialism
could be summarized by the colonial party. the party per se slowly disappeared into
oblivion during the Second World War, but its core – the colonial oficer corps and
the colonial administration – did not and has had an important role during and after
decolonization. The second core social group is African in origin. The black rulers of
the empire also constituted an important social force. more importantly, the mutual
dependency between the two groups exists to this day and as i will argue in the next
chapters, it continues to be central to the sustainability and continuity of French
hegemony and Franco-african dynamics.
The Self, the Other, and the Political
The history of French imperial colonialism that I briely examined above has had a
fundamental role on how current dominant understandings of the self, the other, and
the political were formed and legitimized, and on how these understandings shape,
inluence, and determine current French security policy. Put bluntly, colonialism did
not end in 1962 with decolonization. as darby argues, the legacy of the colonial
relationship must ind its way into our analyses of the contemporary workings of the
international system:
the decolonisation of the international has barely begun. little of the mountain of
intellectual work done on the colonial relationship has found its way into international
studies and, until the last couple of years, practically none into ir. habits of mind with
respect to the workings of the international system, the nature of power, and on how
north and south are constituted reveal a structural eurocentrism. the result is both to
strengthen the authority of the centre and to confuse the ield of action for those who wish
to challenge the established order (Darby 2004, 6).
Krishna (2001, 401-24) goes further and argues that a postcolonial IR is in fact an
oxymoron. Because of its obsession with abstractions, ir discourse aims to escape
history. Much of the violence in world history is sanitized by deining the international
as the clash between sovereign states. the violence, thefts, and genocides of european
imperialism are written out of history because they are represented as the encounter
between the civilized (sovereign states) and the uncivilized (traditional societies).
As Krishna puts it: “[t]o decolonize IR …[and] to remember international relations,
one needs to forget IR.”
There is a new form of orientalism at work in current French security policy
discourse and practice. discussions of new wars, of ethnicity and tradition as roots
of conlict, of typologies of military interventions, of democratization, of regional
security, of nation-building, of global governance, and so on naturalize the terms
of reference and, consequently, are complicit in promoting and upholding French
hegemony. the underlying assumption is that the roots of african social problems
are indigenous. the role of French imperialism – old and new – in transforming
and shaping african societies, and in creating and often sustaining social conditions
which amplify or maintain these problems is completely obscured.
the empire is construed as outside continental France – outside of the France of
liberty, equality, fraternity. The history of the empire is separated from the metropole.
Colonizing the Political in Africa
43
it has no legitimate space. For most intellectuals and politicians, French colonialism
is secondary and comes long after the France of 1789. the memory of the empire
is somehow rejected and erased because to admit to the crimes of the republic
would be to betray it. imperial memory is an epiphenomenon sometimes worthy of
a footnote (Bancel et al. 2003, 15-23, 39-41). Moreover, when it is discussed, the
empire often remains the testimony of France’s grandeur and generosity. crimes and
abuses are replaced with nostalgia. Describing the culture that deines the Marine
Troops (former Colonial Troops), a French general claimed that their historical
participation in all French military expeditions and campaigns abroad gave them
knowledge of the Other:
It is from our military campaigns that this tradition of knowledge about worlds different
than ours comes from. This culture that we are keeping alive and perpetuating today;
this culture of the Other, of the knowledge of the Other, this interest in Others are ours
because the colonial soldier, these soldiers that carried a weapon, but that as soon as the
battle ended would put down their weapon to pick up the shovel and pickaxe in order to
participate in the organization, reconstruction, and development of the country and in the
knowledge of its people. This is a very, very strong identity and cultural feature of the
Marine Troops (Conidential interview, Paris, November 2004).
This discourse also tends to fall into sophism and syllogism: “Africa is in an impasse;
we left africa; thus colonization was not that terrible and perhaps even superior to
today’s arrangements.” It also leads to ridiculous conclusions: “I do not believe that
colonization is to blame” or “Should Africa be re-colonized?”8
more importantly, the history of French colonialism legitimizes postcolonial
security policy. as with the civilizing mission, France continued to believe that it had
a duty toward its african neighbours, to provide the resources and manpower needed
for peacekeeping and nation-building – the newest version of the civilizing mission.
whereas colonization – with its wars, massacres, repression, and other forms of
violence – was legitimized in the name of civilizing the uncivilized, French security
policy in the early twenty-irst century was authorized and legitimized because it
was argued that africans could not provide for their own security, stability, and
development. As Chipman (1989, 32) argues, the “maintenance of French credibility
in Africa depends on a continued ability to point to the dificulty the Africans would
have in replacing France as their principal external provider of security and stability.”
Grovogui (2001, 439) writes: “the justiication of the mission civilizatrice [sic] was
the absence of civilizations in the regions of its implementation. the discovery and
afirmation of civilizations in such regions would alter the meaning of acts committed
in actualizing the mission.” France’s twenty-irst century mission follows a similar
logic: the inability of Africans to attain the “requirements” of civilization.
the dominant version of history and current security policy – which portray the
French as benevolent and the africans as incapable – authorizes and legitimizes
practices of violence, of domination, and of subordination. it also does violence to the
imagined Other by serving as both explanation and justiication for French security
8 Jean-Pierre Cot (1984) and Guy Sorman (1993) both quoted in Bancel et al. (2003,
34-8, 89).
44
France and the New Imperialism
policy. The Self (the French) is constructed in regard to the Other (the African or
the foreign Barbarian). However, the Other is absolutely silent. Colonialism, as
Mbembe (1993, 280-85) argues, was the history of a terribly violent relationship in
which the Self spoke and construed itself by irst silencing and then by creating an
image of the other. the worst part was, according to mbembe, that the colonizer had
the power to silence and imagine the other. the colonizer can persuade the other
that the created image of the colonized is “real.” But these images of the Other, as
Mbembe is quick to point out, are much more representative of who the Self was, is,
and wants to be. the colonizer’s images of the Barbarian inform us about who and
what he does not want to be.
Colonization, and its modern equivalent of French cooperation, did not rely
exclusively on the use of force. French hegemony has also been sustained by symbolic
images of an imagined and sanitized history of the Franco-african relationship.
stories of african rebels and protesters remain invisible. instead, colonization is made
into the history of admirable and generous French administrators and their african
counterparts. the acts of violence and resistance are discarded in favour of the acts
of collaborative african agents who are portrayed as the legitimate representative of
a majority of Africans. The absence of images about colonial conlicts and problems
are meant to demonstrate and emphasize the peaceful and beneicial nature of the
civilizing mission (Mbembe 1997, 257-77).
similarly, Benot argues that French revisionists have denied the colonial legacy
and its fundamental role in current african problems. the fact that colonial massacres
are often ignored or regarded as negligible incidents serves to explain and justify the
colonization of barbarians. more importantly, it exonerates France from all acts of
violence, theft, and massacre (Benot 1995). It is little wonder that the colonizer – or
French public opinion – was often surprised by african passivity and why, at the
same time, the colonizer was opposed to giving too much (if any) autonomy to the
colonized when the latter expressed the will to participate in the construction of its
own future. the civilizing mission aimed at helping and educating, but any insight or
knowledge coming from the Other was automatically rejected. Modernity was and is
exclusively European (Bancel et al. 2003, 70-71).
Racism, as Arendt (1951, 181) argues, was the main ideological weapon of
imperialism. the rejection of the other comes mainly from the fact that the other
symbolizes difference: “The ‘alien’ is a frightening symbol of the fact of difference
as such, of individuality as such, and indicates those realms in which man cannot
change and cannot act and in which, therefore, he has a distinct tendency to destroy.”
According to Arendt (1951, 63-5), if it had not been devised, imperialism would
have required the invention of racism in order to justify the genocides, massacres,
and all other forms of violence and their transformation into respectable foreign
policies, acts of heroism, patriotism, or pity toward uncivilized hordes of savages.
For imperialism, the inferior races could and often should be sacriiced on the altar
of progress and civilization. however, as aimé césaire argues, the inherent racism
in colonialism was a double-edged sword:
What am I driving at? At this idea: that no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes
with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justiies
Colonizing the Political in Africa
45
colonization - and thus force - is already a sick civilization, a civilization that is morally
diseased, that irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one repudiation
to another, calls for its hitler, i mean its punishment … colonization … dehumanizes
even the most civilized man; that colonial activity, colonial enterprise, colonial conquest,
which is based on contempt for the native and justiied by that contempt, inevitably tends
to change him who undertakes it; that the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience
gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him
like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal (césaire 1955,
16-20).
We tend to forget that this racist dimension of imperial colonialism “was the everpresent shadow accompanying the development of the comity of european nations,
until it inally grew to be the powerful weapon for the destruction of those nations”
(Arendt 1951, 41). Racism was necessary to authorize colonial imperialism. And
while racist discourse and practice very much lost all legitimacy after world war ii,
we must wonder whether or not race-thinking created intellectual and philosophical
outlooks and set political precedents that left opened the door to new atrocities.
On imperialism Said (1978, 206) writes: “the whole question of imperialism, as
it was debated in the nineteenth century by pro-imperialists and anti-imperialists
alike, carried forward the binary typology of advanced and backward (or subject)
races, cultures, and societies.” The very fact of designating something as backward
or barbaric (or Oriental in the words of Said) involves “an already pronounced
evaluative judgment, and … an implicit program of action.”
racism as an ideology has been de-legitimized. it does not signify that it has not
left any important trace on the international system. in fact, race was a primary force
in the making of the modern state-system even though in IR discourse “race has been
given the epistemological status of silence” (Persaud and Walker 2001, 374). Racism
denies theoretically the very prospect of a common humankind (Arendt 1951, 107).
today, the same possibility is denied in the name of national security and/or progress.
Linklater argues that from the beginning, state-formation produced distinct patterns
of inclusion and exclusion: “The survival of political community owes much to the
fact … that the social bond between citizens and the state does not extend to aliens.
political communities endure because they are exclusive, and most establish their
peculiar identities by accentuating the differences between insiders and aliens.”9 in
the name of the national interest, military invasion and intervention, nonintervention,
massacres, and so on are transformed into respectable foreign policies and sometimes
acts of humanitarianism. in the name of progress (in terms of technical prowess
and political maturity as deined by the hegemon), neoliberal economic policy,
globalization, and westernization are naturalized without consideration toward their
often catastrophic effects. as said asserts:
9 “[R]esistance to unjust systems of exclusion has resulted in the modern theory and
practice of citizenship. the idea of citizenship provides modern societies with the moral
resources with which to create new and more inclusive arrangements, domestically and in
international relations.” Furthermore, he argues that the acquisition of monopoly power by
the state undermined alternatives and reduced “the level of ethical universality and local
differences which had existed in pre-modern European states.” Linklater (1998, 1, 11, 28).
46
France and the New Imperialism
No better instance exists today of what Anwar Abdel Malek calls ‘the hegemonism of
possessing minorities’ and anthropocentrism allied with europocentrism: a white middleclass westerner believes it his human prerogative not only to manage the nonwhite world
but also to own it, just because by deinition ‘it’ is not quite as human as ‘we’ are. There is
no purer example than this of dehumanized thought (Said, 1978, 108).
French power and intervention in africa are authorized through the common
understanding that the West-knows-best. Put bluntly, Western wisdom and civilization
in and of themselves qualify Western powers like France to intervene (generally
speaking) in which way they want. On the other hand, acts of genocide and civil
wars in the South are understood as the result of lack of wisdom, technique, and
social maturity. Race is no longer the oficial problem. The problem is Barbarism.
It is political and economic backwardness. Consequently, the compelling logic is to
endorse and sponsor French-deined modernity through military intervention and
cooperation among other things. However, what is obscured by this “common sense”
and its related policies is that it relects relations of domination and subordination.
they also are the expression, the promotion, and the practice of French hegemony.
the current practice of French hegemony in sub-saharan africa might not be tainted
by overt racism, but it is tinged by assumptions of western superiority, of Franceknows-best, and of “what-is-good-for-us-must-be-good-for-them.”
the liberal triumphal mindset illustrates this point. the collapse of the soviet
Union “proved” to many scholars, various observers, and politicians that liberal
democracy and capitalism were the ultimate sociopolitical arrangements. the
end-of-history argument took many forms and was heavily criticized, but all sides
seemed to agree that the range of legitimate debate, discourse, and practice had
tremendously contracted after 1989. in this view, western-led modernity became
the only valid and perhaps the best system humanity could hope for (Fukuyama
1992). The consequent logic of this viewpoint was compelling: market-democracy
must be exported for the betterment of all. Unsurprisingly, market-democracy
did not bring peace and stability everywhere and for everyone like many ardent
proponents had claimed. Instability and conlict thus had to be explained. As such an
explanation, Bigo argues that if it was not for its success, samuel huntington’s thesis
on the clash of civilizations should be ignored or laughed at. however, huntington
supplied a theoretical framework that was greatly needed to legitimize a culture of
fear transmitted by the media and more or less distorted by traditional scholars and
government oficials who missed the Cold War era. Bigo adds:
the idea that the clash of civilization and the cultural split will be the main factors of
the conlicts of tomorrow … is nothing but the return, in a barely modiied form, of the
civilizational theories of De Gobineau [Essai sur l’inégalité des races humaines, 1853]
and of the German geopolitical theories of Ratzel [Politische Geographie, 1897] (Bigo
1995).
in short, huntington reinvented the dividing lines between a world of civilized
and a world of barbarians by analyzing cultures (or civilizations) geographically.
that is, as Bigo points out, huntington drew new borders for the post-cold war
world between the “West and the Rest.” The direct consequences of this “clash” of
Colonizing the Political in Africa
47
civilizations were to move the threat from the east to the south and to interpenetrate
theoretically and practically the ields of internal and external security (Bigo 1995).
Moreover, Huntington’s argument rejected the possibility of a common humankind.
he assumed the superiority of western culture, authorized and legitimized relations
of domination and subordination, and construed non-western cultures as barbaric.
They are construed as barbaric because their conlicts are assumed to be caused by
their tribalism, their traditional ways, and thus their resistance in face of european
modernity (Huntington 1996).
Bigo writes:
It is widely known that this view [clash of civilization] is shared by the French extreme
right; that it draws from racism more or less directly. what must be understood is why
it liberates itself from its origins, it spreads as an explanatory principle of the world,
and it becomes so mainstream that it asserts itself as the legitimate problématique in the
eyes of all, including someone like Régis Debray, former ‘revolutionary’, friend of ‘Che’,
François Mitterrand’s Latin America adviser (Bigo 1995).
Bigo (1995) explains that this mindset has become hegemonic because of the politics
of social science and because of the necessity of the powerful military-industrial
complex to reinvent its legitimacy. But more so, this new vision of divisions between
threats and objects to be secured, this new pattern of inclusion and exclusion between
the citizen and the Barbarian also relects material conditions and a historically
constructed vision of a colonized international. that is, the rhetoric and practice
of French hegemony in sub-saharan africa are always in need of reinventing
themselves and this especially was true after the Cold War. A process of doublethink
was as essential as French military forces to maintain the status quo. Suppressed are
the horriic effects of military intervention and cooperation, debt, democratization,
neoliberal progress, and so on. To paraphrase Lindqvist (1992, 226) on imperialism,
“progress” – or modernity however deined by Western powers – leads to the
destruction and the negation of traditional (barbarian) societies. But the ways in
which it is done and the effects it has on the civilized and the barbarians are negated
or, at the very best, only suggested.
Fukuyama’s and Huntington’s theses were two sides of the same coin for the
“pursuit of the former [homogenized global culture] through the West’s strict
enforcement of a standard of civilization almost inevitably risks leading to the latter
[clash of civilizations]” (Bowden 2004, 65). According to Grovogui (2001, 426), to
explain the unevenness of modernity, theorists brought back cultural and civilization
comparative analyses that are founded in subtle racism. However, a lack of sustained
interest in the historical roots of modernity and its processes leads to the “result,
intended or not, [of] the racialization of history and historical processes such as
international relations.” This unwillingness to historicize modernity, imperialism,
colonialism, decolonization, and current postcolonial arrangements leads to
arguments and policies that attribute the causes of “global inequities to degrees
of adaptability or inadequacy of local and regional institutions” (Grovogui 2001,
427). In other words, the essential attributes of civilization – of what it means to be
civilized – are exclusively Western. Consequently, the non-Western world can only
be uncivilized or at the very least in need to be civilized – to be taught modernity by
48
France and the New Imperialism
the proper teacher (Bowden 2004). Furthermore, this construction of barriers between
the civilized world and the world of barbarians demands differential treatment. as
Grovogui (2001, 437) puts it: “Western identity (now a substitute for God’s grace)
and Western canons (replacing the scriptures) would absolve self-justiied states
and their subjects of the burden of accountability in the formulation, advocacy, and
global application of self-interested norms.”
the point is that both the rhetoric and the practice of international relations – of
French hegemony in africa – have yet to be decolonized. the historical construction
of the Self and the Other naturalizes and deines the limits of sociopolitical
arrangements – the limits of the political. Consequently, the political can only be
deined in ways that authorize and legitimize the overwhelming concentration of
wealth and power in the West and, more speciically here, in the hands of the Francoafrican security complex. the rhetoric and the practice of French security policy are
framed in such ways as to deny africans their agency, history, and autonomy of mind
and body. african wars and misery are rationalized as traditional, indigenous, ethnic,
and “immature” social problems. French responsibility is rejected and/or obscured.
But more importantly, when Africans want to take matters into their own hands, they
have to face the coercive apparatus of French hegemony (see Chapters 7 and 8).
when the colonized wants and demands to be civilized, that is when the colonized
wants what France has promised for decades, the colonizer becomes the protector
of traditional cultures, oppressed minorities, “democratically-elected” governments,
and market-capitalism. The French colonizer is the sole provider of legitimate
security. the colonizer is the master of the securitization process. put another way,
the political is framed so as to underwrite French hegemony and proscribe dissent.
chapter 4
authorizing hegemony: French power
and military cooperation, 1960-1994
The irst part of this book examined how republican France, colonial France, the Other,
and the political have been deined and redeined in the last 150 years. I argued that
the colonial dichotomy between civilization and barbarism survived decolonization,
and is relected to this day in the post-Cold War liberal triumphalism. I also argued
that this dichotomy and, more importantly, its subsequent practices are obscured
by the symbolic state. the combination of the symbolic state with the civilizationbarbarism dualism strongly limits the range of possible policy options. the main
objective of this second part is to establish how these constructions inform, shape,
inluence, and determine current French security policy in sub-Saharan Africa.
In the irst two chapters, I argued that security is not an answer to threats alone,
but a practice of authorization to manage and create insecurity. hence, security
policy and its rhetoric are also strategies of deterrence against existing and latent
challengers to the dominant political order. put another way, security policy is not
only about what “is,” but also about “what ought to be.” At the heart of French
power in africa there are ever-changing material conditions (economic, political,
and military structures, instruments, and institutions) that maintain Black Africa in
a quasi-permanent state of underdevelopment and dependency. But these material
conditions draw their authority and legitimacy from a process of “naturalization,” of
the transformation of the “ought to be” into the “is.” As Antonio Gramsci writes:
the active politician is a creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does
he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. he bases himself on effective
reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not
rather a relation of forces in continuous motion of shift and equilibrium? If one applies
one’s will to the creation of a new equilibrium among the forces which really exist and are
operative – basing oneself on the particular force which one believes to be progressive and
strengthening it to help it to victory – one still moves on the terrain of effective reality, but
does so in order to dominate and transcend it (or contribute to this). What ‘ought to be’
is therefore concrete; indeed it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality,
it alone is history in the making and philosophy in the making, it alone is politics [my
emphasis] (Gramsci 1971, 172).
The process of securitization in Africa is about controlling the “ought to be.”
French security policy is not about promoting peace and security alone, but about
continuously maintaining and restructuring French power. this is not to argue that
French security policy is all hypocrisy. Many French politicians and military oficers
sincerely believe in their endeavours. many others, however, seem not to care about
50
France and the New Imperialism
the disastrous effects of the policy on the lives of millions of africans, or simply
rationalize these negative effects. But in the end, it is not about whether or not France
means it. It is about the end result and the consequences for humans.
French hegemony in sub-saharan africa is multifaceted. in this chapter and
the next, I will very briely examine the most important aspects. My focus is on
security policy (or military power) though for two crucial reasons. First, my focus
is on security because as Chipman (1989, 12) argues, “it is the links created by
military co-operation and defence agreements that are most important in explaining
the endurance of French inluence in Africa.” Secondly, my focus is on security
because we are witnessing a form of militarization/securitization of africa. that is,
security and military projects, problems, and solutions are prioritized over any other.
Development aid is being replaced by, and redeined through the lens of, military
aid. the rhetoric and the practice of security were retooled after the genocide in
rwanda in order to re-authorize the use of French military forces. recamp is a
crucial symbol of that movement.
here i re-examine and re-evaluate French security policy from my non-statist
theoretical perspective. my analysis underlines security policy as a fundamental
element of any modern hegemonic project rather than an answer to threats to a
vaguely deined state and/or national interest. In this view, the story takes a whole
new meaning. France becomes not so much a provider of security and stability, but
a factor of instability, fear, underdevelopment, and dependency. the Franco-african
complex is the main beneiciary of French hegemony, but its transnational nature
which was once limited to France and Africa is being redeined within and through
systems of global governance. that is, while the special bilateral relationships are
maintained, they are being integrated and are integrating themselves into global
systems of liberal governance (see Chapter 5). The Franco-African complex and
French hegemony in general are adapting (sometimes with dificulty) to new
structures and relations of power and governance.
In this chapter, I will irst briely survey the post-World War II period up to
decolonization. rather than offer a thorough historical account, i will present
an analysis of the transformation of French power from a colonial system to its
postcolonial version. in the next chapter, the same will be done for the current
amalgamation of the French system into systems of global governance. chapter 6
will focus on changes within the French military.
Decolonization or Leaving in Order to Better Stay
the erosion of colonialism began soon after its entrenchment. By 1919, that erosion
had been signiicantly advanced by the Great War. The conlict had revealed to the
“barbarians” that European civilization might not be itself entirely civilized. The
creation of the league of nations, the promulgation of woodrow wilson’s Fourteen
points, the emergence of communist anti-colonial discourse, and the rise of
nationalisms in the colonies all became sources for debates over changes in colonial
policy. despite the third republic’s inability to adapt because of internal political
crises, the economic collapse of 1929-31, and the reluctance over change and lack
Authorizing Hegemony
51
of imagination of colonial administrators, French imperial colonialism endured and
French colonial consciousness grew (Ageron 1991, 9-31).
In the interwar years, the French government kept alive the image of the empire
as a reserve of men and resources. after the declaration of war against Germany in
september 1939, the topic was almost never brought up again for both the French
military and government oficials knew the poor military and economic state of the
colonies. in fact, the empire was considered a liability more than anything else. at
the start of the second world war, colonial troops numbered only 65,930 soldiers,
of which 43,000 were already in europe in september 1939. By march 1940, their
numbers never surpassed 89,000. Furthermore, French governors were reporting
that the évolués of Dahomey, Senegal, and Sudan (Mali) were passively resisting
French demands to participate in the war effort. people were even moving to British
colonies. The crushing defeat of France by the Nazis and the subsequent armistice
made things worse. the idea of resistance from the empire was not attractive to
everyone. And yet, the empire would become the main stake for legitimacy and power
between the Free French of General charles de Gaulle and the Vichy government
of marshal philippe pétain. even before the end of 1940, the French empire was
threatened from inside as well as from outside (Thobie et al. 1990, 311-18).
The Vichy government justiied the armistice by boasting that it had saved the
empire. until november 1942, the Vichy government sought to maintain the integrity
of the empire against internal acts of resistance or from external acts of aggression.
This led to Vichy military troops iring on other French and English troops at Dakar
and in Syria. Likewise, de Gaulle had determined that France’s last hope resided in
the empire. From london, he sought to rally the empire to his cause. he eventually
succeeded, except for indochina and the French west indies.
in regard to France and its empire, chipman argues that:
to grasp the use that France has made of proven successes in africa, it is vital to see that
the ideology of French world power generally and the images of French power in africa
speciically, have been inextricably linked and mutually reinforcing. A persistent myth
espoused by French leaders, now implicitly accepted by the public, has been that africa in
both a material and psychological sense has served as a repository and source of French
grandeur and strength (Chipman 1989, 3).
chipman’s point is crucial to understand why and how de Gaulle transformed
French colonialism into military cooperation. France’s mission had linked the colonial
myth with the language of domestic and european politics. France and its colonies
had become one and indivisible. after losing indochina and north africa, de Gaulle
did not want to witness the whittling away of the lasting remains of France’s grandeur
and prestige. world war ii had reinforced the importance of the empire in the minds
of most Frenchmen. despite a slow start, by the end of the war French colonies
had again greatly supported the French war effort. By march 1945, north africa
had mobilized 176,000 French nationals (20,000 of whom had escaped occupied
France), 233,000 of Arab origin (134,000 Algerians, 73,000 Moroccans, and 26,000
Tunisians), and approximately 113,000 soldiers from Black Africa, the West Indies,
and Madagascar. However, these numbers do not fully relect the colonies’s war
effort. The inancial and economic effort was heavier and often excessive. It often
52
France and the New Imperialism
led to abuses, injustice, forced labour, high taxes, and repression (thobie et al. 1990,
341-6). Nevertheless, the war developed the perception of a mutually advantageous
relationship between the Free French and elements of French africa. in london in
1947, political director of the ministry of overseas France henri laurentie stated:
the appeal which General de Gaulle launched in london against the capitulation and
the Vichy regime had two results: irstly, it cut the French Empire temporarily in two;
secondly it gave the French colonies a sense of their own importance and responsibility.
this division of the empire, far from promoting the dislocation of France’s possessions,
emphasized a pressing need for unity; never was the principle of unity more appreciated
than during this period of separation. on the other hand, not only were the French colonies
aware for the irst time of the role they could play in wartime, but more important, they
also served as an operational base for the Free French Government … thus the French
colonies enjoyed an audience and a prestige which had never before been theirs (quoted
in: Chipman 1989, 89).
after the war, in France the general belief was that France, instead of being a
liberated country, was a victorious one because of its empire. in 1944-45, the
colonial-imperial myth had never been so popular. de Gaulle certainly believed it,
and while he seemed to have been opened to innovative reforms at the conference of
Brazzaville (1944), the following years showed that he did not want France to lose
one of its crucial sources of prestige and grandeur.
The war also had important consequences on a global anti-colonial movement.
Under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the United States had argued that
colonial imperialism threatened peace and stability while preventing the worldwide
dissemination of freedom. the americans were also concerned about their economic
and commercial interests because of French protectionism in its colonies. president
harry s. truman abandoned roosevelt’s active anti-colonialism, but the united
states often contradicted itself. on the one hand, nationalist movements were often
perceived as an antidote to communism. on the other, it was feared that the end of
colonialism allowed communists to take power in the ex-colonies. Another source
of anti-colonialism was the new united nations organization, and its rhetoric of
human rights and equality of all nations. But beyond the rhetoric, the United Nations
had a limited impact and was often following american leadership in matters of
decolonization (Ageron 1991, 45-78).
the primary force behind decolonization was the rise of colonial nationalisms.
the French people, who in part had put its hope of liberation in the resources of its
Empire, had its views conirmed in the seemingly unwavering loyalty of its subjects.
little informed about what was really going on within the French sovereign territories, it
was not mindful of the rise of nationalisms and was astounded to discover its force and
violence at the end of the war: only then was the empire considered in jeopardy (ageron
1991, 52).
the war in indochina was interpreted in africa as the signal for decolonization
(Ageron 1991, 92). In France, decolonization was a policy option that took a long
time to even be considered. the conference of Brazzaville had offered progressive
options in the social, economic, and administrative spheres. however, the conference
Authorizing Hegemony
53
clearly stated that the underlying colonial order was not to be challenged: “The ends
of the oeuvre of civilization accomplished by France in the colonies rule out any idea
of autonomy, any possibility of evolution outside the French empire; the possible
setting-up, even in the distant future, of self-governments in the colonies is to be
dismissed” (in: Yacono 1971, 58). French colonial policy excluded decolonization.
It also excluded Africans. Even at the Conference of Brazzaville, the only black
present was Félix eboué who was not there as an african, but in his capacity as
Governor-General. the civilizing mission could not end before it was deemed that
africans had become French or civilized (Brunschwig 1986, 49-53; B. marshall
1973). France did not have much of a choice in Indochina and North Africa for it lost
both wars, but de Gaulle and French political leaders were convinced that France had
to maintain its inluence in sub-Saharan Africa in order to promote French power
generally.
when he came to power in 1958, and after the Fourth republic had failed at
reforming the empire, de Gaulle had to ensure a transition from colonial to neocolonial
dependence and French inluence. The French Union (1946-58) had been instituted
by title eight of the Fourth republic constitution in october 1946 and it had aimed
at reforming, unifying, reinforcing, and centralizing the empire in paris. as the war
in algeria became more bloody and violent, the Loi-Cadre (adopted in June 1956)
aspired to safeguard sub-saharan africa from a similar tragedy. the text contained
important principles for a major administrative decentralization without weakening
the 1946 constitution. principles for electoral reform and the establishment and
enlargement of the powers of local government councils made it possible for african
leaders to imagine themselves at the head of future independent countries. the text
also guaranteed that France retained control of issues of foreign policy, defence,
currency, tariff, higher education, and radio stations. the establishment of the Fifth
republic in 1958 compelled de Gaulle to address the need for further reforms.
However, the Communauté (1958-60) did not attenuate the African desire for
independence. de Gaulle recognized the need for transformation when he told andré
Malraux in May 1958: “Colonies are over! We must do something else” (quoted in:
Ageron 1991, 133). Decolonization was a matter of French power, but also one of
honour. France could not abandon its pupils at this stage and hence had to continue
its civilizing mission through economic, inancial, technical, cultural, and military
aid or cooperation. Decolonization was to lead to the new “oeuvre” of cooperation
because, as de Gaulle put it, “We [France] have a certain responsibility to History”
(quoted in: Thobie et al. 1990, 543). Ligot writes on cooperation agreements:
This policy [of cooperation] essential purpose is to continue to bring to the peoples, once
connected to France by links of political subordination, the help they need in their new
situation as independent states … Basically, what we must retained from a study like this
one is the considerable effort carried out by France for over four years, as much on the
psychological front as on the material and inancial fronts, to adapt to new circumstances
of international life without renouncing a certain mission; one that was called ‘colonizing’,
recently ‘liberating’, today ‘educational and protective’ (Ligot 1964, 1).
On the new oeuvre, Jacques Foccart himself wrote in 1964:
54
France and the New Imperialism
[Cooperation] has become the essential condition for the success of the gradual evolution
of the colonized nations toward running completely their own affairs by actually giving
them the means to construct a state administration without which nothing can subsist
and, consequently, without which their cultural, economic and social development
cannot be achieved … its failure or its success concerns all French, all africans and the
Madagascans. But it also concerns, without wanting to use a lot of ine words, all of
humanity … if we succeed imagine the prestige that we would obtain … cooperation
indeed favours internal peace, by nature fragile, in a nation in its process of construction
… Will continue to believe and ight in the name of the development of these countries
those who will have deep and durable motives so as not to get discourage. among those,
above all, are the French whose bonds of friendship and of comprehension are so strong
that they will remain (Foccart in preface of Ligot 1964).
in only six pages, Foccart, secretary general to the presidency for african affairs,
and main engineer of postcolonial cooperation, argued that the French cooperation
oeuvre was the sine qua non condition for African cultural, economic, and social
development, that the oeuvre would beneit France, Africa, and the whole world, that
it was an indispensable condition for peace and stability, that it would demonstrate
the ability of African nations and “races” to construct stable societies, and tie it
all up with French interests, grandeur, and prestige. in short, France had to guide
the african peoples to a level of development that would permit them to govern
themselves.
Consequently, de Gaulle and Foccart engineered the independence of African
states in such a way as to guarantee the sustainability of French hegemony. the new
neocolonial system of (one-sided) “cooperation” could be deined as the “survival
of the colonial system in spite of formal recognition of political independence in
emerging countries which [thereafter became] the victims of an indirect and subtle
form of domination by political, economic, social, military or technical means” (S.
Gregory 2000, 435). The very word “cooperation” disguised the actual implications
of the new agreements. France continued to provide various “aid,” but in return the
newly independent nations were to remain loyal and favour the “special” relationship.
the effect of cooperation is well summarized by albert Bourgi:
in a country where the mere idea of confederation had two years before been considered
subversive, the new type of relations installed by France, under the name co-operation
was aimed to temper the consequences of a process of independence that had become
irreversible and to prolong, if not to consolidate beyond the indispensable political and
juridical changes, the multifarious presence of the former colonizer: presence of a great
number of technicians for some time, of its army in key strategic locations, control of
economic and inancial life, guaranteed outlets and sources for certain articles, a huge
monetary zone based on the Franc and inally a cultural and linguistic hegemony (quoted
in: Chipman 1989, 109).
in fact, the formal recognition of political independence was the fundamental and the
most ingenious element of the transformation and continuity of French hegemony.
From then on, France could legitimize any given intervention by referring to the
defence and cooperation agreements that France had signed with so-called sovereign
states.
Authorizing Hegemony
55
S. Gregory points out that one of the most remarked characteristic of postcolonial
French policy in africa has been its continuity and stability. according to him, one
factor for such continuity “was American indulgence, underpinned by a broad
alignment of shared interests.” As long as France could maintain stability and keep
the Soviet Union out of Africa, the United States was satisied to let France have
its way in africa (s. Gregory 2000, 435-6; also: lorentz 2001; Verschave 2002;
Wauthier 1995). Both continuity and stability of French hegemony during the Cold
war came also from the resilience of both the colonial discourse and structural
arrangements of French power. the transition to independence guaranteed French
inluence and power in Africa. In other words, decolonization did not happen in
French sub-saharan africa; it restructured Franco-african relations. decolonization
did not happen if the term means the transfer of sovereignty or the gaining of
independence and autonomy from a former colonial power.
the relatively smooth transition to independence was also ensured by, and could
not have happened without, the Franco-African complex. The close personal links
between French and african elites formed before, during, and after world war ii
made certain to bind the new independent states to France in order to preserve the
neocolonial order (for instance: see Chapter 8). Of course, the resulting networks
– whether those of Jacques Foccart, Charles Pasqua, François Mitterrand, Jacques
chirac, elf, and so on – cannot be dissociated from the creation, transformation, and
reproduction of both the discourse and structures of French cooperation policy. But
the inal element of continuity and stability was French security policy. It was the
formal defence and military cooperation agreements that allowed France to sustain
its hegemony in africa. But before i turn to this fundamental element, i need to
elaborate on this Franco-african complex and its related structures that are usually
obscured by the symbolic state and the resulting rhetoric of security.
The formal and informal networks and their related structures must be examined
because their forms come from their colonial past and because, in a sense,
French security policy in Africa often works to their beneit. These are networks,
institutions, and organizations that shape, inluence, and determine French security
policy. Furthermore, regarding africa, the Franco-african complex was always
closely connected in some ways to the French presidency. And since “French policy
towards africa, more than any other aspect of France’s external policy, remains the
domaine réservée [sic] of the President” (Chipman 1989, 155) taking into account
the networks, institutions, and organizations of the special relationship can suggest
other meanings of France’s grandeur, prestige, interest, and security. These links
are often disguised and obscured by the rhetoric of security and of the symbolic
state. I do not pretend to offer a thorough and inal analysis of the reasons behind
French hegemony and of the rationale of the many actors involved. my objective is
to offer alternative avenues of explanation to the discourse of threat and security and,
more importantly, to present the social forces and structures within which French
hegemony and French security policy are shaped, transformed, and reproduced. it
is not a simple matter of exploring the historical context (whatever that means), but
to analyze the formation of powerful social forces and structures that can shape,
inluence, and determine policy. The writing of the latter was never limited to the
ofices of the Army, the Ministry of Defence, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
56
France and the New Imperialism
The Postcolonial Franco-African Special Relationship
French leaders who complained that the French Empire lacked a coherent colonial
policy would feel much the same regarding the exasperating complexities of the
relationships between the various French and african bureaucracies, organizations,
and leaders. It is not always easy for the analyst to ind coherence in French
African policy when there exists so much inighting and contradictions between the
presidency, parliament, political parties, French army, secret services, ministry of
defence, ministry of Foreign affairs, ministry of cooperation, and so on. it becomes
even more complex when we include the private interests and networks of those like
Elf, mercenaries like Bob Denard, the private networks of Jacques Foccart, Charles
Pasqua, and so on. We observe that all these formal and informal networks are not
only transnational in nature, but they effectively blur the difference between private
and public. moreover, it seems impossible to appreciate the complexity of it all
without at least acknowledging the necessity for African allies. French hegemony in
africa could never be sustained without them.
Networks within Networks
There exist the usual formal networks between government oficials, military
oficers, bureaucrats, private entrepreneurs, presidents, and so on. However, the
special Franco-African relationship has its set of informal networks that, many argue,
are really “running the show” and that many argue constitute a state within the state
if not the state per se (see Chapters 7 and 8). The array of public/private informal
links forms an exceptional “relationship featuring special favours and symbolizing
the mutual beneits to both France and the governing élites of francophone Africa
of a continuing projection of French power and inluence in the region” (Chafer
2002, 344). France gains grandeur while its African allies proit from a reliable ally
that can provide continuous support to hold onto their sometimes fragile power.
Verschave deines the Franco-African complex (or Françafrique) thus:
Françafrique indicates a nebula of economic, political and military actors, in France and
Africa, organized in networks and lobbies, and polarized on the monopolization of two
revenues: raw materials and government development aid. the logic of this draining is
to prohibit initiatives outside the circle of the initiates. the system, self-degrading, is
recycled in its criminalization. it is naturally hostile toward democracy. the term also
evokes confusion, a domestic familiarity tending toward becoming private (Verschave
1999, 175).1
Foccart was the founding father of the postcolonial special relationship and its
institutional, semi-institutional, and informal connections. When asked about
Foccart’s function, louis Joxe, deputy prime minister under de Gaulle, replied:
1 ironically, the term Françafrique was coined by Félix houphouët-Boigny to express
the close and personal Franco-African relations. Verschave likes to point out the French
homophone “France-à-fric” which roughly translates to the France-that-makes-money.
Authorizing Hegemony
57
“taking care of African presidents and end-of-the month salary payments for African
civil servants” (Whiteman 1997).
Member of the French Resistance during the Second World War, Foccart quickly
became one of de Gaulle’s closest advisers. even before de Gaulle’s return to
power in 1958, Foccart was coordinating backdoor activities for the de Gaulle’s
rpF (Rassemblement du peuple français), in charge of RPF inances and “services
d’ordre” (Gaillard and Foccart 1995, 79, 107). He rapidly became Monsieur Afrique.
he ran operations of intelligence, was the de facto leader of the secret services
(SDECE) Action cell (11e Choc), and coordinated the construction of the French
president’s Franco-african domaine réservé by ensuring that friends and allies
found crucial positions of power in France and abroad, in politics, in business, and
in the secret services. he still symbolizes the special relationship between France
and Africa. After Foccart was ired on 2 May 1969 by interim President Alain Poher
(President Pompidou promptly brought him back to the Elysée), Félix HouphouëtBoigny, president of côte d’ivoire, wrote him a letter:
It is not without great sadness and great sorrow that I see you constrained to leave [your]
delicate functions … For you were not satisied to be the personal and diligent bond
between the prestigious head of the French state - general de Gaulle - and us, heads of
State of French-speaking Africa and Madagascar. You had become the living symbol of
the privileged relations which we maintained with him. You had become more still: our
conidant, a conidant attentive to our often delicate problems. And I do not know of a
case where you did not succeed, thanks to your perspicacity, your diplomacy and your
determination, to help us solve them … Finally, for me personally … you were the sure,
untiring friend to which I never appealed in vain, and in the most varied ields … We need
you for a long time still to prolong the historical and happy policy of decolonization, thus
of Progress in Peace, Freedom and Fraternity, of general de Gaulle [my emphasis] (letter
reproduced in: Gaillard and Foccart 1995).
the relationships between French and african elites were very personal. this type
of relationship and language (family, “special” relationship, and so on) tends to
trivialize these informal networks and their often criminal methods. The networks
rapidly became more than a political instrument, but a legitimate means to do politics
with complete impunity. as the argument goes, they are family after all.
Foccart was also involved in matters of internal security by providing a link
between the sdece and the ministry of the interior (Gaillard and Foccart 1995,
182). To guarantee and to secure France’s interests (however deined), Foccart did
everything in his power to destroy the enemies of France and its allies. he resorted
to the use of force, coups d’état, assassinations, clientelism, arms traficking, and so
on. he was at the centre of a system that assured that a minority of african leaders
monopolized state power with their respective army allies. in short, he was at the core
of a system that supported dictators who suppressed their populations and stayed in
power for decades with the use of secret police, presidential guards, and commando
troops which were all mostly inanced, trained, and equipped through French military
cooperation agreements. all activities were rationalized, legitimized, and authorized
in the name of security, stability, and the symbolic state.
58
France and the New Imperialism
The Franco-African complex has traditionally operated through oficial channels
and unoficial contacts and networks. As Chafer argues:
A key feature of this complex is that the oficial and unoficial links have sometimes
worked in parallel and sometimes in collusion. For example, its activities have often
been ‘covered’ by high ranking politicians or civil servants in Paris, or it has operated
in conjunction with one of France’s secret service agencies. one result of this is that the
public and private domains have frequently overlapped, so that the distinction between
affairs of state and private interests has become blurred (Chafer 2002, 347).
Foccart’s centralized system was undermined by the apparition of competing
networks (especially after the death of Georges Pompidou in 1974) and the changes
in the international political economy in 1973. the formation of diverse political,
business, military, and/or corporatist networks and lobbies further complicated
France’s african policy and sometimes made it appear contradictory. the JeanChristophe Mitterrand and Charles Pasqua networks, big businesses (Elf, Bouygues,
Bolloré-Rivaud, Castel), secret services, multifarious elements of military and
police cooperation, and many “independent” individuals (Paul Barril, Bob Denard,
Jeannou Lacaze, Paul Fontbonne, Robert Montoya, and so on) now compete or have
competed for inluence in shaping and determining French policy or, put another
way, for the dividends of the Françafrique. however, this competition has so far not
undermined their common interest in the maintenance of the systems of dependency,
domination, and subordination. these systems manifest themselves at a number
of institutional, semi-institutional, and informal levels. they included cultural
cooperation, development aid, the franc zone, the ministry of cooperation, personal
links and relationships, the President’s African cell, Franco-African summits, and
the networks.2
The Institutionalization of Marginalization
De Gaulle and Foccart institutionalized formal and informal networks and structures
that guaranteed the grandeur of France in sub-saharan africa. many French
scholars, experts, and government oficials reject the Françafrique, its workings,
and structures as wild imaginings, inconsequential facts, lunatic conspiracies, or as
acts of trivial criminals. however, one does not need to come up with conspiracy
theories in order to understand and integrate these structures within one’s analysis
of French security policy. in fact, it is more complicated than conspiracies. it is a
system at the heart of the French state; a system that developed in tandem with the
French colonial republic.
traditionally, the Franco-african relationship expressed itself at various
institutional, semi-institutional, and informal (private and personal) levels. At the
2 The literature on these informal networks, parallel hierarchies, and criminal activities
is considerable and yet mostly discarded by ir theorists, especially French ones. among others
see Bayart et al. (1997); Bunel (2001); Chafer (2002); Faligot and Krop (1985); Gaillard
and Foccart (1995); Glaser and Smith (1994 and 1995); Hugeux (2007); Lorentz (2001);
Verschave and Hauser (2004); Verschave (1999, 2000, and 2002); Wauthier (1995).
Authorizing Hegemony
59
institutional level, there is French economic policy which is composed of two major
elements: the Franc zone and public development aid (or APD). The former pegged
the currency of France’s former colonies (the Communauté inancière africaine
(CFA) franc) to the French franc (and now the euro) at a ixed rate. The franc zone
is composed of 15 African states and is linked to France (and the Banque de France)
by the three central banks of the economic communities of West and Central Africa
and comoros.
The rules of the franc zone monetary regime have been remarkably permanent
since its creation in 1945, and thus is a striking example of the postcolonial FrancoAfrican relationship (Nubukpo 2007, 70). In the last 50 years, there have been
only marginal changes – and they had more to do with changes in the international
political economy. the zone even survived the 1994 devaluation and the 1999
advent of the euro. The zone procured many beneits which among others included
stable and advantageous rates of exchange especially after 1973 and the return of
loating currency rates. But, more importantly, the regime gave France a privileged
commercial and inancial space, as well as monumental inluence on the economies
and policies of the zone members. the French treasury guaranteed the free
convertibility of african currencies with the French franc. the regime also ensured
a ixed rate of exchange and the absolutely free transfer of capital between the zone
and France. it also centralized the reserve currency in paris. Furthermore, these
arrangements (especially the free convertibility and transfer between the cFa and the
franc) allowed the Franco-African complex to freely launder the money of, in large
part, the apd and their systems of resource extraction. last, the maastricht treaty
clearly stated that the zone would not be affected for it was the French treasury and
not the Banque de France that guaranteed the convertibility of the CFA franc, but
it also meant that the European Central Bank had now a say in the workings of the
zone (Huchon 2007).
the other element of French economic policy was apd. the aid was cultural,
economic, and technical. cultural cooperation was basically the propagation of
the French language and culture. thousands of French teachers participated in this
effort and their salary was included within the aid budget. economic and technical
cooperation aimed at developing infrastructures like factories, schools, hospitals,
roads, and so on. French aid was heavily criticized in the early 1990s for its selfserving and wasteful nature. nearly all (between 90 and 98 per cent depending on
the source) of French aid was recycled and send back to France. Chaigneau (2001)
asserts that 95 per cent of bilateral APD is still brought back to France through the
order books of French companies. The recipient corrupt regimes also often siphoned
that aid which was often attributed to african countries on the very subjective notion
that they were/are French allies (for instance: adda and smouts 1989; Brunel 1993;
Verschave 2001).
At the semi-institutional and informal levels, it is proving dificult to draw the
line and to distinguish them from the private networks. There are the annual FrancoAfrican summits that bring together French and African leaders and their oficials.
However, as Chafer (2002, 346) argues, “insofar as they do not have any published
agenda or make formal policy recommendations, they resemble informal family
gatherings rather than oficial intergovernmental meetings.” There are also the close,
60
France and the New Imperialism
personal, and family-like relationships between French and African elites that were
forged after world war ii and that continued under the Fifth republic. there is the
elysée african cell formed around the president and his personal adviser on african
affairs which operates independently of either government or parliament. all the
levels are penetrated to varying degrees by the informal networks of the FrancoAfrican complex. The networks are at the core of the special relationship because,
in part and as noted above, they blur the distinction between private and public and
they often resort to force with almost absolute impunity. another element through
which the “special” Franco-African relationship has expressed itself is the military
cooperation and defence agreements to which i now turn.
Traditional Military Cooperation
after decolonization, French and african elites came together to form what is now
identiied as French military cooperation. The objectives and means of the policy
were much diversiied and many texts and clauses have remained secret. The reasons
given to support the policy were often vague and ambiguous, but they usually
revolve around a vocabulary of state security and stability. in 1999, socialist Bernard
cazeneuve’s statement represented the consistency of the rationalization supporting
French military cooperation: “There is no great power without a policy of military
cooperation. this policy is, by its orientations, a precious indicator of the international
position of the country that conducts it” (quoted in: Elomari 2001, 9). However,
the so-called policy disguised the crucial institutions that have maintained French
hegemony, France’s postcolonial inluence in Africa, and the diverse institutional,
semi-institutional, and informal arrangements explored above.
military cooperation refers to both defence agreements and military technical
assistance accords (amt: assistance militaire technique). I will irst address defence
and then turn to the broader military assistance agreements. nevertheless, it should
be noted that the former usually implies the latter and that in any case the difference
is mostly theoretical. The lack of a defence agreement never stopped France from
intervening militarily. The key distinction is that defence agreements authorize
France to legally preserve military bases on the territory of the signatory countries.
Defence Agreements
in the post-independence period, France signed defence agreements with: Gabon
(1960), Central African Republic (1960), Côte d’Ivoire (1961), Togo (1963),
Cameroon (1974), Senegal (1974), Djibouti (1977), and Comoros (1978). Defence
accords permitted the signatory states to call on France for help and assistance in
cases of foreign aggression and even domestic instability. they also authorized
the permanent presence of French military troops (pre-positioned forces) whose
numbers allowed France to assist its allies, to protect its political and economic
interests, and to serve as strategic bases for various interventions in africa. Before
1994, there were always between 6,000 and 8,000 French soldiers stationed at six
African bases: Dakar (Senegal), Port Bouet (Côte d’Ivoire), Libreville (Gabon),
Authorizing Hegemony
61
N’Djamena (Chad), Djibouti, and Bangui (Central African Republic). The Bangui
base was closed in 1998 after French soldiers were involved in the civil conlict.
the agreements often included articles and annexes that ensured that France was
informed of, had access to, and was given priority over the continuation “of research,
exploitation and trading of such materials as liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons,
uranium, thorium, lithium, beryllium, helium and various other minerals and
compounds.” Moreover, African states undertook to facilitate the supply of these
resources and to refrain from trading them to those states and clients that the French
government deemed to be threats to French national security (Chipman 1989, 119).
defence agreements provided for direct military intervention, but it was not
necessary for France to respond positively. also, these agreements were not inevitably
linked to military cooperation agreements. However, except for the presence of
“legitimate” French permanent forces, the distinction between the signatories of
defence agreements and the states that did not sign them is blurry and ambiguous.
in any case, the distinction never stopped France from intervening militarily in
countries that did not sign them.
Military Cooperation Agreements
Between 1960 and 1994, 27 african states signed military cooperation agreements
with France (see Table 4.1). These agreements were varied and their peculiarities
depended on the signing country. to differentiate them from defence agreements,
the diplomatic documents took different names: military cooperation, military
assistance, conventions, “échanges de lettres.” They usually are referred to as
military cooperation accords and provide for military training, technical assistance
(maintenance, logistics, and supply), and/or arms transfer. Some states saw their
assistance suspended (Madagascar, Congo-Zaire, Guinea) and others seem to beneit
from it without any oficial document (Angola and Mozambique).
French strategy vis-à-vis sub-saharan africa has rested upon two pillars:
presence and intervention. French presence is guaranteed by military cooperation
and aspires to form and equip the signatory countries with capable armies which
will enable them to provide for their countries’s own security and defence. since
1960, the ministry of Foreign affairs is responsible for the political aspects and the
Ministry of Cooperation is the coordinator for the technical and inancial aspects of
military aid. The Ministry of Defence has the key role however as the supplier and
executer of the policy. according to the constitution of 1958, the prime minister
is in charge of defence policy. in reality, president de Gaulle instituted an african
council whose councillor, the president’s personal adviser on african affairs, is in
command (referred to as the African cell).
locally, French ambassadors were theoretically in charge, but they came under
the authority of both ministries of Foreign affairs and cooperation. on 1 January
1965, the creation of the mission of military cooperation (Mission militaire de
coopération – MMC) gave the authority of military assistance to an ambassador’s
military adviser. the military adviser was detached from the diplomatic mission. he
was both military adviser and in charge of military cooperation. he was always in
close contact with the MMC regarding all military aspects. He was the link between
62
Table 4.1
France and the New Imperialism
Military cooperation accords with African countries
Country
Year of Signature Country
Year of Signature
Benin
Burkina Faso
Burundi
cameroon
car
chad
comoros
congo
congo-Zaire
djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Gabon
Guinea
côte d’ivoire
1975
1961
1969
1974
1974
1976
1978
1974
1974
1977
1985
1960
1985
1961
1966
1980
1985
1979
1986
1994
1977
1975
1974
1979
1963
1973
1992
madagascar
malawi
mali
maurice
mauritania
morocco
niger
rwanda
senegal
seychelles
togo
tunisia
Zimbabwe
Source: Assemblée nationale (2001).
the French military and the african army which he was assigned to assist. the mmc
was in direct contact with the ministry of defence, the department of african affairs
at the Quai d’orsay, and the president’s african council.
Military Cooperation, Intervention, and the Rhetoric of Security
the rationale behind French military assistance, presence, and intervention in africa
has not changed much since the 1870s. it is more precise to say that it has adapted
to different historical conjunctures. the instruments have remained the same:
military presence and intervention. the development of african nationalisms, of
French colonial and postcolonial consciousness, the creation of the Bretton woods
institutions and structures, globalization with its homogenization and standardization
of world affairs, and so on all led to transformations of French power in africa, but
they have yet to radically question and/or de-legitimize the purpose and the usage
of French military might. Interestingly, the rhetoric has also stayed quite similar
through the decades. Two crucial elements have certainly endured over time. The irst
is France’s “need” of Africa (or colonies) to promote its interests, prestige, grandeur,
rang, and thus security. The second, as the argument goes, is the “need” that Africans
have for France – the civilizing mission. the africans once needed to be civilized.
Before the 1990s, they needed France’s help to construct and to consolidate their
states and their national armies against the threat of communism. after 1990, they
required much of the same – as well as to be taught the wisdom of democracy, good
governance, and peacemaking. Only then, the common argument goes, will Africans
stop slaughtering each other and be able to savour peace and development.
Authorizing Hegemony
63
another but fundamental element of this continuity and stability in policy is the
one that is (almost) always left untold: the process by which French abuses, violence,
and impunity are neutralized, sanitized, and trivialized. it is a process that does not
it the oficial rhetoric and mainstream theories of international relations. It cannot be
included within the oficial discourse for it would render the policy illegitimate and
unauthorized. it cannot be incorporated into mainstream theories because the carefully
crafted theoretical frameworks would implode. Therefore, despite all rhetoric and
discourse of Western good deeds, intentions, and scientiic achievements, the events
that could be interpreted as past and present French responsibility, accountability,
and complicity in the past and ongoing marginalization of africa are obscured,
discarded, labelled as blunders, “errors,” or “inconsistencies,” and usually at best
addressed in a footnote. The doublethink process at work in supporting current
French security policy in africa permits both the erasure from history of the historical
process of the institutionalization and maintenance of conditions of savages and the
consequent process of authorizing that erasure. In other words, the rhetoric of French
security which is based on the symbolic state has allowed and continues to allow
for both the sustainability of institutions of dependency and exploitation and for the
legitimization and authorization of the practices of these same institutions.
as noted above, French strategy toward africa is founded on two pillars: military
presence and intervention. French military presence is guaranteed by military
cooperation agreements. Both amt and permanent forces and bases preserve French
inluence and power. French rhetoric about Africa has always been characterized by
two major themes: French generosity and French interest. the mission is not purely
altruistic though for France inds in it its interests as well. For, as the argument goes,
France needs Africa in order to remain a world power and to retain its inluence
whether as a third option between the united states and the soviet union or as
an alternative to post-cold war american hegemony. even decolonization – and
consequently the military cooperation agreements that followed – can be portrayed
from this viewpoint as in the best interest of France. about military cooperation, de
Gaulle himself argued candidly:
To give up co-operation would be equivalent to disavowing our role with regard to the
evolution which carried people of africa so much … to develop in their turn, without
delivering themselves to one or the other of two hegemonies which divide the world …
Why thus would France, which is itself in full expansion, keep away from a movement
for which its traditional genius is largely the pillar on which depend, ultimately, the peace
and fate of the world? (quoted in: Chaigneau 1984, 20).
From then on, the postcolonial conceptual foundation of French military cooperation
would not vary much despite all criticisms and cosmetic transformations.
Formally, amt accords are not political and they aim at creating – through
training, inancial, technical, and logistical assistance – the national armed forces of
France’s ex-colonies. however, they should be considered as the institutionalization
of practices of dependency and as the construction, transformation, and reproduction
of social forces and structures of French power that are mostly guarded against
debate and change. amt agreements authorized the transfer of French military
technology and the propagation of French military culture through african armies
64
France and the New Imperialism
that create a material, technical, scientiic, military, and political dependence. The
permanent presence of French military coopérants (adviser/instructor) represents an
indirect but constant intervention in african affairs. the training of african elites
and military oficers with French elites and future leaders create strong personal
relationships that will constitute inluent networks and lobbies. And because the
“loop” is closed to outsiders – by and large outside military circles – the result is
that generally speaking French military cooperation has created the opposite of its
intended objectives. it did not produce the stability and security necessary for african
civil societies to emancipate and, more importantly from the formal viewpoint of the
military agreements, it did not provide for any concrete african operational military
capability (Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 164-72). In fact, French military policy has
often been and is a major factor of instability as i will argue below and in the next
chapters.
defence agreements were signed to ensure that France could legally launch
interventions in its African allies’s countries, and thus to provide some “insurance
policy” to allied African leaders in order to maintain them in power (Chaigneau
1984, 28). The French network of military bases had, theoretically, a deterrent role.
it permitted the rapid deployment of French troops in cases of instability, and it
represented the formal tools of French world military presence (chaigneau 1984,
49). This aspect of French presence also reinforced the sociological effects of AMT
accords, especially if we take into consideration the fact that the various accords
legalized French intervention into domestic affairs. In short, as Bagayoko-Penone
(2003, 51) argues, French military policy in Africa made France the administrator
when not the owner of the instruments that, in the end, ensured the survival of many
african states.
Chaigneau identiied three levels of traditional French intervention in subSaharan Africa. The irst corresponded to domestic trouble or instability. In these
cases, French intervention was gradual. local police forces and gendarmerie
intervened irst; only if they could not re-establish order and stability were the
national armed forces called on to take over. And only as a last resort would the
local French forces intervene. the second level corresponded to a crisis that could
have serious repercussions on neighbouring states. locally stationed French forces
would act and they could be reinforced by the intervention forces stationed in France
if necessary. Last, in case of an important threat, an interstate conlict, or act of
external aggression, the intervention forces would intervene immediately while the
pre-positioned forces would provide them with logistical support (chaigneau 1984,
52; Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 46).
French military intervention in postcolonial africa has often been legalized and
legitimized by the defence agreements. However, it is crucial to take note of two
points. First, the ways in which the agreements were written allowed the lexibility
needed to legitimize any given and desired intervention. that is, France can even
interfere in domestic affairs because clauses stipulated that in cases of foreign support
or involvement in domestic affairs, France had a legal right of intervention. thus,
any given situation can be interpreted as needing French intervention because in
most instances, if not all, outside involvement is impossible to deny or corroborate.
Authorizing Hegemony
65
There is always some weapon supplier or else that can be “found” (for examples:
see Chapters 7 and 8).
secondly, French military assistance must be interpreted as indirect but permanent
intervention. France has had military oficers incorporated within the armed forces
of the signatory states for decades. These oficers have worn the national uniform of
their army of adoption, they have been integrated into the command structure, and
they have actively participated in the training, logistics, doctrine, operations, and/or
command activities of African armies. Consequently, we can identify the multifarious
elements that are more or less concealed by the concept of intervention.
Chaigneau (1984, 93-100) recognized four types of intervention in Africa: 1)
intervention of “setting up” France’s friends in position of power (corresponds to
most interventions after decolonization); 2) intervention of destabilization and of
coup d’état; 3) intervention to “reduce” domestic threats so as to consolidate the
power or to bring back to power France’s allies; and 4) intervention to defend against
external acts of aggression like in Chad (see Table 4.2 at the end of the chapter for
the list of French interventions). I add a ifth in light of the changes of the 1990s that
somewhat encompassed all the others, and that has acquired great importance after
1997: interventions that are “multilateralized” under the aegis of global governance
institutions. i will elaborate on this in the next chapter.
pre-positioned forces are more often than not presented as the heart and symbol
of French power in africa. their fundamental role should not be underestimated, but
the cornerstone of the French security apparatus in africa was the rapid intervention
forces stationed in France. French bases in africa are positioned near airports and
harbours and their forces’s primary mission is to support and to prepare for the
intervention forces. From the irst days of decolonization, France deemed it too risky
to maintain a signiicant military presence in Africa.3 the emphasis was instead put on
mobile intervention forces. their structures are characterized by their conventional
nature. They operate from a purely conventional standpoint (infantry). Moreover,
they are constituted with professional and elite soldiers. the point for now is that
they are based on a classical model of military intervention: French intervention
forces’s main function is the use of force and coercion (Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 428). I will return to this in Chapter 6.
Authorizing Hegemony
Before the 1990s, the oficial objectives of military cooperation – the creation and
training of African armies – never materialized. So why did it continue? Why did
government oficials favour military cooperation? In other words, why and how has
French security policy in africa remained so constant through the years in sustaining
an African security dependency?
3 From 1962 to 1964, French forces were reduced from 59,000 to 21,000 soldiers
stationed in Black Africa. From 1965 to 1970, they were further reduced from 21,000 to
6,500 soldiers (Chaigneau 1984, 70). Thereafter, the number of permanent forces would never
exceed 8,000.
66
France and the New Imperialism
one reason is politico-cultural. under the Fifth republic, affairs of defence and
security are highly centralized. the executive has always enjoyed enormous control
over these matters. The result is that there is not much (if any) democratic debate over
defence and security. there are analysts and experts who argue over the decisions
and the means of the policy, but there is almost no critical debate over the meaning
and the place of defence and security matters in French society. even the parliament
will only argue over the size of the budget. there is no independent university centre
that studies these questions. Other university centres tend to be small, and usually
work on other countries. Many work for the Ministry of Defence, which controls all
defence-related research funds. Self-suficient research institutes are very rare. One
consequence is the relatively weak involvement of French civil society in security
matters and debates which has led to more de facto control (and impunity?) for the
executive. Furthermore, French academics seem little interested in Franco-african
relations; writings have mainly come from journalists, militant associations, and
institutional “experts” from Defence, Cooperation, and other ministries (Banégas
et al. 2007).
put another way, the symbolic power of the state and its security discourse is
present at all the levels of French society. the role of intellectuals therefore becomes
crucial in forming, transforming, reproducing, and legitimizing the discourse of the
Ministry of Defence. As Verschave claims: “Intellectuals have a fundamental role
precisely because they are paid by society to shed light on these defence matters. if
there is such a fundamental element of the operation of the state which is not clariied
because they do not do their job, it is a tragedy” (Interview in Paris, November
2004). Again, one does not need to be conspiratorial here. The formation of the
rhetoric of security – of a security discourse – relects and is an intrinsic aspect of
the historical construction of the French state and the westphalian order. and yet,
the discourse should not be underestimated for it is a fundamental authorizing and
legitimizing factor of French security policy. it also disguises and/or trivializes the
blunders and actions of the Franco-african security complex.
what gives authority to the French security apparatus, what gives legitimacy to
the French executive and the ministry of defence, and what conceals the activities
of the associated informal networks is largely the uncritical and general acceptance
of a given security discourse – it is the naturalization of that discourse and its related
practices. French hegemony is not only about the practices of French power in africa,
but also about what goes unquestioned and unsaid. The naturalization of the security
discourse and practices renders both nonpolitical: who can be against security? But
as i have already suggested and as i will emphasize in the next chapters, the discourse
often has little regard to practice, especially the practice of military intervention.
table 4.2 shows the extent of French military involvement and meddling in african
affairs since 1945. the list was compiled in the summer of 2005 from documents
describing the various interventions that were published on the Collège Interarmées
de Défense website. As of this writing however (June 2007), the documents do not
seem to be available online anymore. I do not know the reason for this, but I have in
my possession the printed version of these documents.
The classiication of the interventions used is the same as in the documents. I
used the following legend. A: in the context of military cooperation accords; C:
Authorizing Hegemony
67
French coup d’état/change of regime; M: multilateral; N: national (unilateral); P:
protection of French citizens and ambassadors; R: recamp; UNc: under un
command; UNm: under un mandate; X: undetermined for lack of information.
there are a total of 122 interventions of which ten are in progress. i also left out
about 20 interventions because it was impossible for me to know if they actually
qualiied as military interventions. Two things should be noted about the total
number of interventions. First, some of the listed interventions could be merged into
one for, as in the case of Rwanda (three oficial missions between 1990 and 1994),
they represent one continuous French involvement. But, second, the opposite can
also be said of interventions that fall under the label of operation in progress. For
example, the late 2006 interventions in chad and central african republic are not
listed for they fall, oficially, under the 1986 Operation Epervier.
Table 4.2
French military interventions in Africa, 1945-2005
Country
algeria
Name
war of algeria
Beginning
1 october 1954
egypt
mauritania
tunisia
tunisia
chad
niger
Benin
djibouti
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
chad
chad
mauritania
chad
chad
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
Gulf of Guinea
car
tunisia
cameroon
chad
ouganda
Gabon
Mousquetaire
ecouvillon
charrue courte
secours tunisie
limousin
pluie du sahel
crevette
saphir 2
Verveine
Froment
camomille
lamantin
citronnelle
tacaud
Bonite
Okoumé
Barracuda
scorpion
maroua
anabase
menthe
Murène
30 october 1956
10 February 1958
17 July 1961
11 october 1969
14 april 1969
19 september 1973
January 1977
april 1977
7 april 1977
24 may 1977
7 July 1977
2 november 1977
3 February 1978
27 march 1978
18 may 1978
17 January 1979
20 september 1979
27 January 1980
29 march 1980
may 1980
13 august 1980
11 november 1980
End
1 July 1962
24 november 1956
5 may 1959
23 July 1961
3 november 1969
27 october 1972
10 october 1973
January 1977
december 1977
18 april 1977
15 June 1977
26 July 1977
27 may 1980
16 February 1978
may 1980
15 June 1978
7 may 1979
8 July 1981
march 1980
august 1980
17 may 1980
29 august 1980
July 1981
Type
war, n
c, m
a, p
n
n, h
a
n, h
c
n
m
n, h
a
a
a
a
a
a
c
a
n, h
a
n, h
n
Troops
80,000 – 400,000
30,000
600
160
12
350
1,200-2,600
600
40
somalia
car
senegal
chad
côte d’ivoire
libya
chad
myrtille
eFao
thiof
manta
comoe
mirmillon
silure
may 1981
8 July 1981
1982
9 august 1983
1984
september 1984
1 october 1984
may 1981
15 april 1998
1982
7 november 1984
1984
november 1984
1 december 1984
n, h
a
n
a
n
A (Chad)
a
Guinea Bissau
chad
tunisia
soudan
senegal
comoros
Gabon
Gulf of Guinea
rwanda
senegal
soudan
somalia
ethiopia
ethiopia
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
mauritania
Griffon
epervier
hortensia
ellebore
nouadibou
oside
Requin
corymbe
noroit
Jubarte
Francolin
Bérénice
totem
Godoria
Baumier
minurso
december 1985
13 February 1986
april 1986
18 december 1988
29 april 1989
4 december 1989
23 may 1990
26 may 1990
4 october 1990
1991
1991
3 January 1991
24 may 1991
28 may 1991
23 september 1991
october 1991
may 1986
in progress
december 1993
1991
1991
9 January 1991
5 June 1991
12 June 1991
18 october 1991
in progress
X
a
a
n, h
a
c
a
n
a
n
X
n
n
a
n
unc
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
Benin
Gabon
macle
Verdier
Férule
18 october 1991
december 1991
1992
22 February 1992
march 1992
1992
n, p
a
X
april 1986
1 June 1989
16 may 1989
20 december 1989
2 June 1990
in progress
1,500
4,000
4,000
950
70
60
1,500
1,000
220
850
500
4,000
600
25
15
450
Table 4.2
continued
djibouti
car
sierra leone
angola
somalia
somalia
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
angola
senegal
somalia
Burundi
somalia
somalia
algeria
togo
cameroon
rwanda
rwanda
niger
Guinea Bissau
somalia
angola
niger
comoros
Iskoutir
Bio force
simbleau
addax
sanaa
Oryx (Restore Hope)
Bajoyer
Zmas
Cap skiring
onusom 2
Yambo
edicber 1 et 2
onusom 100
caravane
tatou
Balata
amaryllis
Turquoise
croix du sud 1
caducée
united shield
unaVem iii
croix du sud 2
azalée 1
25 February 1992
17 march 1992
may 1992
1 november 1992
15 november 1992
7 december 1992
January 1993
25 January 1993
3 april 1993
12 april 1993
october 1993
16 october 1993
20 december 1993
1994
2 January 1994
February 1994
8 april 1994
18 June 1994
november 1994
22 november 1994
January 1995
march 1995
1 July 1995
30 september 1995
June 1999
08 april 1992
28 may 1992
5 november 1992
18 november 1992
12 april 1993
march 1993
11 may 1993
13 april 1993
15 december 1993
october 1993
13 december 1993
15 march 1994
1994
22 march 1994
august 1998
14 april 1994
22 august 1994
november 1994
8 december 1994
march 1995
march 1995
31 december 1995
8 october 1995
a
n, h
n
n
unm
unm
n
n
n, h
unc
n, p
n
unc
X
n
a
n
unm
n
n, h
n
unc
n
a, c
120
130
300
2,400
140
6
1,100
100
220
20
500
2,500
34
42
11
30
1,070
comoros
cameroon
car
car
eritrea
algeria
congo
azalée 2
aramis
almandin 1
almandin 2
condor
algérie
malébo
15 october 1995
17 February 1996
18 april 1996
18 may 1996
June 1996
november 1996
21 november 1996
23 march 1996
in progress
29 april 1996
21 July 1997
march 2001
2003
8 February 1997
X
a
a
a
unm
n, p
n, p
madagascar
car
congo
congo
sierra leone
congo
angola
car
congo
car
ethiopia
liberia
Gabon
car
car
Guinea Bissau
sierra leone
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
car
Gretelle
Bubale
isard
pélican
espadon
Black arrow
monua
almandin 3
antilope
cigogne 1 et 2
shebelle
melchior
Furet
minurca
Murène
Iroko
monusil
malachite
cigogne 3
23 January 1997
25 January 1997
14 march 1997
19 march 1997
31 may 1997
25 June 1997
July 1997
22 July 1997
15 october 1997
27 october 1997
28 november 1997
January 1998
February 1998
15 april 1998
15 april 1998
7 June 1998
13 July 1998
11 august 1998
15 december 1998
24 January 1997
30 april 1998
19 march 1997
1 august 1997
7 June 1997
8 august 1997
may 1999
15 april 1998
17 november 1997
15 april 1998
6 december 1997
January 1998
2003
28 February 1999
1 march 2001
18 may 1999
21 october 1999
27 october 1998
28 February 1999
n, h
a, r, unm
n, p
m
n, p
n, p
unc
a
n, p
n
n, h
n
n
r, unc
n, p
n, p
unc
n, p
unm
64
1,400
2,500
150
129
130
300
1,300
34
13
1,800
46
220
10
74
1
500
229
Table 4.2
continued
djibouti
congo
Guinea Bissau
djibouti
sierra leone
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
Khor angar
Okoumé
recamp Bissau
Ardoukoba
minusil
monuc
24 January 1999
28 January 1999
28 January 1999
June 1999
21 october 1999
30 november 1999
28 February 2001
23 June 2000
17 June 1999
2000
1 september 2003
in progress
a
n, p
r, un/ecowas
a
unc
r, unc
côte d’ivoire
car
Mozambique
madagascar
madagascar
senegal
ethiopia
Khaya
Bonurca
limpopo 1 et 2
mangoro
hudah
sloughi
minuee
23 december 1999
15 February 2000
19 February 2000
13 march 2000
8 april 2000
8 may 2000
6 december 2000
27 december 1999
26 march 2003
12 march 2000
22 march 2000
20 april 2000
13 June 2000
in progress
a, c
unc
n, h
n, h
n, h
n
unc
madagascar
sierra leone
côte d’ivoire
car
Zaire/rdc/congo Kinshasa
liberia
liberia
côte d’ivoire
samsonnette
loma
licorne
Boali
Mamba (Artemis)
providence
minul
onuci/calao
20 may 2001
4 February 2002
22 september 2002
16 march 2003
3 June 2003
6 June 2003
1 october 2003
23 april 2004
14 June 2001
10 February 2002
in progress
in progress
n, h
unc
a, r
a, r
25 september 2003
11 June 2003
in progress
in progress
un/eu
n, h
unc
unc
Gulf of Guinea
chad
robert
dorca
2 July 2004
31 July 2004
6 July 2004
11 september 2004
n
n
Source: Collège Interarmées de Défense, <http://www.college.interarmees.defense.gouv.fr>, accessed July 2005.
490
30
600
1
7
340
1
37
200
32
2
4,000
190
1,070
150
173
200
chapter 5
into the twenty-First century: liberal
war, Global Governance, and French
military cooperation
French security policy in africa is not a response to an environment of crisis alone. it
also creates and constitutes that environment. in other words, French security policy
must also be conceived as the construction and the reproduction of social conditions
that are themselves fundamental factors of the same instability it seeks to prevent.
the crucial involvement of France in african military coups d’état and wars, its
role in propping up cruel dictatorships and the repression of social movements of
protest, and so on are well-documented. It is now more or less oficially admitted
that France instrumentalized african states and armies during the cold war for its
own purposes and interests. as a colonel of the departement of military cooperation
and defence (Direction de la coopération militaire et de défense – hereafter DCMD)
readily admitted:
The MMC was less autonomous vis-à-vis Defence than the DCMD. It was justiied by
the fact that the cooperation of the cold war was not to work to the beneit of the partner
country, but of the east-west confrontation. with a very close relationship between the
mmc and defence, we made many substitutions. we had many coopérants set up in
African armies in particular to make them functional. It is something that we do not do
anymore because the goal is no more to do things in their stead. we formerly had an interest
in doing that, but now we do not anymore. henceforth, it is necessary that the machine
operates all alone. thus, the relationship between us and the partner is slowly evolving,
but it is not easy with decreasing budgets [at the DCMD] (Conidential interview, Paris,
November 2004).
The acknowledgment and the analysis stay at a supericial level. The abuses remain
legitimized by the “necessities” of the Cold War. Furthermore, the colonel’s claim
relects the very strong belief in French military circles that the end of the Cold
War and its related victorious melody (see Chapter 3) brought a new era of ethical
military intervention and cooperation. moreover, there is a widespread belief that
this time “France will make it right” and “France will bring peace and security”
in the name of partnership, fraternity, liberty, equality, and justice. However, as I
argue in this chapter, the so-called errors of the past have not been “learned.” That
is, as good as French intentions might be – whether they are real or not – current
French security policy in sub-Saharan Africa will most likely fail and will certainly
perpetuate the marginalization of sub-saharan africa for at least two reasons. First,
the conceptualization of French security policy as a response – and only a response –
74
France and the New Imperialism
to an African environment in “crisis” misrepresents the factors of instability and thus
can only lead to maladapted solutions and to characterizations of barbarism and the
like. Secondly, the multinationalization and regionalization of peace operations will
likely worsen things by multiplying the factors of instability and war, by eliminating
any French governmental accountability, and by removing further from public view
and reach French involvement and role in the marginalization of africa.
To make this argument, I proceed in three steps. First, I locate French security
policy of the 1990s in global perspective. I outline the signiicant domestic and
international factors that brought a number of important changes in French military
cooperation. second, i examine two interconnected global phenomena that shaped
and inluenced French policy since the end of the Cold War. One is the conviction
that the “the West knows best” about how to achieve development in Africa. The
embrace of a neoliberal political as the only valid order had an important impact
on French policy. The other phenomenon was the so-called “expansion of security”
in both theory and practice. security has grown to encompass all aspects of our
societies. it is no longer about war alone, but also about the environment, immigration,
development, the economy, and so on. in the context of sub-saharan africa, the
result was the radicalization of the development discourse and the militarization
of policy options. in fact, underdevelopment itself became a source of insecurity
and instability. Consequently, military issues and solutions were prioritized and this
contributed to the de facto construction of a “stability barrier” between Civilization
and Barbarism. This analysis of global inluences is crucial for they have offered
France new opportunities to re-legitimize and restructure its security policy and right
of intervention in africa.
Third, in the next chapter, I will study the military philosophy (or doctrine)
that underpinned French security policy. the reasons are threefold. First, French
security policy is to an unusual degree guided by theory. second, it is taught to
African oficers in French military schools. Third, I want to question whether or
not the doctrine, much like the policy, is not a response to new threats alone, but a
self-fulilling prophecy. Lastly, I will elaborate on my demonstration by analyzing
the recamp concept.
Pressures for Change
the 1990s saw important generational changes. the deaths of Félix houphouëtBoigny in 1993, François Mitterrand in 1996, Jacques Foccart in 1997, and Togo’s
Gnassingbé Eyadéma in 2005 represented a signiicant changing of the guard. At
different times, these igures played a central role in the evolution of the exceptional
relationship from the 1960s to the 1990s. their deaths certainly had repercussions on
the balance of power between the “traditionalists” and the reformers.
the shifting international environment of the 1990s increased external pressures
on France to transform its african policy. the end of the cold war brought an era
of economic liberalization and political “democratization.” At the La Baule Francoafrican summit, on 20 June 1990, mitterrand stated, half-heartedly according to
Bolle, that French aid and cooperation would from then on depend upon democratic
Into the Twenty-First Century
75
reforms.1 the end of the cold war also brought an end to a crucial card which France
had been playing for years: France could no longer be the so-called honest broker
between the two competing superpowers. american hegemony was the context of a
new world order and governance without government the order of the day. moreover,
the united states was more than willing to intrude in France’s pré carré through its
dominance of the Bretton woods institutions. But more importantly, the accelerating
process of economic globalization which had in part diminished africa’s strategic
and economic signiicance led to a re-conceptualization of French involvement. For
some reformers, the beneits were either simply no longer there or worth the effort.
on the domestic front, France was also participating in the accelerated
construction of the european union of the early 1990s. economic constraints were
thus becoming an increasingly crucial issue. the overvalued cFa franc was raising
the costs of the budgetary support accorded to African states. Consequently, Prime
minister edouard Balladur announced in september 1993 the abidjan doctrine
(or Balladur doctrine). The doctrine aligned French aid policy with the neoliberal
approach of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The members of
the CFA franc zone were henceforth obliged to sign an accord with the World Bank
and the imF prior to receiving any French budgetary aid. coupled with the 50 per
cent devaluation of the cFa franc of 1994, the Balladur government was declaring to
African leaders that they were no longer “special” and that France would no longer
bail them out unquestioningly.
as well, changes and events in africa continued to increase pressures to revise the
policy. the debt crisis, the political instability, the multiplication and regionalization
of armed conlicts, economic failures – all coupled with the inability of African
states to come up with solutions, to contain the conlicts, and/or to maintain any
appearance of control – was bound to worry French oficials. Tied to African states
by defence and military agreements, France could end up (and has been) involved in
multiple conlicts it could not resolve.
1 Unlike many French scholars, I will not elaborate on the consequences of La Baule
because they can be encompassed within the more important changes of the 1990s. in other
words, the democracy criterion can be interpreted as part of the neoliberal reform “package.”
in any case, the criterion produced little except more tensions in many african countries as
long-time dictators were pressed to allow for the emergence of a multiparty system and to hold
elections. moreover, in many cases the transition toward democracy was only accomplished
by holding rigged elections, as the examples of lansana conté in Guinea (in power since
1984), Idriss Deby in Chad (since 1990), Gnassingbé Eyadéma in Togo (from 1967 until
his death in 2005), Omar Bongo in Gabon (since 1967), and the 2001-2002 Madagascan
crisis demonstrate. ever since mitterrand’s speech at la Baule, the French demand for
democratization was continually relaxed. even within the pages of the journal Défense
nationale we read that, except perhaps for mali and senegal, no French ex-colony really
moved toward democracy. in short, the 1990 speech at la Baule generated a compelling
logorrhea, but nothing concrete. See Bolle (2001); Chaigneau (2005).
76
France and the New Imperialism
Rwanda: the Turning Point
A key turning point was the French involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
in July, France mounted Opération Turquoise, dispatching its forces to the southwest of Rwanda to create a humanitarian “safe-zone.” However, Turquoise, an oldstyle large-scale military intervention, did not so much provide humanitarian relief
as exacerbate existing problems and generate new ones. It also did not make up for
the fact that French forces had been deeply involved with the genocidal government
since 1990 (see Chapter 7). The international and domestic criticisms of France’s role
in rwanda following the genocide helped to de-legitimize French security policy in
africa or, at the very least, the use of overt large-scale military intervention.
in 1995, alain Juppé was appointed prime minister by the newly elected
President Jacques Chirac. Like his predecessor Balladur, Juppé was a reformer who
had no extraordinary attachment to Africa and who opposed the workings of the
Franco-african complex. he wanted to normalize Franco-african relations, but his
suggestions were blocked by Chirac who after his election had brought back Jacques
Foccart at the head of the elysée’s african cell. only in 1997, with the election of
lionel Jospin as prime minister – and the death of Foccart – was this normalization
made possible. Jospin accomplished what Juppé could not: the abolition of the
ministry of cooperation. the mmc, which was dependent upon the ministry of
cooperation, became the dcmd which was merged with the political and security
affairs bureau of the ministry of Foreign affairs in 1999. the dcmd was created
under the authority of the assistant to the secretary-general and director of security
policy and security affairs.
all these transformations were happening amidst the aftermath of the rwandan
genocide, rebellions in the central african republic, and the crisis in Zaire.
French complicity in the genocide, although refuted at every oficial level to this
day, French participation in the ighting in the Central African Republic, and the
absolute loyalty and support given to the mobutu regime until 1997 even after
everyone had abandoned him, de-legitimized, both domestically and internationally,
the traditional instruments and rationale of French security policy (chafer 2002;
Marchal 1998). Furthermore, the Franco-African complex acquired an unwelcome
increasing visibility through a series of books and articles, and the revelations
of the parliamentary mission of information on France’s role in rwanda. public
awareness of these issues and of the corrupt practices of Franco-african relations
was also strengthened by a succession of legal investigations into the affairs of the
Franco-African informal networks. Signiicant igures came under judicial enquiry
and spent several nights in jail: former minister of cooperation michel roussin,
former Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua, son and former presidential adviser
on african affairs to president mitterrand, Jean-christophe mitterrand, and elf’s
director of inance, Alfred Sirven. The spotlight was also on the Franco-African
complex during a well-publicized and unsuccessful lawsuit for “offence to a foreign
Into the Twenty-First Century
77
head of state” brought against François-Xavier Verschave, the president of the Survie
association, by denis sassou nguesso, idriss déby, and omar Bongo.2
the changes and the newfound publicity of Franco-african dynamics led many
to argue that France was in the midst of trivializing its Franco-african relations.
according to this analysis, France had retreated from africa between 1997 and 2002,
and then went back after 2002 out of necessity to Côte d’Ivoire, but in a new form
(for instance: Banégas et al. 2007; Chaigneau 2001; Guérivière 2001; Lewin 2001;
Roussin 2001). Two elements contradict this interpretation. The irst is the number
of French military operations. As noted in Chapter 4 (see Table 4.2), between 1997
and 2002, France launched (before its intervention in Côte d’Ivoire) a total of 34
military interventions in africa, of which only eight were united nations operations,
suggesting a continuity in the policy of presence and intervention. the military
disengagement had more to do with French military restructuring than anything else
(see below). Second, this debate over whether or not France normalized its Francoafrican relations diverted attention from the Franco-african complex. as chafer
argues:
the réseaux have not disappeared and in some areas appear to be as active as ever, although
they are not necessarily associated with the pursuit of the interests of the state in the
same way as they were in the past. in fact, … they have fragmented, become ‘privatized’
and have transformed themselves into private ‘lobbies that pursue their own objectives,
whether or not these objectives implicate the state.’ they also continue to operate with the
connivance of France’s secret service agencies and the president’s africa cell, and have
been able to mobilize substantial inancial, diplomatic and military resources in support
of their objectives (Chafer 2002, 362; see also Hugeux 2007).
there was no rupture or disengagement per se, but changes and responses to various
crises that were later portrayed as strategy. the transformations of French security
policy in sub-saharan africa after 1995 were in accordance with a neoliberal
ideology that obscured and trivialized the new ways in which French hegemony was
practiced in the twenty-irst century. Globalization provided France with a valuable
new method to maintain and restructure its inluence and power.
The “New” Military Cooperation
the abolition of the ministry of cooperation was of strong symbolic value, but the
reforms were more political than administrative for, while the ministry disappeared,
the government retained a minister of cooperation. it also had more impact on
nonmilitary cooperation (development aid and so on) by promoting the liberal vision
of the international inancial institutions. It seems that the French Development
Agency beneited much from these reforms to the detriment, among others, of the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Meimon 2007). As for military cooperation, the changes
reinforced its purpose. the act was supposed to eliminate the incoherence of the
2 In his book, Noir Silence, Verschave had called the heads of states of murderers,
sanguinary killers, and thieves. An 1881 French press law punishes any published “offense à
chef d’État” (Verschave and Beccaria, 2001).
78
France and the New Imperialism
traditional policy, but the fundamental principles and strategy supporting it were
not called into question. It did, however, reinforce the idea of Africa as an object of
military/security importance.
the new dcmd was in charge of military assistance and cooperation with
foreign states. It was responsible for the execution of the administrative and inancial
management aspects of the amt accords, the management of French military
personnel posted on assignments related to the amt, all the logistical elements,
and the management of foreign trainees. dcmd was headed by a general, which reafirmed the strong link between the Ministry of Defence and the policy of military
cooperation, and also the institutionalization of the link with the Ministry of Foreign
affairs. no general had ever occupied such a crucial and strategic position within the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Elomari 2001, 40-50).
in terms of operations, four new elements to military cooperation should be
noted. First, there was a new emphasis put on internal security forces (police forces
and gendarmes). The oficial motives were to protect French citizens in Africa and to
reinforce the rule of law. the second element was an emphasis on the rule of law or
constitutional state. But this aspect was anything but transparent. it was sometimes
subject to an international effort, inanced by military cooperation budgets, or some
projects funded by the civilian cooperation budget. even the French ministry of the
interior was involved in this effort. third, after 1996 France developed its national
regional Vocation schools (Ecoles nationales à vocation régionale – ENVR). These
schools were in large part (and sometimes completely) inanced and supplied by the
French government. The objective was to move the training of African oficers from
France to local african schools. last, there was the concept of recamp which i
analyze in the next chapter.
an important change was the decline – even if somewhat timid – in the number
of French pre-positioned troops actually stationed in africa. in 1997, nearly 8,000
Table 5.1
French military forces in Africa
Cameroun (Aramis)
central african republic
chad
Côte d’Ivoire (Licorne/UNOCI)
Congo-Brazzaville (MONUC)
djibouti
Ethiopia/Eritrea (MINUEE)
Gabon
Gulf of Guinea (Corymbe)
senegal
MINURSO (Western Sahara)
UNMZIL (Liberia)
Total
2004
2005
200
1,000
4,000
20
3,000
1
700
220
1,100
2006
50
220
1,100
3,650
40
3,000
10
850
220
1,100
2007
50
400
1,100
3,550
40
2,900
10
850
250
1,130
215
1,000
4,500
25
3,000
1
800
220
1,150
25
2
10,938
10,241
10,240
10,280
Source: ministry of defence, <http://www.defense.gouv.fr>; accessed 13 June 2007.
79
Into the Twenty-First Century
troops were stationed in africa; this number declined to 6,159 in June 2000, and was
supposed to go down to 5,600 in 2002 (Elomari 2001, 12), but in fact rose to 6,284
(Ministry of Defence). However, it should be noted that exact numbers of French
soldiers in Africa is always dificult to determine; the number is usually much higher
because of various military operations and exercises that demand other forces. For
example, for 2004-07 the ministry of defence admitted that over 10,000 military
troops operated in Africa (see Table 5.1).
Table 5.2
Budget for military cooperation (in € millions)
technical cooperation,
personnel assistance (art. 10)
training of foreign
trainees (art. 20)
support to cooperation
projects: equipment,
services, and infrastructure
maintenance (art. 40)
support to military
‘coopérants’ (art. 50)
cooperation with regional
organisations (art. 60)
Total
2000
63,42
2001
62,43
2002
57,85
2003
55,82
2004
51,50
2005
50,80
24,83
23,97
22,10
21,1
22,50
23,10
26,80
22,76
22,03
15,18
18,26
18,11
-
0,66
1,22
1,22
1,10
1,10
-
-
0,30
0,18
0,15
0,40
93,51
93,51
115,05 109,82 103,51 93,51
Source: For 2000-2003: see Sénat (2002); for 2004-2005: see Assemblée nationale (2004a).
Likewise, the budget for military cooperation is dificult to assess properly (see
Table 5.2). The MMC was responsible for training, technical assistance, and arms
transfer before 1999. on 1 January 1999, the ministry of cooperation was abolished
and integrated within the ministry of Foreign affairs, after which French military
cooperation was managed by the dcmd. the analysis of dcmd’s budget is
complicated by three factors. First, on the ground the DCMD works closely with
the ministry of defence. therefore, the total budget for military cooperation seems
impossible to calculate because the ministry of defence does not differentiate its
cooperation mission from its other traditional missions. in fact, the French national
Assembly admitted that statistically speaking, the role of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs (and thus the DCMD) in military cooperation seemed symbolic. The French
army is mainly responsible for developing and executing policy (assemblée
nationale 2004a). The general tendency of the DCMD’s budget has been to decline
since 1999, but it seems almost impossible to verify whether or not the overall budget
(DCMD plus Defence) for military cooperation is decreasing.
80
France and the New Imperialism
Second, the numbers for the DCMD are not broken down by region or country.
France extended military cooperation in the 1990s to the middle east,3 south east
asia,4 and eastern europe.5 Furthermore, the numbers are amalgamated in vague
and large categories that do not refer to the speciic programs that are prioritized.
third, different sources sometimes give different numbers. the variations are never
gigantic, but they can vary from year to year and between the ministries of defence,
Foreign affairs, and the senate or national assembly. this is especially true with
arms transfers and equipment donations.
article 10 of the budget corresponds to the pay of the military coopérants posted
abroad for an average of two years on temporary assignments from the ministry of
defence. it does not include the salary and costs of the pre-positioned forces. the role
and number of coopérants are often ambiguous because it is dificult to differentiate
them from the role and numbers of personnel from the ministry of defence. even
more confusing is the fact that article 10 formally affords some leeway to the dcmd
to inance its other priorities whatever those may be (Assemblée nationale 2004a,
28). Oficially, there were around 900 coopérants in Africa in 1990 and that number
declined to 359 in 2004 (Assemblée nationale 2001 and 2004a). Moreover, the
coopérants had to compete with the 380 staff in the Ministry of Defence’s network
of defence attachés. the latter are under the authority of French ambassadors and are
the local leaders of the ministry of Foreign affairs military and defence cooperation
mission. the coopérants also sometimes had to compete with French military
oficers who were members of international and multilateral forces, and with the
pre-positioned forces. the coopérants were instructors, occupied positions with
allied staff headquarters, and managed logistical support. In the end however, they
were outnumbered by the French military, which was responsible for the operational
aspects of cooperation.
Article 20 was the budget allowed for the training of foreign military oficers and
police oficers (gendarmerie). Higher military education was given in France and
often lasted many years. specialized and technical training courses were also offered
to non-commissioned oficers. Most of the training was done at the same time as
French oficers. The number of trainees is signiicant and reinforces the “special”
relationship between France and its African allies (see Table 5.3). But starting in
1996, France moved its training to its specialized schools established in africa: the
ENVR. DCMD deined the training, assigned the instructors, and ensured the quality
of the instruction provided. there were sixteen of these schools in africa and one in
Romania, offering various specialties, including courses on peacekeeping.
The support for cooperation projects (article 40) is also misleading. Oficially,
the article inances the projects judged interesting and worthy by the local military
3 Saudi Arabia (1982), Lebanon (1985), Qatar (1994), United Arab Emirates (1995),
and Jordan (1995).
4 Cambodia (1993), Singapore (1998), Thailand (2000).
5 Hungary (1991), Bulgaria (1992), Estonia (1992), Poland (1992), Slovakia (1994),
Czech Republic (1997), and Romania (1998). These agreements became redundant when these
countries joined nato in the expansions of 1997 and 2004. France also signed agreements
with Turkey (2000) and Ukraine (1996).
81
Into the Twenty-First Century
Table 5.3
Number of trainees by African country, 1999-2004
1999
2000
2001
angola
27
21
23
Benin
81
99
91
Burkina Faso 66
107
114
Burundi
24
11
9
cameroon
75
90
106
car
43
55
51
chad
80
87
84
comoros
7
congo
26
35
46
djibouti
38
45
56
Equ. Guinea 5
10
9
eritrea
1
ethiopia
5
Gabon
81
95
118
Gambia
1
3
4
Ghana
1
3
Guinea
56
61
63
Guinea-Bissau
côte d’ivoire 102
152
131
Kenya
1
madagascar
80
78
77
malawi
3
4
2
mali
99
80
85
mauritania
49
2
morocco
102
142
161
Mozambique 1
2
niger
20
18
41
nigeria
6
19
senegal
103
117
119
tanzania
2
6
togo
128
91
83
tunisia
75
69
86
Zimbabwe
1
2
Total
1,381
1,483
1,588
Source: ministry of Foreign affairs, dcmd.
2002
18
122
173
9
141
49
79
2003
15
137
168
5
192
23
67
2004
9
148
188
14
202
39
83
82
85
3
2
2
147
2
4
57
2
183
4
99
4
109
1
159
2
84
18
184
6
138
71
6
2,045
92
41
7
76
54
4
12
104
2
38
5
90
1
11
45
96
1
73
1
81
57
122
146
7
109
1
125
56
112
85
5
200
1
109
49
103
11
227
6
142
55
1,783
2,069
cooperation oficer or by the DCMD in Paris. In other words, it pays for anything
that can fall under the labels of equipment, services, logistics, and maintenance. In
the 1960s, this form of military cooperation was established to equip the armies
of the newly independent states with new equipment, supply, and spare parts. This
82
France and the New Imperialism
aspect of military cooperation is deceptive because the data are often lacking or
incomplete. the only source of information is parliamentary reports that are vague,
imprecise, and short on facts and igures. The available information often does not
indicate the precise nature of the equipment and assistance provided, often does
not differentiate between weapons sales and donations, and often does not specify
what country receives what (Elomari 2001). Furthermore, the available data do not
take into account licit and illicit small arms trade, and what is now given under the
APD. After the return of Charles Pasqua to the Ministry of the Interior (1993-95),
arms and equipment destined to so-called police security forces were donated from
the public funds counted as APD (Verschave 1999, 68). The rationale remained the
same however: to reinforce the rule of law. what is left untold is the obscure and
often nonexistent line between military and police African forces and the equipment
they use.
Finally, article 50 gives more autonomy to French coopérants to recruit local
assistants. Again, unless one takes it literally and without question, this article could
mean anything. Article 60 inances regional organizations, but in fact 75 per cent of
the funds go to Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
to frame the discussion below, three elements of French policy should be noted.
First, French military/security policy in Africa has traditionally been opaque. From
the moment of independence, the military and defence agreements excluded the
participation of civil society actors and anyone outside exclusive policy circles.
While the French government embraced a “new” transparency in matters of defence
and security in the late 1990s, in fact there is not much more transparency than in
the earlier period. The facts and igures are kept hidden behind undeined terms and
numbers that do not reveal anything concrete about the realities of “policy.” In fact,
the numbers too often seem to masquerade as proof of transparency and legitimate
policymaking. For example, as a colonel of the DCMD put it:
Defence does not have, for the time being, an identiied budget for military cooperation.
defence’s cooperation projects can be carried out by the pre-positioned forces (but these
forces do other things), by mission experts (instructors), or by deploying units (and in
this case it comes directly out of the proper Army/services’s budget). In short, the costs
of cooperation projects are sometimes not identiied (only the total annual cost of prepositioned forces is known) or disseminated in the budgets of the three armies and the
gendarmerie … the needle in the mound of hay. thus, the interest lies in having the dcmd
apart from Defence (and to have our own identiied budget) (Conidential interview, Paris,
November 2004).
in other words, the complete action, budget, and mission of military cooperation
are known only to a few. This opacity is legitimized by secret défense – national
security. Indeed, it masks much more, as I later demonstrate with my case studies.
second, from the very outset, French policy toward sub-saharan africa was
militarized. French power in africa revolved around the French security apparatus,
and French military forces and bases supported the whole ediice. This militarization
continued well into the early 2000s, reinforced by the link between development aid
and security policy (see Chapter 6). French policy was also militarized in the sense
that, in the end, it was the Etat-Major des Armées (EMA) which conceptualized the
Into the Twenty-First Century
83
policy and the ministry of defence which implemented it. as a general of the ema
explained:
There are divergent visions within the various administrations in charge of deining
foreign policy. Foreign affairs is somewhat lost regarding africa and promotes idealistic
visions that struggle to deine pragmatic options. It is thus the Ministry for the Defense
that is the driving force behind African policy because the thinking is more coherent there
(quoted in: Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 204).
As well, an oficer posted to the Ministry of Defence asserted:
Despite inlections, relations with Africa remain particular. Thus, as regards African policy,
the ‘military fact’ remains paramount because not only were the armies of the old colonies
built on the French model, but they also integrated French oficers within their structures.
Whether we like it or not, we must accept the fact that the Franco-African relation falls
within a military context. diplomats have often had a hard time accepting this reality.
there is a difference of perception with the Quai d’orsay because soldiers have a vision of
the ground and of african attitudes that diplomats do not have. the majority of diplomats
do not understand what the outburst of violence is. Generally speaking, diplomats are
irritated by the fact that soldiers remain omnipresent in French African policy (quoted in:
Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 204).
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others might periodically put up a ight to
“normalize” African affairs, but they seem unable to prevail against the formal and
informal apparatus of the Franco-african security complex. the end of cohabitation
with the reelection of Chirac and the “re-involvement” of France in Africa were no
coincidence and seemed to indicate the revival of the special relationship (albeit
transformed within the norms of global governance).
third, the French approach to world politics is deeply statist. that is, the state
is at the core of it all – to the detriment of governments, regimes, and civil society.
the primacy of the nation-state remains at the heart of the French worldview. as de
Gaulle put it: “Nothing is more important than the legitimacy, the institutions and
the functioning of the State” (quoted in: Gordon 1993, 9). According to this Gaullist
view, no other political formation can be as eficient as the nation-state because of
the cohesion and legitimacy which were bestowed upon it by history. of course, this
is a French cultural particularity that can shape and inluence French security policy.
But it can also be interpreted as symbolic power. it can be understood as a way to
authorize and legitimize French hegemony.
this focus on the state and security created a paradox in the post-cold war
period. The “new” military cooperation policy adapted to the neoliberal globalizing
and totalizing agendas. the combination of the two logics – the merging of security
and development –transformed the understanding in France of the peace and war
problématique. Underdevelopment became a security threat and security a sine qua
non condition of development. Both terms were used interchangeably almost as
synonyms. the paradox appears when in the security discourse the african state
is conceived as both the cause of, and the solution to, instability. The “weak,”
“failed,” and/or “corrupt” state must be strengthened by creating strong institutions
like the national army. At the same time, the neoliberal discourse on development
84
France and the New Imperialism
demands the gradual elimination of the state from civil society in the name of
liberalization and globalization. as we will see, in the minds of many government
oficials and scholars, the contradiction does not exist. The deep intertwining of
security and development is accepted as a truism. However, as the problématique is
conceptualized, the intrinsic contradiction cannot be revealed because what comes
out of the west is assumed to produce no adverse effects. the contradiction would
divulge, among other things, how the French and Western management of (or “aid”
to) sub-Saharan Africa is a fundamental factor of both underdevelopment and
insecurity. this is a thought which is automatically rejected prior to any intellectual
exercise of conceptualization and/or policymaking.
Global Governance and the Reproblematization of Security
French hegemony in sub-saharan africa was very much affected by global
conditions. recent changes can only be fully understood within the context of the
transformations of the global political economy. the forces of globalization not only
demanded changes, but also offered France new opportunities to re-legitimize its
policy of military cooperation. in short, as i argue here and in the next chapters,
French security policy was largely being adapted to, and integrated into, global
systems of liberal governance which seek to contain and radically transform African
societies.
Globalization is largely understood as a worldwide phenomenon of economic and
political convergence around neoliberal principles and the technological shrinking
of the globe. Globalization is often said to be indistinguishable from an irresistible
historical force of progress toward economic growth and political and cultural
emancipation. Because globalization is associated with an inevitable evolution
of human societies, it is assumed that to stay outside is tantamount to failure and
marginalization. hence, a universal legitimacy is attributed to the practices and
institutions of globalization and their neoliberal principles. neoliberal norms are now
shared by all western and many other governments and by international institutions
such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
the neoliberal ideology has thus come to be promoted around the globe as the proper
approach to development. neoliberalism supports global economic integration and
presents it as the best, the most natural and the universal path towards economic growth,
and therefore towards development, for all humanity. critics, on the other hand, see its
expansion across the globe as hegemonic (Thomas 2001, 167).
In many ways, the neoliberal discourse legitimizes global inequalities and delegitimizes alternative models of development. and the states that do not succeed
are simply assumed to have not applied correctly the neoliberal principles because
the adoption of the latter is believed to be a win-win strategy:
[D]espite 50 years of oficial development policies and despite huge advances in science
and technology, inequalities between and within states are growing, and almost a third of
humanity continues to live in abject poverty. Yet in the economically advanced countries,
Into the Twenty-First Century
85
and among a signiicant strata in developing countries, there is at best complacency about
these issues. This can be attributed to the widespread inluence of the neoliberal political
ideology (Thomas 2001, 164).
Or, as Dufield (1999, 23) puts it, the neoliberal “teleology dictates that the palliative
beneits of liberalization will eventually prevail … It is an ideology that can excuse
all manners of wrongs.”
As a consequence, the dialectical relationship between the creation of wealth and
poverty is eliminated from any mainstream analysis, discourse, and practice. From
the mainstream standpoint, global inequalities and poverty do not result from the
neoliberal economic order, but are said to be the outcome of a lack of capitalism.
neoliberal capitalism is rejected a priori as a cause of uneven development and
deepening poverty. As Wilkin argues, for the World Bank the causes of poverty are
in fact the symptoms. According to the World Bank, the causes of poverty are the
lack of income and assets to provide for basic needs, a sense of powerlessness in the
institutions of the state and society, and a vulnerability to, and an inability to deal
with, adverse economic shocks. Tautological explanations are offered with the a
priori assumption that capitalism does not produce underdevelopment, inequalities,
social divisions, and extreme poverty. As Wilkin (2002, 638-9) candidly puts it:
“The theory is ine; reality is the problem” (see also: W. Cox and Turenne-Sjolander
1997).
the hegemonic status of the neoliberal ideology is certainly the most important
aspect of it all: “What is most discouraging is the sense most people have that not
only is there no other alternative, but that this is the best system ever imagined, the
triumph of the middle-class ideal, a liberal and humane democracy – or, as Francis
Fukuyama called it, the end of history” (Said 2000). The main consequence leading
from this hegemonic understanding of the global order is the common assumption
and agreement on what constitutes a problem and how it is to be managed. as thomas
(2001, 170) argues: “a recurrent theme on the liberal agenda is the presentation of
a picture of a uniied global necessitating and legitimising a common response in
terms of management.” Poor people are indeed threatening to neoliberal institutions:
they riot, they migrate, they insist on justice and human dignity, they demand food
and resources, they suffer and spread diseases, and they sometimes destroy the
environment and seize much needed resources in order to survive (Wilkin 2002,
641). Of course, when the forces of globalization encounter other social systems, they
often generate such outcomes. Globalization promotes new and resilient forms of
inequality, division, and insecurity, but this paradox which undermines the professed
goals of neoliberal globalization is largely ignored (w. cox and turenne-sjolander
1997). For these reasons, we observe the emergence of a new security community
within systems of global governance which aims at containing the violence occurring
on the boundaries of civilization.
Dufield deines global liberal governance:
Global governance does not reside in a single powerful institution with a clear
international mandate, bureaucratic competence and recognised regulatory authority.
Such an organisation does not exist and is unlikely to do so … This is not to say, however,
that global governance does not have a reality or substance. it resides in such processes
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France and the New Imperialism
of decentralisation and burden sharing … Global governance has a reality not in a single
institution but in the networks and linkages that bring together different organisations,
interest groups and forms of authority in relation to speciic regulatory tasks. Moreover,
the dominance of the liberal paradigm means that in relation to such networks we should
talk more accurately of global liberal governance (Dufield 2001, 44).
the institutions and organizations of global governance include the Bretton woods
institutions, various nGos, western and other military establishments, multinational
corporations, regional organizations, and private security companies (Dufield
2001). One of the alleged objectives of global liberal governance is the eradication
of global poverty through the “unqualiied and comprehensive modernization and
‘transformation of traditional societies’” into the neoliberal and Western image
(Dillon and Reid 2000, 119). The systems of global governance are “to provide
weak states, failed states and corrupt states with the skills they need in order to
overcome their particular weaknesses” (Wilkin 2002, 638). However, as I noted
above, this hegemonic political project of global proportions has obvious effects
on the inequalities, poverty, disorder, and violence it seeks to eradicate. In other
words:
the radical and continuous transformation of societies that global liberal governance so
assiduously seeks must constitute a signiicant contribution to the very violence that it
equally also deplores … Much of the disorder that borders the domain of liberal peace is
clearly also a function, therefore – albeit a iercely contested function – of its very own
normative, political, economic, and military agendas, dynamics, and practices, and of the
reverberations these excite throughout the world. it seems increasingly to be a function,
speciically, of the way in which development is now ideologically embraced by all of the
diverse institutions of liberal peace as an unrelenting project of modernization (dillon and
Reid 2000, 118).
the unavoidable tension between the neoliberal project and the incessant
manifestation of disorder and violence has led to the re-conceptualization of both
development and security and to the modiication of their politics.
The Merging of Security and Development
in the post-cold war era, the mainstream security and development agendas merged
under the banner of global governance. development is essential for stability.
Security provides the necessary stability for development. As Dufield (1999,
25) puts it: “rather like the chicken and the egg, development and security have
become synonymous in oficial policy documents and are almost interchangeable.”
Consider the following statements from a French general: “Security is the sine
qua non condition for development. There is no development without security, but
conversely there is no security without development” (Conidential interview, Paris,
November 2004). From an oficial of the French Development Agency (AFD): “We
realized that, in any event, in order to eat we irst needed to be at peace; thus peace
is the priority” (Conidential interview, Paris, November 2004). From Pierre-André
wiltzer, minister of cooperation and Francophonie:
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The link between security and development seems to be an obvious fact … the richest
countries have understood that they could not let Africa sink into misery and disease, a
bit more every day. of course, it is their moral duty to do so, but also in their interests and
security (Wiltzer 2003, 7).
Elsewhere, he adds: “to maintain or restore peace and security is part of the
development effort” (Wiltzer 2004, 297). General Vaissière (2004, 170), Director of
Military and Defence Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated: “After all,
to say that without security there is no development is banal.” With this small sample
of examples, we can observe the liberal reproblematization of underdevelopment as
a security threat.
Dufield argues that the merging of development and security relects the
transformation of the capitalist world order from an inclusionary to an exclusionary
logic. during the cold war, or at the very least until the 1970s, alternative sociopolitical
models existed outside the west. Very basically, the north argued that the problem of
underdevelopment resided inside southern society. the south argued otherwise. the
source of the problem was endogenous: the north produced underdevelopment in order
to generate its own wealth. the persistence of colonial patterns of international trade
gave credibility to the demands of third world countries as well as some authority
to dependency theory (for instance: Amin 1988). However, the transformations in
the international political economy of the 1970s brought an end to third worldism
as viable discourse and alternative. underdevelopment was slowly being socially
constructed as a dangerous and indigenous in nature problem. in regard to the debate
between indigenous and endogenous causes of underdevelopment, Dufield argues
that both discourses contain certain truths. he further asserts:
It is in the nature of discourse, however, to rework discrete truths and partial relections
into connected and coherent world views, forms of knowledge that are simultaneously
expressions of power. In redeining underdevelopment as dangerous, from its position
of dominance liberal discourse has suppressed those aspects of third worldism and
international socialism that argued the existence of inequalities within the global system
and, importantly, that the way in which wealth is created has a direct bearing on the extent
and nature of poverty (Dufield 2001, 28).
In other words, the main “burden of responsibility” was being placed on Southern
agents. Development (or modernity) was and is exclusively Western and more
recently neoliberal. Not to adopt these “universal” norms and values is tantamount
to welcoming underdevelopment and instability. From then on, the south was no
more told what to do. it was expected to adopt willingly the agenda of neoliberal
globalization and global governance.
The reproblematization of security of the 1990s – or the so-called new framework
of security (see: Buzan 1991; Buzan et al. 1998) – is closely linked and intertwined
with the expansion of neoliberalism and the radicalization of development. the new
framework of security shares, as Dufield argues, the same space as the development
discourse. the new wars are perceived as surging from a developmental malaise
from which comes no clear threat but an ever-present danger. From this perspective,
the politics of global liberal governance hides its martial characteristics. as dillon
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France and the New Imperialism
and reid argue, security policy becomes the administration and the production of
(neoliberal) life rather than the traditional threat of death (Dillon and Reid 2001).
the association of security with a development discourse trivializes the practice of
violence because security is transformed into ethical politics or a new humanitarianism
that seeks to produce stronger and wealthier states and societies, and at bringing
modernity to developing countries. it becomes the new civilizing mission.
The Liberal Way of War
“If there is a changing and evolving liberal way of peace,” Dillon and Reid (2001,
44) argue, “there is certainly also a changing and evolving liberal way of war.” The
reproblematization of security had two crucial consequences. The irst was in how
the new wars and the violence on the boundaries of liberal peace – on the borders
between the north and south, between civilization and barbarism – coupled with the
hegemonic neoliberal model of development transformed (or sometimes conirmed)
the French and western understanding of war and peace. the claims at the core of
this reproblematization “serve to reinforce global hierarchies of social power and
privilege” (Wilkin 2002, 633) by afirming that the causes of the new wars – of
today’s African armed conlicts – are exclusively indigenous. The second effect was
in how the practice of security of western governments changed accordingly.
Dillon and Reid (2001, 45) argue that “the liberal way of war must be understood
in terms of the relations of power that characterize liberal regimes of government; how
they work at both the national and international levels and, indeed, how they operate
so as to problematize security, peace and war in particular ways.” In other words,
the importance of armed conlict is acknowledged, but in a manner that plays down
its full importance. war is largely understood in such a way as to never contradict
and/or undermine the case for globalization and its systems of global governance.
As a developmental malaise, conlict becomes an effectively irrational phenomenon
with indigenous sources. This marks a reproblematization of fear and danger where
friend and enemy are not always distinguishable. scarcity, crime, overpopulation,
tribalism, and disease threaten the very fabric of modern society. according to dillon
and reid, the traditional threat analysis of pre-formed entities is superseded by an
idea of dangerousness; an idea of the level of behavioural threatening capacities
that the individual or the collective possess. the threats are potentially everywhere,
anywhere, and in everyone and anyone. complex emergencies might not be able to
overthrow or match the overall power of the political order, but they might attack
its weak speciicities. In short, “security goes hyperbolic, since any assemblage,
organization or population, however differentiated and speciied, may become
acerbic” (Dillon and Reid 2001, 57).
There are two distinct narratives of conventional wisdom that seek to explain the
causes of conlict on the borders of civilization, but that also relect the positions and
agendas of diverse agents and networks. One might be called the “new barbarism.”
It is predisposed to highlight a revised “racism.” The roots of conlict are found in
tribalism and ethnicity or in some primordial and/or irrational cultural and ethnic
traits. traditional societies – that is pre-modern – are inclined to unleash their anarchic
and destructive power because they have not yet learned or evolved to channel their
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social feelings and antagonisms through stable and eficient institutions. This view,
while failing to form consensus, is very inluential especially in regard to African
conlicts. Kaplan symbolizes and popularized this thesis:
west africa is becoming the symbol of worldwide demographic, environmental, and
societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real ‘strategic’ danger …
throughout west africa and much of the underdeveloped world: the withering away of
central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of
disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war … [In Africa] the threat is more elemental:
nature unchecked [emphasis in original] (Kaplan 2000, 7, 18).
The media certainly often portrays African conlicts as out of control, as irrational
slaughter, and as beyond rational explanation. the new barbarism discourse is also
very inluential in some political, military, and academic circles.
new barbarism articulates with racial discourse and xenophobic tendencies in the west.
its simple messages produce a powerful narrative that occupies an important place in
the popular media and in public anxieties. it also has a strong base among those political
actors and social groups that favour international isolationism, tough border controls,
stringent rules on migration and asylum, and a major reduction, if not the elimination, of
development aid (Dufield 2001, 113).
Echoes of new barbarism can deinitely be found in Huntington’s thesis of clashes of
civilizations (see Chapter 3).
the second narrative is the development position – the developmental malaise
– that explains conlict “in the modalities of underdevelopment and its associated
pathologies of crime and terrorism” (Dufield 2001, 114). Dufield calls it the
liberal alternative to the new barbarism. Unlike the latter, underdevelopment, while
dangerous, is susceptible to solutions. with the right policies, development can be
achieved and thus crime, terrorism, and many sources of insecurity eliminated.
However, as Dufield argues, the new barbarism and the development position exist
in an “uneasy relation.” In the systems of global governance, he argues that the latter
is dominant even though its position is far from secure. despite that, both positions
share basic assumptions about the nature of the problem. Both understand cultural
differences and identity as fundamental elements in how social life is structured. no
one culture can be superior, but their differences have various implications. For the
new barbarism, those differences are strong sources of violence and conlict while
for the development position cultural diversity is not necessarily problematic. it can
indeed be invigorating and emancipating (Dufield 2001, 109-21).6
the two positions disagree on the inevitability of violence, but they agree that
development reduces violence and conlict. The relationship between conlict and
development thus becomes an obvious and unexceptional truism.
The association of conlict with underdevelopment has become the main site of consensus
and cohesion among the different development and security networks that liberal peace
6 on the western assumptions that feed into our understanding and practice of global
politics, see Bowden (2004); Grovogui (2001); Krishna (2001).
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France and the New Imperialism
brings together. in providing a bugle call for collective mobilisation it plays a symbolic
rather than an informational role. In this respect, brief or supericial views on the causes
of conlict do not relect a policy failure. They have to be brief, general in application and
easy to understand and communicate (Dufield 2001, 116).
Put another way: “Explaining the causes of conlict is both a way of knowing and,
simultaneously, a means by which global liberal governance mobilises the strategic
networks of state and non-state actor that police its borders” (Dufield 2001, 109).
Dufield might have been right about the dominance of the development position
when he wrote his book. Since the attacks of 11 September 2001, however, it would
seem that the balance has shifted to the new barbarism (Willett 2005).
in any case, the two positions always retained a common fundamental base. they
are both grounded in the dualisms of modernity-tradition and of civilised-uncivilised.
they both assume a linear evolution toward progress and emancipation on whose
scale the North is clearly “ahead” of the South. This a priori assumption captures the
ideological underpinnings of the common wisdom on the causes of conlict. More
importantly, this evolutionary logic points to new forms of military intervention,
coordination, and power projection. as dillon and reid argue:
Their [the institutions of global governance] accounts of the sources of disorder are varied
and conlicting, yet they also offer new rationales for Western armed forces and their
allied arms economies. The outcome can be quite contradictory: military attachés can
be committed both to selling arms and to selling ‘security reform’ measures designed to
introduce western-style policing, the rule of law, and demilitarization … in the process,
the liberal peace of global governance exposes its allied face of humanitarian war (dillon
and Reid 2000, 123).
the military becomes the agent of progress, development, and stability. it becomes
mediator, paciier, and preacher of the Western gospel of market democracy and
good governance. the merging of security and development transforms the military,
in part at least, into a noble promoter of neoliberal global governance.
Integrated within systems of global governance, a particular kind of military
intervention is created that promotes “the very changes and unintended outcomes
that it then serially reproblematizes in terms of policy failures” (Dillon and Reid
2000, 133). In other words, rather than question neoliberalism and the French and
western use of force, both are understood exclusively in terms of contributing to
conlict resolution, stability, and development. Because conlict and instability are
perceived as a consequence of developmental malaise and/or barbarism, development
and crisis management will eventually solve african problems. this type of analysis
has little to say about the adverse effects of globalization, past and current French
military interventions, and the colonial legacy.
The “New” Military Cooperation Revisited
In short, and as the next chapter will emphasize, France’s “right” of intervention was,
and is continuously redeined and restructured under the auspices of globalization
and global governance, and in the process French hegemony is re-authorized and re-
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91
legitimized. The oficial version is that French security policy in sub-Saharan Africa
evolved after 1995. as the argument goes, the military disengagement (1995-6 to
2001-2) was dictated by the geostrategic transformations brought by the end of the
Cold War. Simply put, Africa lost most of its strategic signiicance. Also, the “new”
African environment called into question French military interventionism. African
states expressed the desire to provide themselves with independent military forces.
lastly, France itself realized the errors of the past and thus brought its old-style
large-scale military intervention to an end. Consequently, France adopted a doctrine
of “ni ingérence, ni indifférence” (no meddling, no indifference). From the gendarme
of africa, France became a partner whose policy followed three new principles:
1) support the African initiative to build independent indigenous armed forces in
Africa; 2) limit bilateral military intervention to the protection of French citizens;
and 3) switch from a bilateral to a multilateral approach to military intervention.
amidst all this, recamp was born (for example: Glaser and smith 2005; pascallon
2004).
In 2002, the year of Chirac’s re-election, the so-called doctrine of “ni ingérence,
ni indifférence” changed to “accompagner sans dicter” (the will to accompany
without dictating). Chirac had announced that France had to once again pursue an
active policy of intervention (assuming it was “inactive” between 1995 and 2002),
but one that would not lead to the creation of new protectorates. in order to do so,
the “new” doctrine supporting military cooperation and intervention was wrapped
in a blanket of regionalism and multilateralism. Explicitly, the “new” French policy
was henceforth re-legitimized because it wore the colours of the united nations, the
european union, or some other multinational organization.
The a priori assumption of the “new” military cooperation was that it was
benevolent and progressive. things, it was said, had changed for the better. there
were supposedly no more systems of control, domination, and subordination. the
purge of the old system was complete: everything was now designed to develop
the partner’s capabilities to be independent. As another high-ranking oficer of the
dcmd put it:
Q. – several critics describe military cooperation as colonial or neocolonial. would you
care to comment?
A. – We do not work in this spirit. The interdependences between France and its traditional
African partners still exist, but they are of another kind. We do not retain control. We
divided by two the number of coopérants in the last ten years, ive years. Whereas the
people we send now are there to supervise projects. these projects are agreements drafted
between African countries and us, with a speciic number of stages and objectives laid
down beforehand in order to bring the part under development to develop. in fact, it is
not a pursuit for control. it is the pursuit for the autonomy of the partner in the long term.
normally, at the end of the project, we withdraw our hands and the house of cards does not
fall. and if it falls, it is the partner that did not do what was necessary to succeed. if that is
the case, we must question our action to know if it is interesting to continue.
Q. – Is the inal objective to develop stable and functional national African armies?
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France and the New Imperialism
A. – Yes, but not so that they can ight each other. We are there so that they have a
political role adapted to a future model of democracy that they could adopt one day. all
the training that we give out is the occasion to preach the word [la bonne parole] - you
know, the French like to profess the word [laughter]. Thus, it is also a work of education
of the personnel: about the respect of the rule of law, the workings of democracy, and the
political role of the military apparatus. We try to educate the future oficers, the elites, so
that there is a maximum number of our democratic ideas that we have in common that are
passed on (Conidential interview, Paris, November 2004).
put bluntly, the civilized is civilizing the uncivilized and modernizing its traditional
ways. african problems are exclusively indigenous. if they succeed, France is
generous and heroic. if they fail, they are failures (for other examples: see pascallon
2004).
The only question that remains is whether France (with its other Western allies)
will succeed in transforming sub-saharan societies or if France will construct a new
“stability barrier” to contain and quarantine the effects of global inequalities and
poverty in order to secure the borders of civilization. it seems that these are and
will continue to be considered the only two policy options practicable unless France
radically calls into question its basic assumptions about conlict and development.
However, such a questioning is unlikely due to the structures and relations of
power that are sustained, legitimized, and reproduced largely by such assumptions.
assumptions that are not so much made to better understand, but to serve the
institutional needs and the will to power of various social forces.
chapter 6
Making (In)Security: The Use
of Force to master Violence
French direct and indirect military intervention in sub-saharan africa was expected
to promote stability, security, and order.1 The “new” military cooperation was also
supposed to bring development and prosperity. however, after over 40 years of
French military activity in sub-saharan africa, there was little to show in terms
of constructive accomplishment. the majority of african armies remained in poor
shape; military and violent conlicts continued to proliferate; many states continued
to be described as “collapsed,” “failed,” or “corrupt”; and the majority of Africans
continued to live in an abject state of poverty. even the country commonly described
as an “economic miracle”, Côte d’Ivoire, collapsed into civil war. The French military
was unable to secure or to promote the development of France’s old colonies. in
short, it failed its own self-appointed minimal mission of forming independent
African militaries. Or has it failed in its formal purpose?
in over 40 years since decolonization, too little has changed for too many africans,
not enough in terms of economic, political, and/or cultural development. should
we conclude that this amounts to policy failure? Is French military cooperation
maladapted, misconceived, and/or in need of adjustment? If even the primary and
constant objective – forming and consolidating the armies of african states – was
never attained, should the French government abandon africa or should it inject more
money into a so-called “reformed” military cooperation? Perhaps these questions are
unfair since the French state does not have the resources to accomplish all of its
goals or to assist and inance all projects. Or perhaps French military cooperation
in sub-saharan africa was successful. maybe the problem has not been properly
deined and its very terms suspect.
the military terms, concepts, and doctrines produced by the French military are
commonly understood as texts that explicate and tell us something about the nature
of conlict, violence, and intervention. In this chapter, however, I interpret them as
a form of discourse that legitimizes and authorizes the practice of French military
intervention and cooperation. That is, they also generate the very “realities” they
claim to describe. these texts, it can be argued, produce a discourse which opens
spaces for legitimate intervention and new forms of domination, subordination,
power projection, control, and dependency. they are as much strategies of power and
deterrence as objective representations of reality. the way problems and solutions
are understood and established are continuously transformed so as to sustain the
legitimacy of French military intervention – of the practice and discourse of French
1
An earlier and shorter version of this chapter was published in Charbonneau (2006).
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France and the New Imperialism
hegemony. this is not to argue that the concepts and programs the French military
construes are erroneous or that they are consciously misleading (although they might
be). All discourses contain some truth, but they all also forms of knowledge that
relect relations of power. The ways in which conlict, violence, and intervention are
conceived and understood by the French military will always omit certain “truths”
or “facts” that could undermine the status quo and/or its own power as an institution.
In short, it is very unlikely that the French military will undermine its own position
or the vision of divisions that it defends.
the very terms of the problem become altogether different. in this chapter, i
argue that the problem becomes the rise of new mechanisms of “normalization”
– of “naturalization” of social realities – through which we observe the construction
of new “objective” realities. I argued that power does not reside in some obscure
and abstract unitary state, but mostly in various forces and networks of social
forces. French military intervention – or cooperation – is linked to numerous other
mechanisms that seem distinct from each other, but they all tend to normalize and
naturalize the dominant political order. that is, French military policy in subSaharan Africa does not respond and react to conlict and violence alone. It feeds on
them for its legitimacy and authority and thus it participates in the maintenance of a
speciic vision of divisions. Hence, as a constitutive component of the social realities
it pretends to describe, French “policy” can produce insecurity, directly or indirectly,
by sustaining, defending, and redeining social conditions that can cause, contribute,
and exacerbate conlict and violence. The symbolic power of the military to create
“realities” should not be underestimated:
military readiness, national missile defense, and preparation against weapons of mass
destruction, all platform highlights on National Security Night, [are] not facts to be
disputed; they are in their own right simulations to deter enemies abroad and political
opponents at home who might try to offer an alternative reality to international relations.
‘this is how simulation appears’, says Baudrillard, ‘a strategy of the real, of the neoreal
and the hyperreal that everywhere is the double of a strategy of deterrence’ (der derian
2001, 156).
der derian’s argument concerns the american military, but it applies to the French
military as well. i argue that the French doctrine of intervention and the program
designed to implement it – recamp – can be best understood as strategies of power
and deterrence that often simulate the new-ness of some sort of ethical and altruistic
military intervention whose theory is simply being adapted to a changing global
environment.
the doctrine of mastery of violence (maîtrise de la violence) contrasts the
legitimate use of force of democratic governments with the anarchic use of violence
by undetermined foes and barbarians. By separating the concepts of force and
violence, the doctrine a priori legitimizes any given military intervention in the
name of stopping irrational conlict and violence. An examination of the doctrine
demonstrates how such conceptualization created both problems and solutions,
and thus informed the policymaking process. RECAMP became a concept whose
programs simulated legitimacy and authority. In theory, it sounded like a genuine
effort to eliminate past abuses. in practice, however, it did nothing of the sort. on
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
95
the contrary: it obscured the “traditional” practices of bilateral military cooperation
while giving an overall new legitimacy to French military intervention and forces
stationed in africa. in short, the French military apparatus in sub-saharan africa
and its practices were re-authorized. Past abuses, “errors”, blunders, and so-called
paradoxes are being eliminated from the practice of French military intervention. or
so the argument goes.
Strategies of Prevention, Projection, and Protection
Military doctrine can be deined as “a set of beliefs about the nature of war and
the keys to success on the battleield” (Snyder 1984, 27). It refers to the classical
principles and rules of war: objectives, manoeuvres, the economy of force, the
principle of mass, the importance of initiative, and the unity of command. in short,
military doctrine is “a body of theory which describes the environment within which
the armed forces must operate and prescribes the methods and circumstances of their
employment” (Viotti 1974, 190). But beyond this common understanding, military
doctrine is also an act of authority which asserts the role of doctrinarians and their
predictive ability. the doctrinal discourse produces a set of norms and principles that
organizes the management and the use of legitimate violence.
to examine French military doctrine is to analyze not so much how problems
and solutions are created, but rather how insecurity and security are construed. in the
African context, the modus operandi of mastering the violence relects and informs
a very speciic understanding of conlict, force, and violence which mirrors existing
relations of power. Consequently, the doctrine forms, informs, relects, and most
importantly legitimizes and authorizes French military policy. it creates the terms of
the discourse for the legitimate use of force.
The consequences are crucial. First, the creation of a theoretical divide
between legitimate force and irrational violence gives rise to erroneous accounts
of African conlicts. African wars and conlicts become irrational and barbaric. The
“legitimate” use of force becomes necessary to impose and maintain peace. it gives
the military a virtual carte blanche, limited only by given and so-called (militarized)
democratic ethical values. second, force is not used to wage war, but to manage
crises and to master acts of irrational violence in order to preserve order. despite
claims to neutrality and/or impartiality, the military becomes deeply involved in the
construction and/or the maintenance of the (neoliberal) political order.
The “New” Environment and Strategic Transformations
according to the doctrinal centre on the use of Force (Centre de doctrine d’emploi
des forces – CDEF),2 the end of the cold war forced a deep and irreversible
transformation of the French concepts of defence and security. the 1994 Livre blanc
sur la défense (white paper) illustrated the fundamental changes in both the purpose
2 cdeF is attached directly to the Chef d’état-major de l’armée de terre (CEMAT). Its
role is to coordinate the research, elaboration, and diffusion of the army’s doctrine.
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France and the New Imperialism
and the actual use of the military instrument. according to the white paper, the army
was no longer obligated to ight lethal battles in which the total annihilation of the
enemy was the key objective. The army had to now adapt to various types of conlict
and situations in which it had to always seek the appropriate method that corresponded
to the level of violence. according to the white paper, the end of the bipolar order
multiplied the numbers of potential zones of conlict; increased the use of violence
as a mean to an end; blurred the boundary between war and crisis; and ampliied the
appetite for power of diverse despots. in such a situation, the distinction between
conventional and non-conventional conlict became almost meaningless. Therefore,
the French army had to adapt. It had to take into consideration all types of conlict
in which a variety of logics – political, economic, diplomatic, social, ethnic, and
religious – confronted each other. Such conlicts demanded a new strategy, doctrine,
and force posture. in addition, their resolution was often found within an inter-allied
or multinational framework that necessitated lexibility in order to counteract the
unpredictability and reversibility of such crises.3
Furthermore, the French military considered that, coupled with this strategic
change, it needed to take into account an equivalent ethical change. The ethical
consideration in, and justiication for, the use of force occupies an unprecedented
place in French military policy. French military interventions are now framed within
an ethical system of values that must be respected and defended. the assumption
is that in most conlict zones, human rights, dignity, and life are not considered as
“sacred values.” The conlicts of the 1990s exempliied, from this perspective, a
contempt and disregard for human life which are mostly apparent in erratic decisionmaking processes. In short, this dual change – strategic and ethical – has redeined
the guides to military action. the defence of the national interest remains at the
forefront, but it is not exclusive anymore (Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 221-5).4
Prevention, Projection, and Protection
French military strategy identiies four strategic functions that the military must
master: dissuasion (which, because it is centered on nuclear weapons, does not apply
to Africa and so does not concern us here), prevention, projection, and protection.
according to ela, the major problem facing France in sub-saharan africa is not
3 one could cite almost any French army or cdeF document from 1994 on, for
the consensus on the transformations brought on by the end of the cold war is both solid
and coherent. reading the documentary record, it is as if everyone is always paraphrasing
everyone else. certainly it appears as though everyone uncritically accepts the analysis of the
1994 White Paper. All of the interviews I conducted with French oficials corroborated this.
see for example the cdeF’s website, <http://www.cdef.terre.defense.gouv.fr>; the ministry
of Defence’s website <http://www.defense.gouv.fr>; Balladur and Léotard (1994); BagayokoPenone, (2003, 219-227); CDEF (2007).
4 of course, the defence of something as subjective as values can legitimize and
authorize any given intervention. more importantly however, as i will argue later, the ways
in which these “values” are promoted and conceptualized relect and reify existing relations
of power. they also offer a powerful and compelling argument for the transformation of socalled traditional societies.
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
97
how to exploit and use african resources or even how to utilize the continent as a
platform for French prestige. the crucial current problem is to uphold political and
social stability and order. the fundamental objectives of French military strategy are
to maintain the internal security of France’s african allies, because without stability
and favourable conditions for development, sub-saharan africa cannot economically
and military support France (Ela 2000).5 as a result, in order to maximize its
ambitious commitments and objectives with limited means, France devised for itself
the military roles of prevention, projection, and protection.
The central theme underpinning the emerging concepts deining the exercise of French
conventional power is the emphasis on dealing with threats to French interests and to
regional and international stability by the use of the lowest level of military force
possible. as the notion of prévention makes clear, France prefers to tackle situations or
conlicts before they escalate, on the basis that a modicum of involvement today may save
considerably riskier commitments tomorrow. If this seems an oversimpliied observation,
it is not. The disposition to take early action is premised on knowledge and understanding
of the potentially escalating situation and on the capability and willingness to act promptly,
if necessary in advance of broader international consensus (S. Gregory 2000, 445).
Subsequently, the French military strategic functions of prevention, projection,
and protection reveal the adaptation of conventional forces to a willingness to
use force outside of europe. the emphasis is on the army and direct contact with
belligerents.
the function of prevention seeks to avoid the emergence of new conlicts and to
anticipate the reappearance of a major threat in europe. For the army, it is a necessary
response to the unstable nature of the international environment (Bagayoko-Penone
2003, 228). In sub-Saharan Africa, the function of prevention rests upon two central
pillars: intelligence gathering and pre-positioned forces (and thus on cooperation and
defence agreements). Pre-positioned bases and their forces participate in intelligence
gathering, but more importantly they have a deterrent role: pre-positioned forces
are essentially stationed around strategic airports, ports, and other communication
routes. they actively contribute in preventing instability by increasing the chances
for success in operations of mastery of violence, by providing permanent sources
of information, and by offering rapid intervention forces that can either support
national armed forces or French projection forces stationed in France. therefore,
the credibility of the prevention function is guaranteed by the projection function
(Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 228; S. Gregory 2000, 445-7; CDES 2003a).
the function of projection comprises the ensemble of French military intervention
abroad. It also underlines the fact that the so-called French military “retreat” from
sub-saharan africa can be explained by the development of projection capabilities;
by the reorganization of the armed forces.
the professionalization of the armed forces permits an increasing number of French
troops on different missions overseas – (‘missions de présence’ in africa, ‘missions
5 Interestingly, Ela is an oficer in the Cameroonian army who graduated from the
French military school of Saint-Cyr-Coëtquidan.
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France and the New Imperialism
de paix’ with the united nations, and ‘missions de souveraineté’ in France’s overseas
territorial possessions, the Départements et Territoires d’Outre Mer (DOM-TOMs) – to
be rotated smoothly between operations, thus eroding the long-standing barriers between
these deployments and paving the way for increased effectiveness. the trends in French
military activity in africa … dovetail with the increasingly robust rules of engagement
of French forces on un deployments and the boosting of projectable forces in the domtoms and point to increased synergies among the three. these are intended to allow
France to extend the kind of cross-deployments which have recently been possible, for
example in Operations Oryx and Turquoise (S. Gregory 2000, 446).
the functions of prevention and projection can hardly be separated in practice.
French pre-positioned forces and bases were empowered by these changes because,
as S. Gregory (2000, 446) argues, pre-positioning enhanced the permanent French
military infrastructure outside Europe in order “to facilitate interactions between
French forces deployed overseas and to allow the projection of more substantive
forces, if necessary either from France itself or to better support for multi-national
operations.”
after the cold war, France did not depend on its nuclear arsenal to safeguard
and to promote French prestige and grandeur. the French military apparatus was
reformed in order to strengthen a new focus on force projection and military
intervention abroad. after 1996, the year of professionalization and reform, the army
had to be prepared to deploy 50,000 soldiers to a major theatre of war abroad under
the aegis of the north atlantic treaty, or 30,000 to a theatre for a full year (with
partial relief), as well as another 5,000 to another theatre (Bagayoko-Penone 2003,
230; Bloch 2000, 39). Moreover, in 1999, the Rapid Reaction Force (Force d’action
rapide – FAR) and the Force of Operation (Force de manoeuvre) were abolished.
all of the army’s operational elements were integrated under the French land Force
command and the land logistic command. projection was the privileged function.
accordingly, the army was structured around the principle of modularité (modularity
in the sense of module):
the capability to act in a crisis or a war environment implies the capability to build up a
force very well itted to the context of each intervention [so as] to achieve the expected
end state. Thus, depending on the general framework of the envisaged operation, of the
nature of the crisis and of the required courses of action, we have to build up the force
and the necessary major units from a common and useful pool of available capabilities
within the land action force … the permanent organization of the French land Force
Command (CFAT) and of the Land Logistic Command (CFLT) is matching this goal,
making possible any type of coniguration with a maximum of lexibility. It favors the
gathering of capabilities by levels and skills for training purposes [original translation by
CDES] (CDES 2003b, 15).
the transformation is fundamental. French units were no longer to be engaged
according to their given capabilities. the major unit was to be tailored according to
the speciic needs and nature of both the intervention and the crisis (Bloch 2000).
Bagayoko-Penone (2003) argues that the reorganization of the French military
system is reminiscent of the philosophy and experience of interventions in africa.
She identiies three key characteristics that borrow from “traditional” military
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
99
intervention in africa. First, the principle of modularity was developed at least
30 years ago. the concept never contributed to the cold war strategy, but it was
one of the foundations to the creation of the Far. the Far thus perpetuated the
French tradition of the expeditionary force and operations of the pre-1960s and the
post-decolonization period. second, the logic of projection reiterated the logic and
desire of prestige and grandeur. Projection seeks to rapidly deploy properly trained,
professional, and combat-ready troops around the globe. theoretically, the model for
intervention in africa extended to include every centre of crisis in the international
system.
Finally, Bagayoko-Penone argues that it is possible to link the new structures of
the French army – which are based on its professionalization – to the ways in which
interventions in africa were conceived after decolonization. professionalization
seemed to compensate a quantitative loss with a qualitative improvement in
projection forces. traditionally, military intervention in africa was the domain of
professional and elite troops (troupes de marine, Foreign legion, paratroopers,
fusiliers). Hence, to abolish conscription can be interpreted as the reinforcement
of projection capabilities for intervention outside Europe (Bagayoko-Penone 2003,
230-1).
a comprehensive examination of the function of protection is outside the
purview of this book. However, it remains important to explore it even if briely
because it seems to participate in the (physical) marginalization and containment
of sub-saharan africa. the function of protection concerns exclusively territorial
France and the French population. in the absence of a direct military threat to French
borders and state, protection refers more to internal security missions rather than
military ones. it is conceived, however, as essential to the functions of dissuasion,
prevention, and projection. protection guarantees that France can become involved
in international crisis management without fear of retaliation.
Furthermore, it must be considered as more than territorial defence. the function
includes the defence or security of the French social order (sécurité sociétale).
Territorial France per se faces no serious threat or danger. Security is thus deined
as the protection of the French life-style, values, prosperity, and quality of life.
France becomes strongly concerned by inlux of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa.
the assumption is that France must securitize, stabilize, and contain the states
from which migrants come from in order to avoid a massive exodus to France.
thus, while the French army is not directly involved with immigration policy, it
contributes indirectly to the function of protection through its military cooperation
missions to train, form, and equip the armed and security forces of African states
that are necessary to maintain order and stability. that is, the French army acts preemptively.6
to enhance the infrastructure of French global military presence (airbases, ports,
communications, and so on), to continue with the process of professionalization,
6 the Gendarmerie is obviously involved within France, but also in africa. the French
armed forces (mainly the air force and the navy) also participate in the surveillance missions
to limit clandestine immigration (Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 232-5). On the securitization and
militarization of immigration and immigration policy, see Bigo (1998 and 2000).
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France and the New Imperialism
and to solidify projection capabilities, substantial resources were made available
by the Loi de programmation militaire 2003-2008. the process toward full
professionalization was consolidated and the function of projection was reinforced.
the continuing transformation of the French military apparatus concentrates on four
pillars:
1. command, intelligence, and situation assessment capabilities enhancement. this
aspect is developed with the european union in mind. it includes strategic, operational,
and tactical command structures that must be “multinationalizable” and high-tech imaging
intelligence gathering through the use of drones (HALE, MALE, and MCMM programs)
and high-resolution satellites (Hélius program). It also comprises a contribution to the
Galileo system and to digital warfare.
2. The reduction of the capacity deicit in terms of projection and mobility of the armed
forces. The objective is to acquire better strategic transport capabilities (future acquisition
of Airbus A310, A400M, and CASA 235) and naval projection capability (second aircraft
carrier and two vessels to carry an amphibious light armoured force of 1,400 men).
3. To continue to increase the number of elite troops and, through the acquisition of
specialized weaponry, their ability to penetrate deeply into enemy or hostile territory.
One objective is to maintain air and sea forces (second aircraft carrier group) and another
is to obtain the ability to strike anywhere and anyone at anytime from a great distance if
necessary: precision-guided cruise missiles, precise air-to-ground weapons, strong special
forces with their specialized helicopters (ten Cougar Mk2) and transmission devices.
4. the reinforcement of the instruments of protection which mostly concerns the
gendarmerie, but includes the nBc protection of French forces and the consolidation
of air and maritime surveillance systems (for instance: Girafe radars) (see Assemblée
nationale 2002).
the defence budgets of 2004 and 2005 seemed to follow the priorities of the Loi with
slight increases (2 per cent a year) for Title V and VI (research and development and
acquisition of equipment). The budget of 2005 provided the army with the following
projection and mobility equipment: one long-range transport plane (TLRA), ten
Rafale airplanes, eight Super Etendard 5 airplanes, 70 SCALP EG missiles, 40 AS
30 Laser missiles, and seven unspeciied helicopters for special forces.
to sum up, French military strategy is very clearly oriented toward direct military
intervention outside Europe (or inside Europe within the scope of NATO). The
projection of force, coupled with the function of prevention, provides justiication
for preemptive action: “Outside our borders, within the framework of prevention and
projection-action, we must be able to identify and prevent threats as soon as possible.
Within this framework, the possibility of a preemptive action could be considered,
as soon as an explicit and proven threatening situation is recognized” (Assemblée
nationale 2002). While in most instances unilateral action is unlikely, in the case of
sub-Saharan Africa it is not – if only because France has had a quasi-monopoly on
the instruments of military force in sub-saharan africa.
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The Mastery of Violence
the functions of prevention, projection, and protection explain the reasons for the
use of force – they answer the “what-for” question. The doctrine guides the actions
of military forces. It is the answer to the “how-to” question. Every French military
action is irst and foremost based on the fundamental principles of war. These
principles combine to form two general approaches. The direct approach seeks to
ight the enemy’s forces in order to destroy its capabilities to wage war. The indirect
approach tries to avoid direct confrontation with the opposing force. the objective is
to attack the source of the belligerent’s power whatever that may be. Military action
aims at destroying, neutralizing, or reducing the determining centres (which are not
necessarily the armed forces) of the belligerent so as to eliminate its will and/or
ability to ight.
these classical principles of war were complemented with new concepts on the
use of force that relected, or so the argument goes, the transformations of the strategic
environment. The “new” wars demanded the further development of the indirect
approach. Basically, French military doctrine was “humanized.” That is, the military
approach to security was combined with ethical values centered on human rights
and the rule of law. prevention consisted in developing an analytical ability based on
intelligence networks, solidarity networks, and a set of pre-positioned capabilities in
order to act quickly and decisively so as to save more lives and to create a coherent
link between military and political objectives. The overall military strategy was
the limited and selective use of force in time and in space. the French army must
seek a “focalized superiority” (supériorité focalisée) in order to contain and limit
permanently the use of force of all belligerent parties. French military intervention
cannot, indeed must not cause an escalation of violence between belligerents. the
primary role of the army is to avert, contain, and control the escalation of violence
in situations where there are no declared enemies. It is to keep the crisis at its lowest
level of intensity possible.
Furthermore, moral obligations must be taken into consideration. This is not only
to limit collateral damage, but to guarantee the moral ascendancy (ascendant moral)
of the French force over other parties. In other words, the French army must seek a
psychological superiority in the eyes of local and international public opinion. such
superiority depends on the political, judicial, and moral legitimacy (and sometimes
impartiality) of the military intervention. This aims to demoralize the belligerent(s)
and thus to facilitate their defeat. This so-called “human” conceptualization of
security and, subsequently, of military intervention is intertwined with a newfound
respect for the rule of law as a cause for action of every military intervention.
These “newfound” considerations led to the formulation of two original modes
of operation: coercion and the mastery of violence. The former “aims at putting out
of action the opposing forces and to dismantle their military organization, normally
within the framework of a direct strategy” (Veyrat 2003, 15). It represents the
traditional use of military force. The second mode of operation seeks to “prevent,
contain, and strictly control the escalation of violence in a manner that includes from
the very beginning of the operation a totality of political, diplomatic, humanitarian,
and media actions” (Bloch 2000, 36) and “which goal is to ensure or to restore
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France and the New Imperialism
security in a territory disturbed by violent actions, normally within the framework of
an indirect strategy” (Veyrat 2003, 15). It is in part an attempt to distinguish between
combat and peacekeeping in order to come up with ways in which the use of force can
be applied in hostile situations where the belligerents are undetermined. accordingly,
violence itself becomes the crucial “enemy.” To control and eliminate the “threat,”
French commanders must differentiate between various dynamics and types of
violence in order to strike decisively and with extreme precision at the belligerents’s
physical and moral source of power without provoking an escalation of violence.
the primary objective is not to destroy the belligerent, but to establish stability and
order by controlling, dominating, and eliminating the sources of violence. But before
going any further, i need to discuss the assumptions underpinning the mastery of
violence in order to fully appreciate its conceptualization process and its importance
as guide for action and policymaking.
Legitimate Force and Irrational Violence
General Francart was the primary author of the doctrine “mastery of violence” as
it is deined in the oficial manual TTA 900.7 It is a doctrine of “counter-violence”
that seeks to prevent, control, and contain the escalation of violence. According to
Francart, it was a response to the “new” wars of the 1990s in response to which
the so-called international community appointed a force to preserve, reestablish, or
create stability. Military forces engaged in such operations cannot directly attack
the belligerents’s army, and often cannot clearly identify the enemy. therefore, the
intervening forces must use force in order to “master the violence” of the situation.
the fundamental assumption underpinning the doctrine is one that understands
“new” conlicts as a clash of civilizations or a clash of cultures (or identities). A
theoretical and purely abstract distinction is then created between the legitimate use
of force and the irrational use of violence. that is, the doctrine assumes a priori
that the “new” conlicts are indigenous in nature; that they are based on an identity
malaise which is more or less intertwined with a developmental malaise; that the use
of force by vaguely deined belligerents in such conlict or crisis is more than likely
irrational, nonpolitical, and thus “violent”; and that the intervening force(s) is the
only party with the indisputable legitimacy to use force.
The analysis of conlict offered is supericial and combines a Huntingtonesque
clash-of-civilizations thesis with an abstract typology of “modes” of violence
(Francart 2002, 54). The result is the legitimization of the use of force when it is
used by one side (the “West”) and its de-legitimization when it is used by others
(the “Rest”). Both the political and the politics are removed from the analysis, the
concepts used, and the actions of all parties. everything from the nature of the
conlict to the response of the international community, order, and disorder becomes
natural. To create and preserve stability becomes a simple matter of technique and
of adapting the military instrument to these “new” modes of violence. Both conlict
and the use of force are de-politicized.
7 Because the tta 900 manual is highly technical and not widely distributed, i use
Francart (2002). See also CDEF (2007); CDES (2002).
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
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according to Francart, the end of the cold war completely altered the nature of
conlict:
Conlicts between states were replaced with many intrastate or trans-state conlicts. The
logic of these conlicts is not centred on the search of power and the defence of interests.
Deeper, it calls into question the Westphalian world order. Based on a search for meaning
and on the return of fundamental values, it demands a ‘civilizational’ and cultural
membership [appartenance] as a right to international recognition. It is the revenge of
communities on the political systems. Generally without armed forces, they develop new
forms of ighting disconcerting for the traditionally organized armies (Francart 2002, 16;
see also CDEF 2007, 12).
Conlicts have been radicalized in the name of fundamental “civilizational” and
cultural values and sometimes in the name of resisting the westphalian model of
sociopolitical order:
the attempts to return to the order that seemed natural in the old context run up against a
natural disorder, resulting from the fundamental nature of human communities and their
attachment to a type of society. The nature of conlicts has evolved and it implies an
evolution of the nature of political and military answers (Francart 2002, 55).
For Francart, so-called “traditional” conlicts were caused by a combination of two
logics: a state-centred logic of conquest and defence of the national territory and
a logic of ideological confrontation (mainly between communism and capitalism).
According to Francart (2002, 56-67), after the Cold War the world witnessed
the calling into question of the nation and in some cases of the state as a form of
government. Consequently, for him conlicts are now irst and foremost based on
claims for legitimate identity and representation by political communities that do
not share the same cultural or “civilizational” values; and the crisis emerges when a
majority opposes the legal basis of the government or when the state collapses in the
face of confrontation with multiple identity demands.
According to Francart (2002, 67): “The nation-state remains the focus of the
conlict phenomenon. It is the type of government and its relation with the society
it governs that constitutes the predominant factor in triggering a crisis, whether it
is internal (intrastate) or external (interstate) [my emphasis].” Francart assumes
that the roots of conlict are predominantly indigenous. From his perspective, the
problem comes mostly from a democratic deicit. The democratic state tolerates and
can manage conlicting ideas, values, and identities. Hence, it can consolidate its
legitimacy on that same diversity and on public debates over ideas, interests, and
values. More importantly, autocratic states tend to instrumentalize the “new” logics
and thus they exacerbate the factors most likely to spark off a crisis (Francart 2002,
67-71). In short, the state is both the problem and the solution to war and peace. The
state is the problem when it cannot accommodate multiple existing identities within
its borders or when it instrumentalizes these differences to consolidate its power (in
short when it is not democratic). The state is the solution when it is democratic for
it can then celebrate and consolidate its power on such cultural or “civilizational”
diversity.
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France and the New Imperialism
In a sense, these “civilizational” and cultural conlicts are conceptualized as
having a pre-modern logic to them and as a necessary step toward the construction
of a European-like state system and progress.
These conlicts are not exclusively driven by a logic of power and material interests.
The actors ight in the name of values and speciic meanings. It is another rationality
based on vital ambitions, beyond any power. admittedly, this logic also ends up pursuing
power, but with the single objective of expressing and living according to its culture or its
civilization [my emphasis] (Francart 2002, 83).
The French army seems to conirm this analysis by stating that, in these conlicts,
the rationality of their violence “is sometimes barely perceptible by the forces …
Barbarism characterizes a number of these actions that aims at making a maximum
number of victims” (CDEF 2007, 61). The mastery of violence seeks to avoid
the prolongation of such violence. The “new” military intervention is therefore
exclusively interpreted as an opposition to belligerent(s) to protect another party
or as an intervention between belligerents in order to preserve, control, and contain
the escalation of violence. such an assumption is made possible, in part at least, by
dissociating the use of force from the use of violence.
Basically, Francart deines force as a neutral quality of a state or individual. It
refers to the ability of an agent to act and to compel others. Force is a neutral notion that
in itself is neither good nor bad. and yet, he asserts that force is positive, necessary,
and legitimate when it guarantees the protection, defence, and survival of a state or
political community. Force is negative, or violent, when it is used in an oppressive
or aggressive manner. Force becomes violence when the use of force is excessive.
In other words, violence is the excessive use of force and constitutes an attack
on human beings, their relationships, and their environment. Violence is “hybris,
that is an abuse of power, desecration of nature, fruit of excessiveness” (Francart
2002, 152). Force turns into violence when international law is not respected, when
human rights are violated, when crimes against humanity are committed, and when
a government oppresses its population. in short, force transforms itself into violence
when the agent that uses force has no legitimacy or when the agent loses it (Francart
2002, 151-71).
hence, force is legitimate violence. put another way, according to Francart
violence becomes force when it respects democratic criteria:
the distinction between the use of force and the use of violence is a political distinction
based on legal rules born from democracy. without democracy, violence and force merge.
Democracy regulates the use of force and, at the same time, makes it possible to express
opposition without having recourse to violence. the beginning of a worldwide democracy,
even if very caricatural at the UN, makes it now possible to make this distinction between
violence and force (Francart 2002, 171).
and because France has achieved such a level of legitimacy, it becomes possible to
claim the intrinsic goodwill nature of French interventions: “the use of force … does
not conquer anymore, but acts in the service of law and peace; force acts at the heart
of life itself [agit au coeur même de la vie]: the human society” (CDEF 2007, 20).
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
105
philosophically and theoretically, Francart’s argument might sound reasonable
and it could certainly be compelling. however, he misses the inherent political
nature of his own theoretical exercise. The distinction he makes between force and
violence does not only legitimize the use of force for democratic governments. it also
legitimizes a speciic vision of the political order with its existing relations of power.
In other words, his distinction relects and reiies pre-existing political structures
and their related relations of power between dominant western-democratic states
and others.
Francart assumes that democracy imposes restraints on the use of force. it might
well be so. nevertheless, the point is: who decides what constitutes democracy and
democratic rules and what does not? Who decides what is force and what is violence?
the a priori assumption that the roots of “new” conlicts are indigenous, cultural, and/
or “civilizational” and that, consequently, there exists a distinction between legitimate
force and irrational violence constructs the intervening state(s) as intrinsically
benevolent and it “barbarizes” the belligerent(s). Therefore, the issues at the heart
of the conlict are de-politicized. Belligerents become nonpolitical actors. Another
effect is that the responsibilities and role of western governments in intervention,
nonintervention, and the causes of conlict are completely obscured. For example, it
permits governments to deny complicity, responsibility, and accountability in cases of
genocide (see Chapter 7). Put another way, it hides the fact that military intervention
and nonintervention have not somehow become “humanized”, altruistic, or ethical,
but that they often remain an instrument to maintain existing systems of privileges
and marginalization to the detriment of a strong majority of human beings.
The Practice of the Mastery of Violence
the mastery of violence is a doctrine that goes beyond the traditional concepts of
conlict prevention and peace support operations. It claims the possibility of one
common vision for all operations.8 the heart of the doctrine is that violence itself
is the primary enemy of the intervening force(s) rather than a deined adversary.
Consequently, the commanding oficers must distinguish between a variety of
dynamics of violence (Francart 2002, 26-46) in order to determine the minimum
force required to control, contain, and eliminate the threat. In the new strategic
environment, the destruction of the belligerent(s) is an extreme goal. While
belligerents might not be real enemies or might be ill-deined, the commanders
must pierce their rationality or irrationality because they cannot be considered as
neutral elements (Francart 2002, 178). The commanding oficers must understand
and master the environment’s operational dimensions (champ physique et matériel),
which represent the “classical” military sphere of activities, and the human networks
(champ psychologique).
8 As Bagayoko-Penone (2003, 286) points out, even though many French oficers
claim that the experiences of the african continent had little to do with it and that it was
the experiences of the Balkans which largely inspired the doctrine, the mastery of violence
demands a thorough analysis because it is the foundation of the teachings given to african
militaries and of French military intervention in africa.
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France and the New Imperialism
Whereas the militarily objective is the mastery of violence, it is also advisable to take part
in the political resolution of the confrontation of legitimacies. the theatre commander is
put forward as an arbiter of these confrontations and as a policy adviser to their resolution.
It is up to him to have a precise knowledge of them and to be able to organize into a
hierarchy [hiérarchiser] the political and military actors according to their legitimacy
(Francart 2002, 179).
in other words, politics is militarized at every level.
the mastery of violence include: the mastery of forces, the mastery of space, the
mastery of armaments, the mastery of humanitarian assistance, the mastery of the
masses, the mastery of information, and the army’s participation in reconstruction.
The Mastery of Forces, Space, Armaments, and Humanitarian Aid
the mastery of forces, space, and armaments symbolize traditional military
operations. For the army, the mastery of humanitarian assistance is simply another
variable or context to take into consideration. The mastery of forces is in fact combat
necessary to implement the terms of the intervening forces’s mandate and to eliminate
the threat of violence. the distinction between the mastery of forces and the coercion
of forces is found in both the means and the ends of the former. the target can be
either an undetermined belligerent or a recognized military force (a national army
for instance). In either case, the use of force must be limited in order to preserve
the target’s centre of gravity (in the Clausewitzian sense). To preserve the centre
of gravity allows the intervening force to control the escalation of violence and
thus to leave open the doors for a negotiated solution to the crisis. the destruction
of, or an attack on, the centre of gravity could be tantamount to a declaration of
war. Consequently, the main difference between the mastery and the coercion of
forces is found in the political objective. in other words, the distinction is not one
made between war and operations other than war. the two modes of operations are
understood as the two ends of a spectrum of possible military actions (Francart 2002,
351-69).
The mastery of space and armaments can be interpreted as the actions taken prior
to any other in order to prevent the escalation of violence and the use of force, but
also to control, contain, and limit that escalation if it were to occur. the mastery of
space refers irst to geographical space. The strategic hills, valleys, and rivers must
be identiied and susceptible to control. The mastery of space also concerns structural
and social space. that is, political (borders, administrative limits, relationship
between social forces, and so on) and economic (structures of economy) space must
be analyzed and understood.
the problem with the mastery of space is often analyzed in terms of the position of the
parties in this space rather than in terms of the actions to be carried out. the manoeuvre
will consist in suggesting, negotiating, imposing a spatial posture to them that favours
the resolution of the conlict. This posture will correspond, as far as possible, with a
satisfactory interpretation of space as lived or of space as represented by the parties
(Francart 2002, 213).
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
107
in other words, the mastery of space is based on a thorough understanding of social
networks and the relationships between a variety of social forces. Geographic space
is relativized. it is accepted as a social construct that is highly susceptible to change.
The so-called “disorder” of the new conlicts demands an approach based on an
analysis of the interactions between territorial space and the social space that forms
networks. The main objective is the penetration of the various networks which itself
relies on intelligence gathering. the mastery of armaments complements the mastery
of space and it can be consensual or coercive. the objective can be to control the
level of violence, to increase feelings of mutual trust between belligerents, to favour
transparency, and thus to contribute in balancing the power of belligerents. its
actions are often limited though because of the enormous problem represented by
the proliferation of small arms in conlict zones (Francart 2002, 257-74).
the mastery of humanitarian assistance more or less interprets humanitarian
operations as another potential factor for the escalation of violence. From the
perspective of the mastery of violence, humanitarian aid constitutes an important
source of resources for armed groups. it also permits them to control and to
instrumentalize populations, to reinforce their local and/or international legitimacy,
and to stabilize a local economy that is often informal and reliant on humanitarian
goods (Francart 2002, 288). Nevertheless, French armed forces will participate in
military-humanitarian operations through their contribution to the distribution of aid
to populations in distress, by intervening to protect and to guarantee the survival of
groups threatened by extermination, and by protecting the personnel and goods of
humanitarian organizations. missions of evacuation of French citizens are included
under the label of humanitarian intervention.
especially from a military point of view, the above aspects of the mastery of
violence are sensible and legitimate. But when we examine closely the other elements,
the search for stability and order becomes a goal that suppresses any positive force
toward social change. Because everything is or can become the enemy (violence),
any given action, movement, or group that question the status quo is subdued or, at
the very least, social change is managed and oriented in a speciic way favourable to
the intervening state. social change becomes what the intervener wants or interprets
as such.
The Mastery of the Masses
The mastery of the masses (or crowd control) is the most controversial element of
the army’s doctrine because, among other things, it tends to militarize the public
maintenance of law and order.
For a mandated Force, acting as a third party in a conlict where its mission is to master
the violence, some actions carried out on the theatre of operation are always aiming at
reassuring the populations and at contributing to the maintenance of law and order, even
if that is not clearly explicit. these actions concern the tactical levels of the Force within
their zone of action. their purposes are to avoid the crystallization of the overthrowing
mass [masse de renversement], the driving force of civil war (Francart 2002, 254).
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France and the New Imperialism
The mastery of the masses aims at two main objectives: 1) public protection that
seeks to defend the populations and public goods targeted by violent forces; and 2)
to maintain public order so as to protect the intervening forces from the population
and the population from itself. the analysis of potier is crucial to understand the
consequences of the mastery of the masses.
Potier (2005) argues that while in France the “masses” or crowd has disappeared in
favour of “manifestation,” outside France the masses or crowd still exists. According
to Potier, the object “masses” that needs to be “mastered” or controlled refers more
to an imaginary object than anything else.9 put another way, the French military
objectiies and personiies the masses. By doing so, the masses becomes an external
object and an actor with intentions and a predictable behaviour. But control can only
originate from outside and not from within the masses because a social group – as
masses – is irst and foremost a threatening thing that needs to be controlled. This
objectiication of the masses attributes to it an essence; an ad hoc nature. From this
perspective, as potier points out, the masses can mean or refer to anything as long as
it alludes to a group that the French army wants to control. any group or movement
can thus be designated as masses if it interferes with the military missions.
Potier identiies three forms that the masses takes when personiied by the French
military: the Insane, the Woman, and the Delinquent. The Insane is the symbol of
the mental patient who does not know what he or she is doing. The Woman is the
frivolous, easily inluenced, emotional, and intuitive stereotype who is incapable
of the same kind of rationality as men. Combined with the irst image, the result is
the hysterical crowd. lastly, the crowd is assumed to be composed of the dregs of
society: the Delinquent. Consider Francart’s writing:
The crowd behaves then like a true psychological entity: in the grip of strong emotions,
her feelings are always simplistic and exaggerated; she then becomes intolerant, irritable,
sensitive, impulsive and does not tolerate any delay between her desire and its fulilment
… the closer the goal is, the more she becomes dynamic and uncontrollable; her destructive
rage is often characterized by ire (Francart 2002, 235).
the army goes one step further in arguing that the crowd is both friend and enemy:
Moreover, more so than yesterday, the adversary that we sometimes have to ight is
the partner of tomorrow that we will necessarily make a partner in the resolution of the
conlict: it is in the village that we secure by force where tomorrow it will be necessary
to restore normal living conditions, to rebuild the market and send the children to school.
The ickle crowd that welcomes or opposes is ready on a sign, an image, an instruction to
change camp (CDEF 2007, 21).
Therefore, as Potier (2005) argues, the only action possible to control the crowd is
the scattering of the crowd; the dissipation of the masses. it must be so because the
masses is conceived as capable of violent action at any moment in space and time.
the mastery of violence is preserved only through the dispersal of the crowd.
9 “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” R.
Williams quoted in Potier (2005).
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
109
more importantly, to continue with potier’s analysis, French forces face the
above paradox created by their own doctrine. in mastery of violence operations,
French armed forces must protect populations that can “transformed” themselves
into “masses” and thus into a threat. The crowd is conceptualized as the army’s
antithesis: it is an assembly of human beings that control nothing (including their
own actions), that is contagious, and that is prone to violence. Its only organizing
principle is psychological. Consequently, the mastery of the masses can only be
conceptualized as an opposition between the army – an artiicial and controlled
masses – and the “natural” uncontrollable crowd. Potier (2005) concludes that
the reduction of every social manifestation, movement, or group to an objectiied
masses obliterates inevitably the social, historical, and political substances that these
movements can represent and create: “The practices, including discursive ones,
related to the control of crowds are then likely to deny any positive force of the
‘crowd’ and to jeopardize on a long-term basis the original potential of emerging
social movements or in becoming.”
Psychological Operations and Civil-Military Actions
the mastery of information is at the heart of both modus operandi of mastery of
violence and coercion of forces (cdeF 2007; chauvancy 2003; Francart 2000 and
2002). Within the framework of the mastery of violence, the mastery of information
focuses on two elements: command and psychological operations. the former
refers to the acquisition of intelligence and seeks a superiority of command in the
environment’s operational dimensions. The key objective is prevention rather than
the traditional support for military manoeuvre. the objects of attention are the
belligerents and the population because of the nature of operations of mastering
the violence. One does not know a priori where and when violence will emerge.
intelligence gathering cannot be limited to military intelligence. the strategic,
operational, and tactical levels must all be penetrated to prevent violence. local
and transnational networks that inancially and logistically support the actors of
violence must thus be controlled. However, as Bagayoko-Penone (2003, 292) points
out, the mastery of information in africa is compromised by the multitude of French
intelligence organisms that analyze and transmit often contradicting information.
the result is competition between French agencies and general confusion.
nevertheless, what is much more interesting here and more relevant to subsaharan africa are the psychological operations or the so-called war of meaning:
a major evolution can be noticed. to conceive of information operations cannot be limited
only to military operations. The political-military level must be taken into account in
order to have a global and coherent inluence strategy, using all the functions of the State
(or States) apparatus … It is a question of inluencing globally and universally with the
appropriate vector … The ‘psychological operations’ function is the other signiicant
function used for implementing IOs [information operations] at military level [original
translation] (Chauvancy 2003, 47; see also: Francart 2000, 16).
according to Francart, psychological operations within the context of the mastery
of violence are mainly concerned with giving meaning to the military intervention
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France and the New Imperialism
and to spread this meaning to the relevant networks in order to shape the conditions
that will favour the attainment of the political objectives. Meaning is the new key
objective of war. The meaning that each belligerent attaches to “its war” creates an
actual war of meaning (guerre du sens) in which legitimating rationales confront
each other to justify the use of force. Military intervention requires meaning and one
that is comprehensible and susceptible to the approval of all parties (Francart 2002,
336-9).
The war of meaning alludes to three “meanings”: 1) the signiication of war
in terms of interests and/or values to be promoted and defended; 2) the emotional
sensibilities of local and international public opinions as a strategy to persuade
others over the meaning of the situation and the intervention; and 3) the direction of
the action which refers to the transparency and clarity of the objectives and goals of
the operation. in short, the war of meaning concerns essentially the meaning of war
(or use of force).
a political matter in the old context, meaning has become an element of strategy. From
secret, strategy becomes opened and displays a transparency that gives it weight and
legitimacy. if the strategic decision to engage a Force in order to master the violence
belongs to politics, its implementation belongs to the soldier. the latter cannot cut himself
off from the matter of meaning. this concern is at the root of the implementation itself
(Francart 2002, 340).
therefore, the war of meaning is between belligerents and between belligerents and
the intervening force(s) and it revolves around the legitimacy of their respective
political objectives. It concerns the justiication for the use of force as well as the role
of other organizations and social forces (Francart 2000, 19). As the argument goes,
the new strategic environment has generated a war of meaning which is conceived as
natural, imperative, and necessary for all modes of operations. the war of meaning
is inevitable, but democratic governments must formulate its limits.
Francart identiies three modes of psychological operations that are differentiated
according to their degree of intensity. The irst mode is communication and it seeks
to give meaning and to create support. it proposes, explains, suggests, persuades, and
convinces through the dissemination of relevant information, the use of democratic
argumentation (exchange of ideas), and, signiicantly, through the use of management
and marketing techniques and campaigns. The second mode of mystiication distorts
meaning through stratagems, deception, intoxication, and disinformation methods.
The third mode of alienation imposes meaning through techniques of propaganda,
indoctrination, subversion, and terror. the overall objective is always to win the
struggle for legitimacy in order to gain inluence over the perception regarding the
conlict, the intervention, the belligerents, and so on. This war of meaning, according
to Francart, has little to do with the psychological wars of the cold war and of the
wars of decolonization. the topic is a sensitive one in France because such war once
sought to control whole populations in both mind and body (Algeria). Nonetheless,
for Francart, the mastery of information does not aim to control populations by
substituting a given truth with another, but to prevent violence and to justify military
intervention. Hence, this “new” version of the war of meaning is and indeed must be
restricted by democratic norms and values (Francart 2000, 30-31).
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
111
Francart writes that democracies cannot use alienation methods. Mystiication
methods must be used carefully and all three modes must respect speciic principles
even though they can be circumvented if necessary.10 the a priori assumption is that
democracies are, by deinition, legitimate actors to intervene in any conlict.
democracies do not feel the need anymore to protect themselves from challenges to
their foundation and do not have as a matter of principle to impose by force their values
on others. The pursuit of inluence is carried out through several means, from cultural
inluence to economic investments to military assistance (Francart 2002, 337).
And because they are democracies, their “wars of meaning” are different and their
objectives intrinsically legitimate.
The war of meaning, for a democratic country, cannot be reduced to what we know under
the terms of psychological warfare, subversive war, or even disinformation … it is not a
matter of compelling the minds and hearts, but to convince of the coherence of the cause,
the ends and the legitimacy of the action undertaken, of the soundness and effectiveness
of its execution and thus to convey its distinctive nature [d’en rendre pertinente sa
perception] … The commitment of a democratic government to a crisis is done in the
name of the sovereignty of the people. it supposes that there exists a certain consensus
around this commitment (Francart 2000, 65).
operations that aim to legitimize military intervention are themselves legitimate and
sensible because their key objective is “philanthropic”: the mastery of violence.
in order to control local violence, it is indeed a matter of ensuring the military authority’s
legitimacy, of isolating the belligerent factions and supporting local authorities by a public
information campaign aiming at gaining the populations’ trust, and obtaining changes of
attitude favorable in the long term to the friendly forces’ objectives [original translation]
(Chauvancy 2003, 49).
the whole argument for psychological operations is founded on a priori assumptions
about the nature of democracies and “democratic” means and ends. It is also based
on a shaky and abstract distinction between the modes and the methods of the war
of meaning. For example, propaganda is deined as systemic techniques (its formal
expression) to impose a speciic vision on a population. But what differentiates it from
marketing campaigns? It is often not the message, but the method that distinguishes
them. Propaganda, like all other methods, is a more useful concept if understood as
a discourse intended for the “masses” (Potier 2005). The method used often depends
on social conditions and/or on the position of the “propagandist” within the social
structures. while Francart’s typology might be helpful to differentiate between
methods or techniques, it says nothing about the political objective or message. Put
another way, all methods (communication, mystiication, and alienation) have the
10 the principles are: freedom of thought and expression, truthfulness, credibility,
distance vis-à-vis the conlict, and adaptability. And yet, Francart writes (2000, 68): “Let us
also note that these principles are only principles. their only value is as guides for action.
They cannot be compared to rules or laws. Any active engagement can sometimes require an
exception from the principles that are supposed to guide it.”
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France and the New Imperialism
same objective: to win the “war of meaning”. What makes some methods legitimate
and others illegitimate is only the a priori assumption that the methods of democratic
countries are legitimate. the crucial corollary is that the message is also assumed
to be legitimate or illegitimate according to its method of dispersal instead of its
content. Nowhere is it acknowledged that the legitimate methods of discourse or
message dispersion are usually owned and controlled by western forces. put bluntly,
“democratic” (neoliberal) intervention propaganda is legitimized to convince others
of the inherent legitimacy of the military interventions of democratic governments.
what we observe here is the actual militarization of the politics of intervention
at every level. The war of meaning, psychological operations, and “democratic”
(neoliberal) propaganda are legitimized and authorized. In other words, to “convince”
others that the current relations of power are the best for everyone has become a
formal objective of war. Both the objective and the methods used to attain it are
authorized in the name of mastering the violence. what is left unsaid is that these
actions of “democratic convincing” do not occur in a vacuum of power. They occur
between various agents who are unequal in terms of power and inluence. They
serve to restrict and monopolize the terms of political legitimacy and authority.
implicitly, the war of meaning imposes a vision of the political order and its rules
of behaviour.
another aspect of the mastery of information is the civil-military actions (actions
civilo-militaires or ACM). I do not elaborate on this “function of inluence,” for
it is somewhat outside the purview of this book, but I wish to illuminate the fact
that reconstruction efforts also seem to be threatened by militarization. French
acm are not as developed as they are in the united states or in Britain, but they
are increasingly considered as essential to consolidate or create peace. Generally
speaking, they seek to ensure the peaceful insertion and acceptance of French forces
into their environment of intervention. they aim to reinforce or create the legitimacy
of the intervening forces. their actions include missions that will increase the
security of the intervening forces, that will contribute to reconstruction efforts, and
that will participate in humanitarian missions if necessary. however, the primary
objective is always actions that prioritize the security of French troops. acm are in
fact highly national in nature. They work for French interests before anything else.
More importantly, they permit the penetration by French interests of local networks.11
They remind us of the colonial soldier who picks up his shovel after iring his gun.
They also represent a French foothold for future political and economic proits.
11 there is little research on French acm. what has been published so far are often
the works of military oficers that promote their ACM projects rather than providing us with
critical analysis. A good starting point is Bagayoko-Penone (2003, 309-14); Dumontet-Fabvier
(2002). Note that the irst edition of Francart’s book had no chapter on ACM. The second
edition (2002) was published largely to add chapter 12 and thus to take into account this
important “evolution” of the strategic environment. Read his “Avertissement” in the second
edition.
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
113
RECAMP
the concept of recamp symbolizes the reorientation of French security policy in
sub-Saharan Africa. It was presented at the United Nations in New York in December
1997, at the Afrique-France Summit at the Louvre in 1998, and at various other
conferences thereafter. the Conseil de Défense of 3 March 1998 deined the chief
adjustments that the new military cooperation policy needed to take: 1) to support
africans in developing the capabilities and the expertise to prevent and manage by
themselves their conlicts and crises; 2) to restrict unilateral military intervention to
operations of evacuation of French citizens; and 3) to favour multilateral intervention.
Generally speaking, French military assistance and intervention must develop
indirect approaches to replace the so-called “outdated” direct methods (Pascallon
2004). According to Bellescize (1999, 27), RECAMP corresponds to the evolution
of africans who want to organize themselves in order to play an increasing role in
the prevention and the resolution of their conlicts; RECAMP aims to avoid French
meddling into African affairs and to permit Africans “to be the architects of their
own happiness.”
the ema is the primary actor in the recamp concept. in fact, the ministry of
Defense owns, elaborates, redeines, and implements RECAMP. The EMA promotes
the concept with the help of the RECAMP ambassador; it deines the actions of the
foreign armies that wish to participate; it creates the multinational exercises and it
deines the topics of RECAMP seminars; it ensures the maintenance of the equipment
in recamp depots; it establishes the actions of the pre-positioned forces within
the framework of RECAMP; it commands the oficers detached to African armies;
and it coordinates the administrative and logistical support of the programs. other
actors include the recamp ambassador who coordinates the promotion of French
initiatives, the dcmd which participates mainly through enVr schools, and the
pre-positioned forces to which i will return below. the army and the gendarmerie
also contribute through their respective training detachments.
The Concept and Programs of RECAMP
the function of prevention is considered as the major element of recamp.
originally, the function of projection was limited to operations of logistic support.
RECAMP was conceived as “an initiative to beef up the capacity of African states,
under the aegis of the united nations and in close co-operation with the organization
of African Unity (OAU), to conduct peacekeeping operations in Africa” (S. Gregory
2000, 442). Since the 2002 Licorne operation in Côte d’Ivoire (see Chapter 8), the
function of projection has become an integral part of RECAMP (Bagayoko-Penone
2003, 472). In other words, pre-Licorne RECAMP assumed that France would no
longer intervene directly in africa. it assumed that France would no longer send
large numbers of troops. Post-Licorne RECAMP was redeined as complementing
French “peacekeeping” (direct military intervention) and traditional training of
African armed forces (indirect intervention). That is, the multilateral approach of
recamp and the bilateral approach of military cooperation are now conceived as
complementing each other.
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France and the New Imperialism
and yet, both pre- and post-licorne recamp innovate in the sense that they
represent the multilateralization of French military policy through “an ‘Africanization’
of regional security and a ‘multinationalization’ of Western interests, exempliied by
Franco-British and American-led initiatives to create regional peacekeeping forces”
(S. Gregory 2000, 442). RECAMP is part of a multinational venture to reform
peacekeeping in Africa. In part, it comes out of, and was reinforced by, the November
1998 Franco-British summit at Saint-Malo which afirmed the will of both countries
to coordinate their policy, the June 1997 adoption by the european union of a
common position on peacekeeping in Africa which recognized that Africans needed
to take matters into their own hands, and the P3 initiative presented to the United
nations on 22 may 1997 by France, Britain, and the united states that asserted the
need for coordination between their respective programs (Bellescize 1999). So far,
despite oficial statements, this cooperation has been characterized by competition
between the programs. in 2003 though, cooperation was being reinforced in west
africa. a tripartite informal collaboration was envisaged: France would contribute
to the tactical training of African troops at the ENVR of Koulikouro; Britain would
participate in the operational training of African troops by supporting the Koi Annan
centre; and the united states would engage in the strategic training of african
troops by sustaining the War College of Abuja (Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 481-4).
more recently, the French senate promoted closer cooperation with the european
Union, but so far progress has been very slow (Sénat 2006).
According to the EMA, RECAMP responded to three needs: 1) the desire
expressed by Africans to take their responsibility in the prevention and the resolution
of their conlicts and crises; 2) the international community’s preoccupation with
violent conlicts and instability; and 3) the renewal of French security policy in
Africa (EMA 2004). The emphasis was to be on prevention and coordination with the
united nations, european union, and British and american initiatives. despite this
strong focus on multilateralism and the multinationalization of interests, recamp
does not undermine the bilateral accords of military cooperation and defence. it
was construed as complementary to the bilateral approach which endures, as the
argument goes, to answer to the particular needs of each state in matters of securitysector reforms, crisis prevention, and post-conlict reconstruction (EMA 2004, 7).
concretely, the political and strategic levels constitute the priority of recamp to
the detriment of the tactical level which falls under bilateral cooperation accords.
recamp aimed to consolidate regional integration in order to favour an
atmosphere of cooperation and dialogue. it sought the emergence of an african
preventive diplomacy that could anticipate crises and reduce tensions. in the end,
africans must be enabled to intervene on the continent in united nations operations.
in the long term, command functions, positions of responsibility, and most military
forces must come from and must be in the hands of african states.
In concrete terms however, RECAMP is mostly about its irst feature: training. The
training of high-ranking oficers and civil servants is ensured by specialized schools
in France and in africa, by regional seminars, and via command post exercises
(CPX). Military units are trained by various training detachments whose teachings
are lexible according to the particular demands of the signatory states of bilateral
assistance accords. The French schools at Compiègne for staff oficers, Tours for
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
115
administration and logistics, and Montpellier for infantry training all offered speciic
training modules for peacekeeping.12 The Koulikouro ENVR in Mali was the primary
training ground for the African oficers who were to serve in the staff headquarters
of international and joint task forces and usually within the context of peace support
operations. The school organized the formation of observers, staff oficers at the
battalion level, and staff oficers for multinational brigade command. The objective
was to teach to African oficers the international rules and the technical and tactical
operational procedures necessary for peace support operations. Furthermore, all the
training courses refer to the doctrine of the mastery of violence. African oficers are
“taught” not to use their weapons, the mastery of the masses, crisis management,
and the general concepts of respecting and protecting human rights in the context of
peace support operations.13
the second element of recamp concerned training exercises that were planned
and conducted by the Etat-major interarmées de force et d’entraînement (emiaFE). The exercises were devised, designed, and conducted within a multinational
and sub-regional framework. The irst exercise, Guidimakha 98, was deemed
to be too focused on military manoeuvre rather than to emphasize peacekeeping.
Subsequently, the following exercises became much more “political” in the sense
that they emphasized formation, dialogue, and simulations. in the words of a
colonel of the DCMD: “the [now] very small exercises are not necessary, but they
make our African partners happy” (Conidential interview, Paris, November 2004).
The RECAMP cycle lasted approximately 18 months and consisted of three key
meetings. The irst was a politico-military seminar that revolved around the planning
of the exercise and that brought together the representatives of the international,
regional, and national organizations and states that were scheduled to participate in
the exercise. The second round was a command exercise (CPX) which was organized
at the inal preparation conference and which aimed to train staff oficers in the
planning and conducting of peace support operations. lastly, there was the actual
military exercise with troops which were placed under the command of the staff
headquarters created during the CPX.
The third and last element of RECAMP concerned military equipment. Initially,
France had planned for collective military equipment that were to be stationed at the
French bases of Dakar, Libreville, and Djibouti and that were to be made available
to the african armed forces participating in exercises or operations of peace support.
12 This is what one can ind in the oficial documents that concern RECAMP. However,
and oddly enough, when I visited the DCMD in November 2004 the two oficers to whom
I spoke were surprised to learn that French military schools were dispensing peacekeeping
training. according to them, these schools do not differentiate between basic military training
and peacekeeping just like French military doctrine.
13 Training courses are one to three weeks in length. They are provided not by France,
but by the staff of the Canadian Pearson Peacekeeping Centre which participates in the
RECAMP project with the inancial help of the Canadian International Development Agency.
The number of oficers that can go through the school at Koulikouro in a month is very
limited due to the small number of beds and rooms available (Yvan conoir, director regional
Programs Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, Montreal, August 2005). See their oficial website:
<http://www.pdcmps.ca>
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France and the New Imperialism
Most of the equipment came from the stocks that were made available because
of the professionalization and modernization of the French forces. this element
of RECAMP was with little doubt its weakest point. The quality and the quantity
of equipment were severely criticized by Africans. The RECAMP depots were
very often empty, the equipment being used, and the depots urgently needed to be
replenished. everyone seems to recognize that it was the crucial and biggest problem
for all, including the african union, european union, and united nations. the heart
of the problem was that no one seemed willing to pay for the necessary equipment
that would give credibility to the whole concept of recamp and, of course, african
states did not possess the resources either (for overview: Bagayoko-Penone 2003,
472-7). And yet, no one seems to formally acknowledge the irony behind it all:
traditional military cooperation aimed to train and equip national armies that could
have been involved in RECAMP. The “new” objective was to train and equip
peacekeeping forces. The “problem” remained the same: lots of good intentions and
rare concrete and positive actions.
it remains to be seen whether or not recamp will bring peace, stability, and an
independent african capability to prevent and resolve crises. the involvement of the
African Union, European Union, and United Nations might promote RECAMP-like
initiatives, but so far the effort has not been consequential. The money is simply not
there (but French, British, and American special troops are ever-present in Africa).
RECAMP lacks in operational credibility in the sense that beyond the need for basic
equipment, without strong logistic, communication, and strategic transport support
from France, such operations have no means to accomplish their missions (a fact that
contradicts the idea of African peacekeeping autonomy). Moreover, it is fairly easy
to realize that few actions of French cooperation have been intended for regional
organizations. In 2005, only €400,000 was devoted to supporting cooperation with
regional organizations (see Table 5.2). As Bagayoko-Penone puts it:
In fact, if RECAMP is allegedly falling, since its origin, within the framework of the subregions, this orientation was largely limited to the simple location in the sub-regional space
of the exercises, and did not bring institutional change. african sub-regions were thus
used as simple geographical frameworks, even though the French were irst to suggest the
relevance of a sub-regional approach … One thus notes that the traditional prerequisites
of France’s african policy, that put the respect of the territorial sovereignty of african
states at the centre of all security action on the continent, constituted a signiicant obstacle
to increased collaboration with supranational or even intergovernmental organizations
(Bagayoko-Penone 2003, 480).
Bagayoko-Penone analyses the situation from a statist point of view. Her
understanding is that recamp is defective because of some reticence to let go of
state sovereignty as the core principle of French security policy.
her words are carefully chosen so as to not undermine the power of the symbolic
state. put another way, she seems unable to conceive of recamp as anything else
than a genuine attempt at policymaking. And yet, from my perspective, her argument
remains relevant and is in fact crucial: recamp can easily be interpreted as a strategy
of power, deterrence, and camoulage and/or as a process that re-legitimizes French
military cooperation. recamp shifted the military cooperation discourse from one
Making (In)Security: The Use of Force to Master Violence
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of assistance to one of partnership and from one of military intervention to one of
peace support operation. The training remains the same except for the peacekeeping
school of Koulikouro. African armies still need to be equipped and their oficers
taught the defence and respect of democratic values and norms. this transformation
in discourse could perhaps be discarded if it was not for the concrete inadequacies of
recamp. For once, recamp does not even have its own budget which is buried
within the budget of the ministry of defence. also, the formation and training still
emphasize african elites. But more importantly, the inability of african states to
intervene on their continent for lack of military means – as acknowledged by the exPrime Minister Pierre Messmer (2004) – and the large insuficiencies of RECAMP
to equip African peacekeeping forces demand of us to question the objective(s) of
recamp. pascallon writes:
under UN mandate and at the request of African countries and organizations – thus with the
prior agreement of the concerned parties - France is from now on ready, within a regional
or multilateral framework, to respond to calls for military action in order to help resolve
conlicts. In other words, Paris does not intend to commit to military action unilaterally
anymore, but from now on to don these commitments with multilateral colours (un,
Europe, …), even if, in reality, it is Paris that is the driving force not to say exclusive [my
emphasis] (Pascallon 2004, 34).
it is doubtful that pascallon meant it in this way, but the argument remains the same:
France dons multilateral colours and retains the de facto (if not exclusive) means for
military intervention.
in other words, France might be multilateralizing its military policy and
multinationalizing its interests through some quasi-concrete RECAMP programs,
but it does not necessarily translate into new partnerships between equal partners.
relations of domination and subordination are not eliminated if only because France
retains the almost exclusive means to use legitimate force. in fact, the French military
apparatus in africa has been reinforced and the French military empowered because
recamp has re-legitimized pre-positioning. the use of force will always be about
force and violence, but the mastery of violence and recamp transformed the French
use of force into an instrument of peace, security, and development: the empire is
again benevolent and its use of force enlightening. to promote its african allies’s
development and security as it has since decolonization, “We [France] maintain
control,” as one French oficer told me, “because there is no one to give it to, but
we should nevertheless not confuse the current picture with the inal objective”
(Conidential interview, Paris, November 2004). Sadly, very few (if any) French
scholars and government oficials seem (or are willing) to recognize the similarities
between the discourse and practice of today’s and traditional French security policy
in Africa. The “old” version led to abuses, violence, and worse. The “new” version
will likely maintain the status quo and even increase the potential for violence and
insecurity.
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Conclusion: Neocolonialism Redux?
according to recamp ambassador Guy azaïs, recamp is founded on simple,
recognized, tested, and perfectible principles. this perfectibility is crucial because
it means that RECAMP is an extremely lexible and “evolutionary” concept that
adapts to circumstances. RECAMP works in Côte d’Ivoire because of the 4,000
French soldiers there. But, according to Azaïs, this is temporary. In ten, ifteen, or
twenty years perhaps, africans will be at the very least able to do without French
troops on the ground (Azaïs 2004, 136-41).
according to the director of military and defence cooperation at the ministry
of Foreign Affairs, General Vaissière, RECAMP illustrates the changes in the nature
of French military cooperation. military assistance was replaced by a logic of
partnership. Bilateral cooperation remains at the heart of French cooperation policy,
but this bilateral approach is complemented in order to provide africans with the
means to ensure their own security and to assume their responsibilities (Vaissière
2004, 165-9).
Furthermore, for recamp to be effective it must be integrated with a set of
policies that promote good governance, democracy, the rule of law, and development.
RECAMP must participate, in the words of Bellescize (1999, 11), “in making societies
and states evolve in the right direction” (see also: Dupuis 2004, 213; Gaulme 2001;
Petit 2004, 199). From the perspective of the French military and government,
recamp is a legitimate, rational, and strategic adjustment of French security policy
in sub-saharan africa. another interpretation imposes itself however.
It is dificult to miss the supericial transformations of the discourse of French
military cooperation. assistance becomes partnership, military training becomes
development aid and peacekeeping, violence becomes force, the promotion and
defence of French hegemony becomes the mastery of violence, multilateralization
legitimizes bilateralism, proscribing dissent and social change becomes the mastery
of the masses, neoliberal propaganda becomes the mastery of information or a
war of meaning, the construction of security forces becomes the construction of
peacekeeping forces, and so on. The discourse was “sanitized” in order to naturalize
and normalize the transforming practices of French hegemony. it is readily admitted,
for instance, that recamp re-legitimized French pre-positioned forces in africa
(Azaïs 2004, 140; Gaulme 2001, 27). If one also takes into consideration the
operational inadequacies of RECAMP, it proves dificult to conceive of RECAMP
as other than an operation of camoulage and re-legitimization. The intentions might
be good, but as was the case with traditional military cooperation, the results are
wanting. the resources have not been made available.
what France regionalizes or subcontract is the implementation. it is to avoid as much as
possible to intervene directly, but to have africans intervene with the same objective. it
is a façade because France does not help to develop regional organizations. the african
union, for instance, can be hindered by these arrangements. France tries to regionalize its
means of intervention, but not its strategies or policies … we are still hearing discourses
of stabilization, of strengthening forces for the maintenance of law and order, of teaching
them to respect human rights, and so on. since the 1960s, if we had really done that,
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today there would be strong, operational, and respectful african armies and police forces
(Conidential interview, Lyon, November 2004).
this French scholar’s statement emphasizes the fundamental continuities of the
discourse and practice of French military cooperation. as of this writing, recamp
does not seem like an initiative that will radically transform anything except to
consolidate and perhaps “multinationalize” (or Europeanized) French hegemony in
sub-saharan africa. regionalization tends to dissipate political accountability. put
another way, the French government can more easily than ever put the blame of
blunders on someone else’s shoulders.
more importantly, the discourse of French hegemony obscures the fact that the
French practice of security can produce, directly and indirectly, the insecurity that
French military cooperation formally aims to defeat. as the examination of the
cases of Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire will make clear, French military cooperation,
old and new, can manufacture insecurity if only by sustaining and defending social
conditions and social forces that often cause, contribute, and/or exacerbate conlict
and violence. The common ways in which conlict, crisis, insecurity, and violence
are problematized lead to erroneous and incomplete accounts of the problem(s).
Consequently, from the perspective described in the preceding chapters, from the
dominant worldview present in the French military, there can only be two solutions
or policy options: the containment of africa or the transformation of african
societies into the Western image. The former is exempliied in the militarization of
French foreign policy and the latter in the neoliberal message of global governance
that is being integrated into military cooperation and that is being rationalized as a
legitimate objective of war. my analysis of the cases of rwanda and côte d’ivoire
will support these claims.
chapter 7
complicity in Genocide:France in
rwanda
the genocide is a rwandan tragedy acted by rwandans, but it is also the ultimate
consequence of decades of colonial and racial thinking and rule. The Hutu and Tutsi,
as “races” or “tribes,” are the product of European colonialism. The rise of extremists
in rwanda and the racialization of rwandan politics were achieved with the consent
and help of the Belgian state, the roman catholic church, and then the French
state. France might not have “caused” the genocide, but it provided the génocidaires
with the resources, the support, the methodology, the impunity, and the latitude all
necessary to carry out what Prunier called their “mad” political scheme. In the name
of legal military assistance agreements, what France did was “unthinkable” because,
at the very least, “it itted like the last missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the
Rwandese political madness” (Prunier 1995, 352).
the analysis offered here aims to go beyond the assignment of blame. Blame
is necessary to eliminate the spaces of immunity and impunity created by the
symbolic state. however, it will only be possible to prevent such a calamity from
ever happening again if, among other things, we raise consciousness about how our
western concepts, terms of reference, and assumptions about world politics that we
take for granted are too often at the heart of the problem. The state, security, and
the security state are not things or objects, but practices. national security, and the
search for stability and order, lead to questions about who and what is to be secured.
in many ways, the practices of state security create and sustain the social conditions
that produce the insecurity they seek, in theory, to eradicate.
The practice of security can in itself contain the roots of conlict and insecurity.
however, the problem runs much deeper. its roots are in fact the foundations of
our modern state-based political order. in other words, the state often needs an
“enemy” to legitimize its very existence and authority. The Westphalian state-system
discourages us to think in terms of humanity. As the case of the Rwandan genocide
suggests, the practice of security, as it is conceptualized and practiced, holds in itself,
when it is brought to its logical conclusion, the “ultimate solution” to insecurity. The
ultimate solution of the “problem” of security is the total negation of the “enemy,”
the Other. Total negation means total annihilation because often the “enemy” is not
regarded as human. this act of de-humanization transforms genocide into regular
war. the negation of the fact that the westphalian state-system is based on a logic
that divides humanity indeinitely into opposing factions, is global because it is at the
heart of the structures of the international system western societies constructed. it is
the foundation on which modern relations of power are legitimized and authorized.
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in the preceding chapters, i argued that France utilizes postcolonial arrangements
as an instrument of hegemony, and I outlined the networks of French military
cooperation. But I have yet to detail exactly how it works, and how both are
connected. This chapter and the next will do just that. The consequences of French
security policy in sub-saharan africa since decolonization could be summarized
with two words: militarization and impunity.
militarization refers to direct and indirect military intervention. France often acted
as a catalyst for the hardening of authoritarian regimes, unsustainable development
policies, and extremist politics. French military support, in the form of arms supplies
and sales, training, and military cooperation, very often reinforced and empowered
local elites and military structures, and thus often contributed to the militarization
of the state’s politics. military support in the form of direct intervention was also
perceived by african heads of states as open-ended and unconditional; authoritarian
governments have shown that they are convinced that French support will always
be forthcoming. Consequently, they too often felt free to do as they wish no matter
the effects or how violent and deadly their actions. in the case of rwanda, Frenchsponsored militarization was a key factor in convincing the regime’s extremists that
they could get away with genocide.
impunity refers to the criminal and often inhuman acts that are trivialized
and sanitized in the name of security, stability, and order. impunity concerns the
individuals who steal, engage in violence, empower systems and structures of
repression, domination, and subordination, and kill and destroy either in the name
of France and civilization or for private gain. impunity involves african and French
government oficials, military oficers, and private actors. In short, the overt and
covert operations of the Franco-african complex are often legitimized under the
“security umbrella” of French military cooperation. The individuals involved in
Franco-african dynamics are often not accountable to anyone whether they represent
private or public interests (in any case, the distinction between public and private is
too often meaningless).
militarization and impunity are often intertwined, as the case of rwanda will
demonstrate. French security policy in sub-saharan africa generates the legitimacy
and authority for social forces to maintain their privilege. these social forces do
not need to be criminal. In fact, it is often they who deine exactly what is criminal.
French military cooperation de-politicizes political issues and it often transforms
them, or it helps to transform them, into security issues. in other words, military
interpretations and solutions are prioritized because the problems themselves are
deined as military/security in nature. Political solutions are too often undermined
because the problem is described as one between irreconcilable forces. The conlict,
as it is obvious in the rwandan case, is interpreted as one between ethnic groups,
races, or barbarians. Barbarians cannot, from that perspective, have intricate social
structures and thus social quarrels, but only essentialist and violent conlicts. Such
barbarism, coupled with the discourse of the symbolic state, has a useful purpose for
social forces that seek to reproduce their power.
to put the actions of the French state into perspective, we need to discuss the
history of rwanda and of the genocide in order to demonstrate that the genocide
was not simply an unforeseeable event precipitated by irrational barbarians. rather,
Complicity in Genocide
123
the genocide was the effect of a rational political decision made by political actors
who were supported by France. However strongly the French government oficially
denies it, it was complicit with the actors of the rwandan genocide. even if we
can admit that France never intended, wished, or planned for a “inal solution,” the
Rwandan genocide would more than likely have been prevented if it were not for
French seemingly unconditional support of a genocidal regime. this controversial
claim could be discussed ad vitam aeternam and an argument could possibly be made
that the genocide would have happened with or without French support. For now, the
point is simply that French security policy, based irmly upon military cooperation
accords, produces insecurity in the sense that it can have dire human consequences.
Before going any further, it should be noted that what France did in rwanda was
not out of the ordinary in terms of its security policy and of its politics of military
intervention in Africa. French support to African allies has always been (almost)
unconditional, strong, and committed to the stability of the african state concerned.
it is only the end result or, put bluntly, the extent of the massacres that differentiates
rwanda from other French interventions.
secondly, while i argue that France was complicit in the rwandan genocide, i do
not argue that France committed genocide nor do i argue that all French people and/
or oficials are somehow responsible. As I will make clear in the following pages,
not all French soldiers were even aware of the genocide and many more, after setting
foot in rwanda, were appalled by what the Mère Patrie had done. indeed, many
French soldiers and citizens have demonstrated since 1994 that they are ashamed
and angry about what was done in their name and have demanded justice.
Prelude to Genocide
the roots of the 1994 genocide can be found in the Berlin conference of 1885,
which allocated rwanda and urundi to Germany. in 1891, Germany integrated both
its eastern african colonies. in 1916, British and Belgian forces invaded the German
colony; its administration was entrusted to Belgium by the league of nations in
1923.
Prunier (1995) argues that the history of the genocide is of a cultural mythology
that became reality. Until decolonization (and indeed up to this day), race-thinking
clearly conditioned european views and policies regarding rwanda. the Germans
discovered intricate social structures and were amazed by the complexities of the
social order, but they redeined it all in racial terms. Rwanda1 was inhabited by hutu,
tutsi, and twa, who comprised one per cent of the population. however, to be hutu
or tutsi had nothing to do with race or class. agriculture was the domain of the
hutu and tutsi were the owners of cattle. cattle were a sign of wealth, power, good
breeding, and a means for upward social mobility. even though most chiefs were
tutsi, the relationship between the two groups was more reminiscent of a client1 One must keep in mind that Rwanda, as a territorial entity and as a nation-state only
existed in the minds of Europeans. Rwanda became “real” when it was “constructed” by
europeans in 1885 as a means to delimit their shares of the african continent.
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France and the New Imperialism
patron one. It was therefore possible to be “tutsiied” or “de-tutsiied” according to
whether one acquired or lost cattle.
the europeans of the time did not interpret the situation from the rwandan point
of view, but from their race-thinking perspective which was the “scientiic canon” that
governed German and later Belgian colonial administrative decisions. the accepted
scientiic theory was that the Tutsi were pastoral invaders from Ethiopia who had
brought with them their sophisticated institutions to subjugate the “inferior” Hutu
race. A Belgian colonial administrator of the 1920s, Pierre Ryckmans, wrote:
The Batutsi were meant to reign. Their ine presence is in itself enough to give them a
great prestige vis-à-vis the inferior races which surround … it is not surprising that those
good Bahutu, less intelligent, more simple, more spontaneous, more trusting, have let
themselves be enslaved without ever daring to revolt (quoted in: Prunier 1995, 11).
the europeans had to explain to themselves what they perceived as an impossibility:
“savage negroes” who had evolved and construed complex social structures. This
misrepresentation had (and still has) dire consequences.
the colonizing europeans did not devise hutu and tutsi out of nothing, but they
modiied the meanings and social purposes of these groups. Under Belgian rule, these
distinctions acquired a racist connotation and became more inlexible. They became
integral to rwandan relations of power and social structures. From the beginning,
europeans, in hand with the roman catholic church, reinforced centralization and
the power of the king. The Rwandan elites (mainly Tutsi) went along with Belgian
administrative reforms and converted to christianity between 1926 and 1931. the
Belgian colonial authorities also classiied Hutu, Tutsi, and Twa according to their
height, the length of their nose, the shape of their eyes, and then introduced identity
cards in 1933 which speciied who belonged to which “race.” Colonial rule had a
massive impact on rwandans. the white rulers had been telling them for decades
that hutu were an inferior race while their colonial policies clearly favoured one
group over the other. absentmindedly, the Belgian authorities and the church were
producing what Prunier (1995, 9) labelled a “social bomb.”
Social “Revolution” and the Hutu Republic, 1959-1990
the decolonization climate of the 1950s meant the increasing challenge of Belgian
colonial rule by the tutsi power elites. combined with shifting white clerical
sympathies and with internal struggle within the rwandan church, the colonial
authorities rapidly adjusted their policy from supporting the tutsi elites to supporting
the rise and “liberation” of the subjugated Hutu. According to testimonies given in
the 1980s of the Belgian colonial authorities, Jean-paul harroy and colonel Guy
Logiest, the decolonization and “democratization” of Rwanda and Burundi were
organized in a brutal manner. Both the Belgian state and the catholic church, in
response to the challenging tutsi elites, politicized hutu and put them in power. this
“social revolution” was in fact a change of guard operated by the colonial masters.
the republic of rwanda was proclaimed on 28 January 1961 and independence was
formally recognized on 1 July 1962.
Complicity in Genocide
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the cultural mythology in rwanda painted the tutsi as foreign invaders. this
belief justiied plans to expel them from Rwanda. The “revolution” had already
brutally banished tutsi from social and political life. the regime of president
Grégoire Kayibanda (1961-73) was grounded in a racist ideology that advocated
bigotry and hatred against the tutsi who were called inyenzi – literally “cockroaches.”
on 14 november 1963, about 1,500 exiles from Burundi invaded Bugesero but were
repelled. Between December 1963 and January 1964, the government used the attack
as a motive to initiate a wave of violent repression in the region which killed between
10,000 and 14,000 people (Melvern 2004, 9). Prunier (1995, 61-4) estimates that as
a result of political persecution, there were between 600,000 and 700,000 refugees in
Burundi, uganda, tanzania, and Zaire who had left rwanda between 1959 and 1973
and who still identiied themselves as refugees in 1990.
the political immobility, the racial ideology, the repressive climate, and the
regional inighting between North and South of the Kayibanda regime came to
frustrate the elite. Major-General Juvénal Habyarimana took power in a coup on 5
July 1973. everyone seemed to express relief – even the tutsi who were encouraged
by the new regime’s assurances that it would guarantee their security. relatively
speaking, the irst decade under Habyarimana was calm and stable and promising of
an encouraging future. in fact, up until the genocide, rwanda was often recognized
by international organizations such as the international monetary Fund and the
World Bank as an example for “weak” states to follow.
serious problems began to arise with the fall of the prices of rwanda’s exports.
The price of coffee had been declining since 1977 and inally collapsed in 1986.
tin prices also collapsed between 1984 and 1986 and led to the closing down of tin
mining which intensiied the economic crisis.
For the élite of the regime there were three sources of enrichment: coffee and tea exports,
briely tin exports, and creaming off foreign aid. Since a fair share of the irst two had
to be allocated to running the government, by 1988 the shrinking of sources of revenue
left only the third as a viable alternative. hence there was an increase in competition for
access to that very specialized resource, which could only be appropriated through direct
control of government power at high levels. so the various gentlemen’s agreements which
had existed between the competing political clans since the end of the Kayibanda regime
started to melt down as the resources shrank and internal power struggles intensiied
(Prunier 1995, 84).
in april 1988, the political murder of colonel stanislas mayuya, who was a close
friend of the president, was a sign of worse things to come. amidst these increasing
tensions, the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), believing that the regime was unstable
and weakening, invaded Rwanda on 1 October 1990. The attack provided the
habyarimana regime with a useful scapegoat and it reinforced the position of the
extremists.
The devastating economic consequences of falling commodity prices and IMF and World
Bank policies were not confronted, because of feared inancial repercussions. Instead the
woes of the country were blamed squarely on the RPF and their allies, the Batutsi “enemy
within”, who together were charged with full responsibility for Rwanda’s woeful condition.
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France and the New Imperialism
as economic and political crisis bit harder, the regime’s enemies came to include an everwidening circle of people, incorporating not only the rpF and all rwandan Batutsis
but eventually all “moderate” Bahutus, and anyone suspected of supporting the Arusha
Accords (Hintjens 1999, 258).
The “enemy within” became anyone who opposed the regime. Its symbolic power
gave the regime a strong rationale to turn against any and all political opponents.
Because the “enemy” was deined by the regime, it legitimized the regime’s actions
while giving violence its relevance. The RPF attack of October 1990 led the
government to quickly and massively massacre its people between 1990 and 1994.
French Military Cooperation in Rwanda
on 7 december 1962, France and rwanda signed civil cooperation accords regarding
economic, cultural, technical, and radio cooperation and assistance. the terms are
classical and include the education, formation, and assistance provided by French
coopérants. It was only on 18 July 1975 that France took over deinitively Belgium’s
role as Rwanda’s “tutor” when it signed a military cooperation agreement with the
habyarimana regime.
the military accord comprised nine articles. article 1 stipulated that France
would supply the military personnel necessary to the organization and training of
the Rwandan Gendarmerie. Article 2 speciied that French personnel were appointed
by France with the consent of the rwandan government, with the senior French
military oficer in charge of all French military personnel as the Director of Military
technical assistance, under the authority of the French ambassador. article 3 stated
that French soldiers remained under French jurisdiction and that they had to serve in
French uniforms. it also indicated that under no circumstances could French forces
participate in the preparation or execution of military operations and operations of
maintaining or restoring public order. article 7 provided the rwandan government
with the possibility of soliciting France for the donation or purchase of military
equipment.
the treaty was revised twice; these revisions corresponded to periods of political
and economic turmoil in rwanda. on 20 april 1983, the accord was altered in two
ways. article 3 was changed so that French military personnel would henceforth wear
the Rwandan uniform. French personnel were to be distinguished with a “Military
Cooperation” badge on their left arm, shoulder high. They maintained their rank or
its equivalent in the Rwandan Armed Forces. The modiication was justiied by the
fact that French military personnel might be asked to substitute Rwandan personnel
within the Gendarmerie. more importantly, the sentence forbidding French personnel
from directly participating in the preparation or execution of operations was erased.
even the French national assembly’s parliamentary mission of information of 1998
about the events in Rwanda (hereafter, MIPR) was puzzled by this revision.
On 26 August 1992, Articles 1 and 6 were modiied. The term Gendarmerie was
replaced with rwandan armed Forces. French military assistance was extended
oficially to all Rwandan forces. But this amendment came two years after the de
facto modiication caused by the RPF attack of October 1990. When questioned
Complicity in Genocide
127
about this alteration, Georges martres, who was French ambassador to Kigali in
1992, claimed that he simply noticed that French military cooperation lacked juridical
legitimacy. In other words, as even the MIPR concluded, the 1992 modiication was
a technical operation to update the treaty to the practice (assemblée nationale 1998,
vol. 1, 27-30).
Civil War, Genocide, and French Military Complicity, 1990-1994
The RPF attack of 1 October 1990 triggered a variety of mechanisms and responses
that led to genocide.2 On the one hand, Rwandan extremists gradually acquired
more power and control over the state apparatus and thus committed it to genocide.
on the other hand, the instruments, institutions, and practices of French military
cooperation were fully activated. Consequently, the French military took over, both
formally and informally, partial command and control of the rwandan military as
well as reinforcing the extremists’s position. in fact, as i will show, it seems that
without French support, the regime would have without much doubt succumbed to
internal and rpF pressures.
Before I turn to the events of 1994, I must briely address the question of sources.
Many books and articles have been published on the genocide and France’s role
in it. Some questions remain. While some testimonies and publications seem too
incredible to be true, and while the French government denies to this day any direct
involvement or responsibility, the sheer amount of information that came out after
1994 strongly suggests complicity. In addition, there is the evidence of two enquiries
into the genocide. The irst was the French Parliament’s Mission d’information
parlementaire sur le Rwanda (MIPR). The report was published on 15 December
1998 with its chair, Paul Quilès, proudly proclaiming that it revealed that France
was innocent of any direct involvement or complicity in genocide. the general tone
of the report was indeed that France (no individual was held accountable) made
a “simple,” if catastrophic in effect, “error” of judgment and assessment. In other
words, French security policy was not the cause since the French state could not
have foreseen that its support for the habyarimana regime could lead to genocide.
however, the report’s 1,800 pages contain a wealth of information and evidence
which contradict its own cautious conclusion. despite this, the mipr appeared to
satisfy the curiosity of the French government. in short, as far as the French state was
concerned, the case was closed.3
For many French citizens, however, the case was not closed. in march 2004,
a number of French associations and citizens organized their own commission of
enquiry: the Citizens’s Commission of Inquiry (Commission d’Enquête Citoyenne
2 This is not to argue, as some negationists do, that the genocide was “caused” by the
rpF. such an interpretation transforms genocide into a conceivable and reasonable response
to a political crisis.
3 The MIPR was only organized after revealing reports in the press and the work of
a handful of French politicians. and even then, it was a mission of information and not a
commission of inquiry, which would have had more power and would have required that
witnesses testify under oath.
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– hereafter CEC). Ten years had past and the evidence against France had already
seemed incriminating, but the cec succeeded in bringing more evidence of French
direct involvement with rwandan genocidal forces. the project was planned and
organized by various French nongovernmental organizations: aircrige, cimade,
Observatoire des transferts d’armements, and Survie. their report was published
in January 2005 and remains a second invaluable source (see: coret and Verschave
2005). The report assumes a priori that raison d’état is not a satisfactory motive or
explanation for supporting genocide and/or for interpreting genocide as the collateral
damage of a civil war.
Enabling Direct French Military Intervention
On 1 October 1990, the RPF attacked Rwanda from Uganda. The confrontation
between the RPF and Rwandan Governmental Forces (RGF) is recognized by
the mipr as the beginning of a civil war, even though at the time many French
oficials and oficers talked of an unprovoked foreign invasion (Assemblée nationale
1998, vol. 1, 126). President François Mitterrand was informed of the attack on a
plane headed to Paris from Oman. According to Prunier, after consulting briely
with defence minister louis Joxe and Foreign minister roland dumas, mitterrand
decided almost immediately to despatch troops to rwanda.4 prunier even witnessed
a phone conversation between Jean-christophe mitterrand, the president’s son who
ran the african cell at the elysée, and habyarimana who pleaded for French support
and help. after reassuring habyarimana, Jean-christophe mitterrand told prunier
with a wink: “We are going to send him a few boys, old man Habyarimana. We
are going to bail him out. in any case, the whole thing will be over in two or three
months” (Prunier 1995, 100).
on 3 october, Foreign affairs minister casimir Bizimungu met in paris with
Minister of Cooperation Jacques Pelletier. Even though there was no defence treaty
between France and Rwanda, French military intervention was conirmed. The very
next day, on 4 october, a company of 150 soldiers of the 2nd Régiment étranger
de parachutistes (REP) stationed in the Central African Republic arrived at Kigali
airport to take immediate defensive positions. These French troops were soon
followed by 400 Belgian paratroopers and several hundred elite troops ordered to
Rwanda by Zaire’s president, Mobutu Sese Seko. Contrary to the non-combat status
of European troops, the Zairians took immediate action against RPF forces (and the
Rwandan population) (Prunier 1995, 102). Habyarimana was not entirely satisied
with the French effort and on the night of 4-5 October, staged a fake attack on Kigali.
this had a dual purpose: to convince the French to send more troops and to justify
political repression against opposition groups.
Operation Noroît (4 October 1990 – December 1993) was originally under the
command of colonel rené Galinié, the defence attaché in Kigali who was in charge
4 General maurice schmitt offered a somewhat different story to the mipr. according
to him, the decision was taken in Riyadh on 4 October after a short Conseil de Défense. The
general’s account seems unlikely since French troops were already in Rwanda on 4 October
(Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 128).
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of the military assistance mission, and thus under the French ambassador. on 19
october, after heated debates between the ministries of defence and Foreign affairs,
Colonel Jean-Claude Thomann was appointed the commanding oficer of Noroît,
answering directly to the chief of staff of the armed forces. under his command,
noroît consisted of 314 troops: a forty-soldier staff and troops of the 1st and 3rd
companies (137 men each) of the 8th Régiment parachutiste de l’infanterie de
marine (RPIMA). Oficially, the number of French troops went as high as 688 in
March 1993 (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 130, 167). However, Prunier (1995,
164) reports that a French colonel boasted in his presence on 11 April 1993 that “by
playing on the dates and rotation patterns of the various units, it was possible to keep
up to 1,100 men in Rwanda while admitting only 600 to the press.”
To the MIPR, Thomann, by then a general, testiied to “the stabilizing role, even
if non active, of a foreign intervention force to comfort a regime threatened by an
external aggression and faced with a non negligible risk of domestic troubles of
ethnic or political origins.” On 30 November 1990, in a telegram urging against
the withdrawal of Noroît troops, the French ambassador to Kigali wrote: “The
presence of our troops, even if reduced, appears not only as a security guarantee for
an expatriate population, but also as an indirect factor of appeasement for the whole
country” (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 134-5). Meanwhile, massacres and
massive arrests of Tutsi and opposition Hutu were taking place. The Habyarimana
regime told its people that the RPF was coming to kill them all, and ordered people
to kill the inyenzi – the tutsi – and to burn their houses. an estimated 10,000 people
were arrested. reports indicated that approximately 50 tutsi were executed at the
Kanombe military camp on 4 october. on 10 october, a witness observed major
Aloys Ntabakuze order his troops to eliminate all Tutsi in Bahima. Ten days after the
invasion, at least 348 persons had been killed in 48 hours and 550 houses burned in
a commune halfway between Kigali and the prefecture of Gisenyi. This attack was
organized and directed by local authorities (Melvern 2004, 13-16).
In fact, Operation Noroît was more or less the French takeover of RGF command
and planning positions. Between 11 october and 26 november 1990, colonel Gilbert
canovas, as assistant to the defence attaché, was appointed as adviser to the rGF
staff headquarters. He was oficially put in charge of helping the Rwandan military
to enhance its operational capability in order to counter the rpF’s incursions. to the
MIPR, he testiied that he used his expertise to help in the elaboration of the plans
to defend Kigali and that he participated in the efforts to reinforce the rGF border
positions around Gisenyi, Ruhengeri, Byumba, and Lake Mutara. In his telegram of
11 october 1990, defence attaché colonel rené Galinié commented:
the rwandan army is unable to face the situation. thus, if the French and Belgian forces
had not relieved it by taking responsibility for some missions and terrain (protection of the
airport and of the roads leading to it) and if the Zairian forces had not taken part directly in
the conlict, it would have in all likelihood conined itself to Kigali under conditions and
according to a plan of action not very effective (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 137).
Galinié also recommended the sending of more military advisers to train, organize,
and motivate rGF troops. as of 1 october 1990, there were only 18 French military
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France and the New Imperialism
coopérants in rwanda. that number went up to 80 in 1992 and to 100 by the end
of 1993 (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 151). These troops supervised and
trained a rGF army which had numbered about 5,000 soldiers in october 1990, but
increased to 30,000 by the end of 1991, and 50,000 by mid-1992 when arusha peace
negotiations began (Prunier 1995, 113). French military advisers and Noroît troops
also participated in much more. In fact, Saint-Exupéry argues, citing high-ranking
French oficers, that Noroît was a smokescreen for other operations launched 4
october 1990. Between 1990 and 1993, most French elite troops from the 11th
Division parachutiste, 1st and 8th rpima, 2nd rep,5 and other elements attached to
special operations command (Commandement des opérations spéciales – hereafter
COS) landed and operated in Rwanda (Saint-Exupéry 2004, 201, 243-5).
Training Soldiers, Militias, and Death Squads
at the beginning of 1991, habyarimana pleaded for French direct military
intervention. France refused and proposed help in the form of military assistance: a
detachment of military assistance and training (Détachement d’assistance militaire et
d’instruction – DAMI). Oficially, the DAMI was conditional on opening a dialogue
with the rpF, but in practice it was unconditional assistance. the 30-person panda
dami arrived in Kigali on 22 march 1991 in Kanombe. it was reinforced in 1992
with an artillery element and in 1993 with engineers. in december 1993, French
military advisers numbered one hundred. however, it seems impossible to determine
exactly how many French troops there were in rwanda and how many of those
troops were involved in the training of Rwandan forces. All we know for certain is
that the French military helped rwanda to recruit and train an army that went from
5,000 to 50,000 soldiers.
the French government recognizes that its military trained the rwandan army
as authorized by its military assistance agreement. It does not oficially recognize
training elite troops, the presidential guard, and the militia which all committed most
of the killing and destruction before and during the genocide. And yet, despite this
denial, there is plenty of incriminating evidence that, at the very least, demands
further investigation.
Canadian Major Brent Beardsley of UNAMIR conirmed that the Presidential
Guard had its French military advisers who knew each other by their irst names.
more importantly, these advisers who were supposed to leave rwanda in november
1993, under the arusha accord, never left the country. in december 1993, the French
advisers simply took off their uniforms. They acted as “independent” advisers or
pretended to stay for personal reasons (Interview, Kingston Canada, July 2005).
Jean carbonare, president of survie and member of the international commission
of Inquiry into the violation of human rights in Rwanda in 1993, reported that in
January 1993 he witnessed French military instructors in the military camps of
Bigogwe where civilians were brought in on trucks, tortured, killed, and buried
5 the 11th Division parachutiste is the armed element and action cell of the Direction
générale de la sécurité extérieure (secret services – hereafter DGSE). The RPIMA and REP
are the colonial troops.
Complicity in Genocide
131
in communal graves. He also interviewed Janvier Africa, a repentant death squad
member who has since repeated his story to journalists. among other things, africa
testiied that, within a month, at the start of 1992, he and other members of death
squads killed approximately 10,000 Tutsi from their main base of Mukamira (Coret
and Verschave 2005, 28-9). The MIPR conirmed that the DAMI instructors lived
outside Kigali with their students and that the instruction was carried out in the camps
of Mukamira, Nyakanama, Ruhengeri, Bigogwe, Gako, and Gabiro (Assemblée
nationale 1998, vol. 1, 146, 148). General Roméo Dallaire (2003, 68) also conirmed
that a Gendarmerie rapid reaction force and elite military units were being trained by
French and Belgian advisers in 1993 in ruhengeri.
to date, there does not seem to be uncontested evidence of the French military
training the Interahamwe (militia) or the death squads. However, the concomitant and
circumstantial evidence is abundant. First, there are many, albeit contested, testimonies
from Rwandan survivors (see: Coret and Verschave 2005). Also, the French army itself
admitted that it was more often than not dificult to distinguish between soldiers and
militia. Forges interviewed French soldiers who could not tell the difference. she
assumed, however, that career soldiers and oficers could in fact differentiate soldiers
from militia (in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 33). In 1997, a French general confessed
to Saint-Exupéry (2003, 164) that the investigation of France’s role in Rwanda had
not yet progressed. He reluctantly conceded: “I cannot guarantee that no militiaman or
member of the death squads was trained by French soldiers.”
There is also the famous episode of 1 July 1994 at Bisesero, a week after the
beginning of Operation Turquoise:
Near by was an oficer of this elite unit that is the GIGN. He was standing, stiff on his legs,
and appeared elsewhere. He was as in a world of his own, and I remember to have ixed
my gaze on him because of a detail: over his French gendarme uniform, he wore a jacket
of the Rwandan army … little by little he was braking down and ended up sitting on the
grass, where he started to weep … he had just realized … he turned around and told us:
‘Last year, I trained the Rwandan presidential guard …’ his eyes were haggard. he was
lost. The past had just become confused with the present. He had trained killers, the killers
of a genocide [emphasis in original] (Saint-Exupéry 2004, 91).
Exporting a Method of Total War and Annihilation
Planning and executing genocide takes organization, techniques, and methods. France
provided, through training and support, such means. But French military assistance
did not consist of tactical training alone. in the case of rwanda, the strategic training
provided – that is the military doctrine taught – was so pervasive in itself that it was
relected in the structures and institutions of the Rwandan state itself. Rwanda was
an authoritarian state whose population had for a long time been under tight and
strict control. French military instruction reinforced its authoritarian characteristics.
France supplied a racist regime (whether knowingly or not does not matter for the
moment) with an essential doctrine that transformed massacres into genocide.
in rwanda, the French military applied and taught its doctrine of revolutionary
warfare (guerre révolutionnaire) which reminded us of the Algerian War. President
charles de Gaulle had put a stop to the enthusiasm of the proponents and theorists
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of that doctrine, Lacheroy and Trinquier. However, President Giscard d’Estaing,
who had reactivated military cooperation with rwanda in 1975, had been trained
by Lacheroy as an oficer at the Ecole de Guerre. the end of the cold war, and the
subsequent demise of the relevance of the nuclear deterrent, was an opportunity
for the disciples of another kind of total war. As a French oficer conided to SaintExupéry (2004, 246): “As early as 23 January 1991, I realized that a parallel military
command structure was put in place. at that time, it was obvious that the elysée
wanted Rwanda to be dealt with in a conidential manner.” Another oficer told SaintExupéry (2004, 246): “Outside the hierarchy, Lieutenant-Colonel Gilbert Canovas
was greeted on a regular basis in Paris by the armed forces chief of staff.” Canovas
openly discussed his contribution in rwanda with the mipr:
in his report of 30 april 1991, at the end of his second mission as adviser, colonel Gilbert
Canovas reminds us of the adjustments that had taken place in the Rwandan army since 1
october 1990, among which are these particular ones: - the implementation of operational
sectors in order to cope with an adversary threatening the entire rwandan-ugandan
border and most of the rwandan-tanzanian border; - the recruitment of a great number
of soldiers and the mobilization of reservists that almost allowed to double the strength
of the rGF from 11,000 in october 1990 to 20,000 in January 1991; - the reduced time
taken for the basic training of the soldiers, limited to the use of the individual weapon …
colonel Gilbert canovas also underlines the preponderant role played by the international
media in October 1990 but speciies thereafter ‘the obvious advantage conceded to the
rpF at the beginning of the hostilities was offset by a media offensive carried out by the
Rwandans that started in December’ (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 138).
But as Saint-Exupéry (2004, 248) observed, these words had a speciic meaning:
“operational sectors” means a grid pattern designed for tight military control;
“recruitment of a great number” signiies popular mobilization; “reduced time
for basic training” signiies militias; and “media offensive” means psychological
warfare. For instance, canovas proposed in order to alleviate the insecurity of the
population of the Ruhengeri zone, “to set up small civilian elements, disguised
as peasants, in the sensitive areas in order to neutralize the rebels that are usually
isolated” (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 157).
on 24 June 1992, the means to wage such wars were created by president
mitterrand. the cos was born by presidential decree and rwanda, according to
Saint-Exupéry, was the training ground for the “new” doctrine:
The COS is a combined joint task force placed under the direct authority of the chief
of staff of the armies; himself placed under the direct authority of the president of the
republic … the prerogatives of this military arm are unlimited. they hold in four words:
‘Assistance, support, neutralization and actions of inluence’. These are the four pillars
of secret war … in 1993, the chief of staff of the armies, admiral lanxade, authorizes the
COS to develop capabilities for psychological warfare. It opens the way for the oficial
implementation of our doctrine of ‘revolutionary warfare’ … lieutenant-colonel canovas
will set up the key elements of our ‘revolutionary warfare’: the partitioning of zone in
search/control operations [quadrillage des populations], popular mobilization, setting
up of self-defence militias, psychological warfare … lieutenant-colonel canovas is
supported by admiral lanxade, chief of staff of the armies, general Quesnot, chief of staff
Complicity in Genocide
133
to François mitterrand, and general huchon who, after having been general Quesnot’s
assistant at the elysée, will be at the head of the military cooperation mission (saintExupéry 2004, 276-80).
General Thomann testiied that the discussions between the ministries of Foreign
affairs, defence, and cooperation about the command of operation noroît
relected doctrinal dificulties because these “operations were the object of ongoing
theorization and doctrine” (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 130).
G. Périès is a French scholar who wrote an as-yet unpublished Ph.D. thesis on
the French doctrine of revolutionary warfare. He studied the inluence of the French
army on latin american military doctrine and became interested in rwanda after he
met with saint-exupéry. in his testimony to the cec, he explained that the structures
of the Rwandan state gave away the inluence of the doctrine of revolutionary
warfare. The construction of the modern Rwanda state (1959-64) was overseen
by the Belgian paratrooper colonel logiest. it just so happened that the Belgians
participated for a time in the elaboration of the doctrine at the paris ecole de Guerre
where oficers from Belgium, Israel, Latin America, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Spain
shared their expertise. Périès explained that many Argentinean oficers were trained
in Paris and then worked in Argentina with French oficers integrated to Argentinean
headquarters.
Beginning in 1959, the Argentinean Staff, under the supervision of French oficers,
organized the territorialization of the argentinean army; that is the organization of the
argentinean army in entirely militarized zones of responsibility. in case of an emergency,
the military substitutes itself to civil authority - in a very complex organization of parallel
hierarchy, with oficers put in place in parallel to civil structures. Finally … they eliminate
the civil structures and take charge of the whole territory and of all of its dimensions:
justice, the army’s organization, self-defence militias. Something we ind again in
rwanda. the formation process of the rwandan state follows this territorial explosion,
this territorialization of the armed forces … [but] in very limited space in Rwanda, which
is what, when the process begins, will give it in my opinion a rather important explosive
effect (testimony in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 45).
Périès argued that, starting in 1964, the Rwanda state itself functioned on a model
of population control and parallel hierarchies that could obtain intelligence on any
opposition party.
Under this doctrine, foreign elements are to be identiied so that as soon as they
appear, the state knows their location. In Rwanda, the Tutsi were this made-up
foreign object. in such an environment, the use of fear, if not panic, was a valuable
tool of political control. a profession, a geographic zone, or an ethnic group can be
targeted to create an emotional shock. People disappearing, maimed corpses left for
everyone to see, and other manipulations can instil fear and panic.
Because, as these courses stipulate, fear puts one to light, it paralyzes and makes one stay
still. and as lacheroy says, when a receptacle is held in place, one can pour what one wants
inside. it is the metaphor of the human receptacle: when it is seized by fear, when it is held
properly inside the framework of a parallel hierarchy, we pour terror into it; the person
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France and the New Imperialism
empties herself and the human receptacle can be illed with whatever message. The Radio
des Mille Collines is very much like that (Périès in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 48).
Consequently, the image of the inyenzi – the cockroach – became very powerful
because it gave a “face” to the “threat”. The “enemy within” demanded total war
and complete domestic cohesion. In other words, the state had to be uniied and
thus reformed to face the greatest threat of all. According to Périès, the doctrine of
revolutionary warfare commands this cohesion of the domestic front against external
aggression. But at the same time, it is a method to create a new state with new
political structures; thus “revolutionary” (in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 45). French
military cooperation taught and exported this doctrine.
For Périès, French doctrine was clearly identiiable in the fragmented organization
of the rwandan state, in the territorialization of the oppression forces, and with the
identity cards that, with a number, could control every individual in its sector. an
individual who was not in his or her sector would automatically be interrogated by
the intelligence services. The question becomes whether or not such a doctrine can
lead to genocide. In any case, as Périès and Saint-Exupéry point out in their own
ways, how such military expertise can bring stability and order is dubious.
it holds the destruction of the state, an explosion of the state’s structures. the system of
parallel hierarchy will superimposed itself, in a climate of such violence that it can only
destroy all the structures, including the administrative structures, including the health care
system. Everyone takes part in it, everyone is involved. Afterward, there is no possible
legitimacy because at some point this doctrine destroys the state. we face a vacuum, and
then it is very hard to rebuild (Périès in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 52).
For saint-exupéry, this doctrine was dehumanizing since it destroys our humanity:
this ‘revolutionary war’ is a beautiful tool. But it is also a ‘cannibalistic’ tool. it is a
doctrine that aims at crushing and denying man, to transform it into a knot of fear, into a
lump of nerves, in order to deprive it of its free will. it is a doctrine that transforms man
into a tool. A doctrine of pure terror (Saint-Exupéry 2004, 281).
when they elaborate such a doctrine, soldiers might just aspire to be the best
machines of war. one is left to wonder however, how waging war so can result in a
peaceful and stable post-war future.
Direct Military Involvement in the Civil War and the Machine of the Genocide
there are two ways to see direct French military involvement in the rwandan civil
war and with the machine that executed genocide. The irst is the most obvious
if predisposed to diverse interpretations. It is the higher-level “advising” of highranking French oficers who participated closely and actively in the Rwandan
decision-making process. These French oficers did more than to train and advise
their rwandan counterparts. they were basically in command of rwandan forces.
the other way is not as obvious if simply because it is harder to believe. moreover,
it should be noted that no French soldier has come forward oficially so far to
corroborate these accusations. it is the direct actions of French soldiers who operated
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135
roadblocks, machine gun positions, and who contributed to the “sorting out” of Tutsi
from hutu.
the mipr reported that the dami was complemented, as demanded by Kigali,
with a French oficer assistant to the defence attaché whose mission was to advise
the rGF chief of staff.6 in april 1992, admiral lanxade named lieut.-col. JeanJacques Maurin to a temporary assignment as the oficer personally in charge of
advising the RGF chief of staff. Maurin testiied that he participated actively in the
elaboration of the daily battle plans and in the decision-making process. He also met
on a daily basis with col. laurent serubuga who was a member of the inner core of
the Habyarimana regime (Akazu), the Zero Network (death squads), a propagandist
of anti-Tutsi rhetoric, and with close links with the Interahamwe. Maurin was also
solicited to create an intelligence company based on French elite troops and a phonetapping team. maurin was also responsible of the daily updating of intelligence
reports on the tactical situation (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 159-60).
In February 1993, Col. Dominique Delort assumed command of French forces
in rwanda: the noroît contingent, the panda dami, and the rapas cell of the 1st
rpima which encompassed panda and which supported the rGF during operation
Chimère. According to the MIPR, the RPF offensive of 8 February 1993 totally
demoralized the rGF forces, which rapidly lost control of the situation. on 22
February, delort welcomed col. didier tauzin who arrived with approximately 20
oficers and specialists from the 1st RPIMA. Delort then put all DAMI personnel
under Tauzin’s authority for the duration of Operation Chimère (22 February – 28
March 1993). The Chimère mission was a typical train/support mission, but on a
larger scale. according to the mipr’s analysis of various documents regarding
Chimère, the “objective of the detachment was to supervise indirectly an army of
about 20,000 men and to command it indirectly” (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1,
165). However, the MIPR report did not indicate how one commands “indirectly.”
we cannot conclude with certainty whether or not French forces fought the rpF
except for a few reported incidents. however, it seems clear that France supported an
army that in all likelihood would have collapsed without its support. Dallaire (2003,
71) reported that French soldiers operated patrols and roadblocks in and around
Kigali. in charge of the civilian cooperation mission in Kigali between october 1992
and September 1994, Michel Cuingnet testiied to the MIPR:
regarding the military sphere, if there was a very oficial cooperation with the Gendarmerie
under the authority of colonel Bernard cussac, defence attaché, we saw the opposite
in september and october 1993, a month after the arusha accords: French soldiers
controlling roads under the shelter of nests of machine guns, for example that from Kigali
to Ruhengeri, and to almost take the role of an army of occupation despite the fact that
6 Although the MIPR discussed the question of French advisers, the report is often
confusing as to who, how, when, and in what capacity French oficers advised Rwandan
commanders. While the report sometimes reads as speciic and clear, at other times it reads as
if every high-ranking French oficer advised Rwandan commanders at some point or other. In
other words, the chain of command seems unclear. the most probable explanation is not that
the report is imprecise or sloppy, but that it relects the complexity of the French formal and
parallel hierarchies.
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France and the New Imperialism
the memorandum, signed the year before by the president of the rpF and rwandan prime
Minister Dismas Nsengiyaremye, speciied that foreign troops were to leave (Assemblée
nationale 1998, vol. 3, 176).
during combat, French advisers were very close to the action and, at the very least,
helped the RGF to adjust its mortar and artillery ire. The parliamentary Mission
itself concluded:
if France did not go into battle, it intervened however on the terrain in a manner that brought
it extremely close to the RGF. It has, continuously, taken part in the elaboration of battle
plans, given advice to headquarters and sector commanders, proposed reorganization and
new tactics. it sent advisers to train the rGF on how to handle sophisticated weaponry.
It taught the techniques of setting booby traps and of mining, even suggesting the most
suitable sites (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 171).
In other words, the French were in charge. They might not have ired a shot, but they
saved the rGF from the rpF.
to the cec, immaculée cattier claimed that as soon as april 1991, French
soldiers participated in roadblocks with the RGF. She related her experience at a
roadblock where two French armoured vehicles were supporting Rwandan soldiers
and two French soldiers performed identity checks:
tutsi were made to get out of the car and the French soldiers handed them over to irritated
militiamen who chopped them with machetes and threw them out in the ditch by the roadside
of the main Ruhengeri-Kigali road … I saw a Tutsi who was taken out of a car … After
checking his identity card, a French soldier and another Rwandan oficer gave him to the
militiamen who immediately began, in front of these cars, to strike him with their machetes
… to then throw him in the ditch … When I saw that, I looked around us in the ditch where
I saw some bodies lying in silence (Cattier in: Coret and Verschave 2005, 21).
whether or not French soldiers participated directly or indirectly in massacres or in
the genocide will most likely always be contested. The MIPR itself concluded with
a harsh if somewhat diluted critique:
French forces set up, between February and March 1993, on the orders of the headquarters
of the armies, a well-developed surveillance system of the approaches to Kigali, ready
on short notice to eventually transform itself so as to interdict access in order to ensure
the evacuation of French nationals, but also to prevent RPF iniltration. This active
surveillance, in the form of patrol and ‘check-points’, incontestably leads to performing
identity checks even if it is carried out in collaboration with the Rwandan Gendarmerie.
If the rules of behavior at the ‘check-points’ refer to the ‘handover to the Rwandan
Gendarmerie of all suspect, weapon or documents seized’, we cannot see how such a
procedure can be followed without beforehand having to perform an identity check or a
search. How, under these conditions, are we to deine ‘the limited action to support the
Rwandan Gendarmerie in charge of identity checks’ as anything else than cooperation?
in short, how are we to explain the orders to prohibit access of the positions to the press
and the Gomn, if not by the existence of a commitment of the French forces in police
operations that are, on principle, to fall within the competence of the national authorities
and that are preferably not to be emphasized? (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 176).
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137
in short, French military cooperation was so close, so deep, and so integral to the
protection of the rGF, Kigali, and the regime that it seems unconceivable that French
soldiers did not operate identity checks at roadblocks or other. In other words, it seems
likely that French cooperation was limited only to direct intervention against the RPF.
Arming Murderers
a narrow conception of the French national interest and of military cooperation
accords has made France the main arms supplier in africa. the mipr annexes
indicate that 146 arms contracts were signed between France and rwanda between
1990 and 1994. as to whether or not they were honoured, all delivered, or who
paid for the weapons (Rwanda, French Ministry of Defence, or Cooperation), more
research needs to be done.
It is always dificult to explore the question of arms transfers in France because
of at least three particularities. First, the French system is based on prohibition.
every transfer is forbidden unless it is authorized by the prime minister. the
interministerial commission for the study of weaponry exports (cieemG –
Commission interministérielle pour l’étude des exportations de matériel de guerre)
is the body that authorizes all arms sales. such an authorization is not a guarantee for
delivery. An oficial authorization (AEMG – autorisation d’exportation des matériels
de guerre) must be acquired from the state’s organization responsible for armament
(dGa – Délégation générale pour l’armement) at the Ministry of Defence. Secondly,
this procedure for authorizing transfers is secret. even decisions are not made public.
only since 1998 has the ministry of defence begun to publish reports concerning
arms exports (and the reports are not very transparent). Thirdly, there are exceptions
to the procedure. in the case of rwanda, and under military cooperation, the ministry
of Defence can give military equipment without going through the procedure or even
the prime minister. As well, French brokers and arms dealers can escape control
when the arms that they sell, buy, or resell do not pass in transit through France
(since 2000, brokers and dealers are now subject to some degree of control). Despite
these dificulties, we can observe that French military support was essential to the
habyarimana regime between 1990 and 1994. the mipr did not explore the topic
of arms transfers in much depth. moreover, it stopped its investigation in april 1994,
and did not examine the public-private dynamics of Franco-African arms traficking
(for example: Berghezan 2002). However, the MIPR offered enough to demonstrate
the strong French commitment to Kigali.
the cieemG approved of 62 arms transfers between 1987 and 1994, worth 591
millions francs. It consented to the transfer of equipment ranging from radios and
goggles to machine guns and artillery shells. worthy of mention is the approval of
20,000 antipersonnel mines even though the ministry of defence asserts that France
has not exported mines since 1986. the mipr also presented a list of aemGapproved transfers. the report is not clear, but aemG transfers appear to sometimes
sell or donate weapons without going through the cieemG. Between 1990 and 1994,
there were 62 contracts reviewed by the cieemG and 84 consented by aemG. on
top of these 146 contracts, we need to add 19 donations of diverse equipment (see
Tables 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3).
138
Table 7.1
Year
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Total
France and the New Imperialism
CIEEMG approved weapons transfers, 1987-1994
Weapon
Number
Rockets 68-mm
Milan 2 iring posts
Milan 2 antitank missiles
Rockets 68-mm
mortars 120-mm
munitions 120-mm
Grenades
mortars 60-mm
Milan 2 iring posts
Milan 2 antitank missiles
munitions 7,62-mm
Rockets 68-mm
munitions
Rockets 68-mm
mortars 81-mm
munitions 81-mm
Gazelle helicopters
munitions 60-mm
cartridges 60-mm
munitions 90-mm
hand grenades
40-mm gun grenades
munitions 5,56-mm
munitions 60-mm
munitions 81-mm
mortar shells 81-mm
munitions 5,56-mm
munitions 12,7-mm
mortar shells 120-mm
antipersonnel mines
igniters
Rocket-launcher 68-mm
munitions 20-mm
munitions 90-mm
Rockets 68-mm
aml 60
pistols 9-mm
assault weapons sG542
munitions 7,62-mm
munitions 9-mm
Rocket-launcher 68-mm
Rockets 68-mm
mortar shells 120-mm
3,000
4
16
500
10
2,100
12,000
30
4
16
140,860
400
3,000
697
13
2,000
3
2,500
1,000
1,000
9,000
7,000
588,060
10,000
500
1,200
700,000
150,000
5,300
20,000
600
6
10,000
3,000
1,000
12
250
530
265,000
125,000
6
1,000
5,300
Value (million francs)
50
19
116
191
48
122
44
1
591
Source: Assemblée nationale (1998, vol. 2, 540-561). Non-lethal equipment was not
included.
139
Complicity in Genocide
Table 7.2
Year
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
Total
Arms transfers authorized by AEMG, 1990-1994
Weapon
munitions 60-mm
Milan iring posts
pistol 22 lr
cartridges 22 lr
revolvers 357 magnum
munitions 357
cartridges
Rockets 68-mm
munitions 9-mm
Riles
munitions 7,62-mm
Grenades
munitions 9-mm
revolver 357 magnum
weapon support
Gazelle helicopters
munitions 120-mm
munitions 5,56-mm
Rocket-launcher 68-mm
shells 90-mm
revolver 357 magnum
revolvers 38
munitions 38
munitions 60-mm
munitions 81-mm
rasura radars
Pistol Glock 17
pistol 6,35
munitions 6,35
pistol 9-mm
munitions 9-mm
pistol Beretta
munitions Beretta
munitions 120-mm
munitions 60-mm
Rockets 68-mm
revolver 357 magnum
machine guns cal 56
munitions 12,7-mm
pistols
munitions pistols
pistols 9-mm
pistol 7,65-mm
Number
2,250
2
1
200
2
150
600
600
121,500
6
5,000
100
200
1
20
3
4,000
700,000
6
1,300
1
2
400
1,800
2,000
6
1
1
100
1
100
1
100
2,000
1,800
200
2
50
100,000
7
100
2
1
Value (million francs)
9
5
90
32
0,4
136,4
Source: Assemblée nationale (1998, vol. 2, 540-561). I did not include transmission, listening,
radio, and other such equipment.
140
Table 7.3
France and the New Imperialism
Other transfers (sale or donation), 1990-1994
Weapons
rasura radars
machine guns 12,7-mm
artillery 105-mm
Munitions
mortar 60-mm
mortar 81-mm
machine gun supports
12,7-mm
shells 105-mm
Weapon systems
Gazelle helicopters
6
70
8
1,000
2,000
25
32,400
6,000
3
Source: Assemblée nationale (1998, vol. 1, 180).
Operation Turquoise
Oficially, Operation Turquoise (22 June–22 August 1994) can be distinguished from
other French military operations in rwanda because it concerned the rwandans
themselves, because it had nothing to do with any defence or military assistance
agreement or the protection of French citizens, and because it had a united nations
mandate. According to the MIPR, Turquoise was clearly a mission with humanitarian
and neutral objectives. If not purely humanitarian, the MIPR concluded that Turquoise
was not an operation to reconquer Rwanda but one to favour a political solution.
Overall however, the MIPR’s analysis of Turquoise seems excessively supericial for
it does not examine many crucial aspects, it analyses supericially other elements, it
does not investigate Turquoise in relation to previous French actions and within the
context of France’s role prior to the operation, and it even seems to try misleading
the public in the case of Bisesero (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 311-49).7
France had claimed that it would not act without a un mandate. Before the
security council had a chance to meet, an advance elite team of French troops landed
on 20 June at the airport of Goma, Zaire. on 16 June, France had started to position
its forces in the Central African Republic. There was little response to requests for
7 Bisesero is near Kibuye, where approximately 50,000 tutsi went into hiding in the
surrounding hills and where survivors were found on 27 June by journalists and French
soldiers. it would appear that the French soldiers who found the survivors told them that they
would come back later to pick them up. Their oficer, most likely Capt. Marin Gillier, had
been ordered at the time to leave them there by Col. Rosier. On 30 June, Gillier “rediscovered”
the survivors and France thus “saved” about 800 persons. After three days, it seems that
Gillier disobeyed his orders and “rediscovered” Bisesero. The MIPR seems to mislead us
in two ways. First, it states that the survivors were irst discovered on 30 June instead of 27
June (p. 328). Secondly, the MIPR later talks twice of July instead of June when discussing
Bisesero (p. 349). As the CEC pointed out, such carelessness from the MIPR seems unlikely
and suggests foul play (Coret and Verschave 2005, 433-5).
Complicity in Genocide
141
support from various allies: between them senegal and chad decided to send a
few hundred soldiers; congo and niger sent approximately 40 soldiers each, and
mauritania provided four doctors (coret and Verschave 2005, 393-5; melvern 2000,
210). Consequently, nine days after Mitterrand had called for French intervention on
18 June, and ive days after UN resolution 929 endorsed French intervention on 22
June, French troops were seen near Kibuye on the morning of 27 June 1994 (saintExupéry 2004, 50).
although it was supposed to be a humanitarian intervention, the French force was
equipped to wage war. The French commander, General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, had
2,500 troops, including nearly 300 soldiers from special forces (COS), a minimum
of 100 armoured vehicles, a battery of heavy 120-mm mortars, two light Gazelle
helicopters, eight Super Puma helicopters, four Jaguar ighter-bombers, four Mirage
F1CT ground-attack planes, and four Mirage F1CRs for reconnaissance (Melvern 2000,
212; Prunier 1995, 291).8 moreover, the force had been given a chapter Vii mandate
allowing for all necessary means to accomplish its humanitarian objectives. in other
words, the French force was placing UNAMIR (Dallaire’s contingent) between two
potential belligerents: the French army and the rpF. as dallaire puts it:
As far as I was concerned they were using a humanitarian cloak to intervene in Rwanda,
thus enabling the rGF to hold on to a sliver of the country and retain a slice of legitimacy
in the face of certain defeat. if France and its allies had actually wanted to stop the
genocide, prevent my UNMOs from being killed and support the aims of the UN mission
– something France had voted in favour of twice at the security council – they could have
reinforced UNAMIR instead (Dallaire 2003, 425).
more disturbingly, when news of the French intervention reached Kigali, it prompted
a surge in the ranks of the génocidaires:
news [of the intervention] that was soon picked up by the RTLM and the other local
stations and broadcast to the nation. the defending forces in Kigali went mad with joy at
the prospect of imminent rescue by the French. Their renewed hope and conidence had
the side effect of reviving their hunt for genocide survivors, which put in further jeopardy
those who remained in refuges in the few churches and public buildings that had been
left untouched. the génocidaires believed that the French were coming to save them and
that they now had carte blanche to inish their gruesome work … It seemed to me that for
every life that Opération Turquoise would save, it would cost at least another because of
the resurgence of the genocide (Dallaire 2003, 426, 437).
French troops were welcomed like liberators.
on the ground, the welcome given to the French troops by the Interahamwe and the
local authorities of the former regime was enthusiastic. enormous French tricolors
were displayed everywhere, even on FAR [RGF] military vehicles. They proved to be
an embarrassment, not only because of the press, but because, on seeing French lags,
hidden Tutsi would come out of hiding only to be immediately killed by the soldiers or
the militiamen. the French troops, who had been given a properly slanted view of events
8 The MIPR talks of a ceiling of 2,924 French soldiers and 510 foreign soldiers
(Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 326).
142
France and the New Imperialism
beforehand, were rudely awakened when they began to realize the relationship France
had entertained with the rwandese authorities. as a French soldier protested, ‘i am fed up
with being cheered along by murderers’ (Prunier 1995, 292).
An oficer of the COS, Capt. Marin Gillier, later conirmed this welcome (SaintExupéry 2004, 26).
Written on 22 June 1994, the operational orders for Turquoise were clear and precise:
“to put an end to the massacres everywhere possible, possibly with the use of force
[emphasis in original]” (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 322). This mission was to be
accomplished while respecting three rules of behaviour: 1) to remain neutral; 2) to insist
that the mission was to stop the massacres and not to combat the rpF or support the rGF;
and 3) to promote and insist on the humanitarian nature of the intervention (Assemblée
nationale 1998, vol. 1, 322). However, one should notice the use of the word “massacre”
instead of genocide. The rhetoric is signiicant for it meant that the génocidaires were
still recognized as legitimate and that the RPF was put on an equal footing in terms of
atrocities committed. in other words, we could already see the rhetoric of two genocides
taking shape.9 From this perspective, to remain neutral seems logical. But in the case of
genocide, of the state-organized annihilation of an entire people as recognized by the
international community at the time, neutrality can be interpreted as taking side with the
génocidaires.
in that regard, dallaire’s account of his meetings with lafourcade and his staff is
revealing.
While I was talking about stopping the ongoing genocide, his [Lafourcade] staff were
raising points about the loyalty France owed its old friends … they thought that
unamir should help prevent the rpF from defeating the rGF, which was not our job.
i tried to alert lafourcade to be on his guard when it came to the interim government …
But my French interlocutors weren’t convinced and continued to express their displeasure
with unamir’s poor handling of the military aspects of the civil war. they refused to
accept the reality of the genocide and the fact that the extremist leaders, the perpetrators
and some of their old colleagues were all the same people. they showed overt signs of
wishing to ight the RPF (Dallaire 2003, 450).
In fact, according to Major Beardsley, Operation Turquoise leaders told Dallaire
that they were in Rwanda to defend the Francophonie, to ight the RPF (Interview,
Kingston Canada, July 2005). Some of these French oficers were not only from the
colonial tradition, but they had served in rwanda with the rGF between 1990 and
1994 which might, in part at least, explain some “inconsistencies” with Turquoise.
9 The question of RPF massacres or murders remains a touchy one in France (and
elsewhere) because the RPF is considered either as the force that put a stop to the genocide
by those who reject the French government version of its role in rwanda or as the ‘enemy’
by those who would have reconquered Kigali. It now seems that RPF troops did commit
murders and important massacres, but the number of victims remains a matter of controversy.
in any case, whatever the crimes rpF members committed, they seem to have been either
political assassinations or motivated by revenge and could hardly be described as genocide.
to compare the actions of the rpF with those of the génocidaires amounts to negating the
genocide in the irst place.
Complicity in Genocide
143
dallaire later received a memo from general lafourcade that stated he had no
mandate to disarm the RGF (despite his Chapter VII mandate). He would not disarm
the militias or the rGF in the humanitarian protection zone unless they posed a
threat to the people within the zone. “As a result, the extremists would be able to
move about freely in the zone, safe from any interference from the French, and also
safe from retribution from or clashes with the RPF” (Dallaire 2003, 457).
Turquoise was also accused of creating, or of trying to create, a “Hutuland.”
assuming that France tried, it failed because of the rpF advances. it also seemed that
French forces evacuated members of the extremist party out of rwanda; they chose
not to close down Radio des Mille Collines; and they secured a “refugee corridor”
into congo-Zaire for the génocidaires who found sanctuary in the refugee camps in
eastern Zaire (see: Coret and Verschave 2005, 379-444). The essential questions,
however, are best expressed by dallaire and saint-exupéry:
A French oficer named Colonel Thibault, who had been a long-time military adviser to
the RGF, was in charge of the southwest region of the HPZ [humanitarian protected zone].
thibault publicly announced that he was not in rwanda to disarm the rGF or the militias
and that if the rpF made any attempt to come near the hpZ line, he would use all the
means at his disposal to ight and defeat them … Lafourcade had to rein Thibault in and, to
his credit, he did, publicly rebuking his subordinate commander. He clariied Turquoise’s
position in an unequivocal media statement: ‘We will not permit any exactations [sic] in
the hpZ against anybody and we will refuse the intrusion of any armed elements’. he
sent a letter to Kagame through me explaining the situation, and Kagame received it with
his usual scepticism. The question did remain: Which man best expressed Turquoise’s
underlying sympathies, Lafourcade or Thibault? (Dallaire 2003, 459).
Saint-Exupéry witnessed a much more troubling and shocking event during
Turquoise. In Kibuye on a tour of inspection, Admiral Lanxade, then chief of staff of
the armies, was greeted by Col. Patrice Sartre, commander of the northern task force
(Kibuye region). At the end of the reception, Sartre offered Lanxade a little present:
It was a wooden plaque, cut as in a trunk. About thirty centimeters in width, it had been
carved so as to represent rwanda. on it, by way of decoration, were small machetes
… standing besides the admiral, proud of his idea, colonel sartre was smiling. he was
beaming with self-satisfaction … it could be pure bad taste. it could also be a symbol. i did
not know … Everything had a double meaning … Years later, I evoked this memory with
admiral lanxade … he explained to me that he did not really remember, that indeed the
gift had appeared particular to him but that he could not really remember. But more than
that, what struck me was his embarrassment. I am unaware, Sir [Dominique de Villepin],
if you have ever discussed with a chief of staff the armies whose embarrassment was so
palpable it would show even on the telephone. it was the case. the admiral was disturbed,
very disturbed. Near confusion (Saint-Exupéry 2004, 106-7).
In Paris, Saint-Exupéry reported that the issue of Turquoise’s main objective was the
object of a tough political battle between the mitterrand line and the Balladur line.
The former favoured the reconquest of Kigali in order to put France’s allies back
into power – the typical colonial expedition. the latter were against any colonial
expedition and wanted to limit Turquoise to a humanitarian intervention. Military
144
France and the New Imperialism
staff oficers were divided. On the ground, oficers had to differentiate humanitarian
operations from secret operations. in the end, it seems that it was the rpF that
solved the issue by capturing Kigali on 4 July 1994. it was too late for the colonial
expedition (Saint-Exupéry 2004, 100-105).
the last section of this chapter discusses political accountability and
responsibility. For now, trying to make sense of all the above information one
should only remember the “special relationship” between France and sub-Saharan
africa and the attempts by the Balladur government to normalize Franco-african
relations prior to the rwandan genocide. it should be obvious that French military
interventions in rwanda, pre- and post-genocide, are in so many ways reminiscent
of a colonial tradition. the examination of French diplomacy will now give us more
insights into why african leaders believe that there are advantages to be part of the
Françafrique.
Diplomatic Complicity
Even before the genocide, the French reaction to the RPF actions had been quite
sharp. The RPF was portrayed as an unprovoked aggressor from a foreign country,
uganda. the massacres committed by the habyarimana regime were even denied
by Ambassador Georges Martre. The DGSE (French secret services) repeatedly
accused uganda of supporting the rpF and accused the latter of burning villages
and engaging in large-scale killings. The DGSE was actively participating in a
disinformation campaign which generally speaking presented the civil conlict as
something new and as an unambiguous foreign invasion. on 17 February 1993,
during operation noroît, then minister of cooperation marcel debarge stated to the
press:
France has supported the arusha negotiations which have led to an agreement between
the government and the opposition to create a transition cabinet … in any case, the world
Bank and the other donors keep their representatives in Kigali only because of our military
presence which – need I remind you – is there only to protect our citizens (quoted in:
Prunier 1995, 177).
On February 28, Debarge arrived in Kigali to demand that the opposition “make a
common front” with the Rwandan president against the RPF. As Prunier (1995, 178)
points out, such a call in such a context “was nearly a call to racial war.”
Journalist C. Braeckman and Vénuste Kayimahe, an employee of the Kigali’s
French cultural centre, reported that the rwandan interim government was formed
on 7 april 1994 at the French embassy in the presence of the French ambassador
marlaud. members of the extremist factions Froduald Karamira, Justin mugeni, JeanBosco Barayagwiza, Hassan Ngeze, Ferdinand Nahimana, Jérôme Bicamumpaka,
Pauline Nyiramasuhoko, Colonel Bagosora, and others were the interlocutors of
ambassador marlaud when the interim government, which supervised the genocide,
was constituted. all of these individuals were condemned for genocide or are among
the accused at the international criminal tribunal for rwanda, except for Karamira,
Complicity in Genocide
145
who was tried by the rwandan justice system, condemned, and executed (coret and
Verschave 2005, 213-7).
Two of these important participants in the genocide were also oficially welcomed
in Paris. On 27 April 1994, Foreign Affairs Minister Jérôme Bicamumpaka and CDR
leader and RTLM shareholder Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza were quietly received by
mitterrand, prime minister edouard Balladur, and Foreign minister alain Juppé
when many nongovernmental organizations were already talking of genocide.
The meetings took place despite strong protests by Daniel Jacoby, president of the
international Federation of human rights.
After the genocide, Braeckman found a document written by Lieut.-Col. Ephrem
rwabalinda, deputy to rGF chief of staff. rwabalinda described a visit in may 1994
to the ministry of cooperation in paris. he met with General Jean-pierre huchon on
9 may, to discuss French support and the need for more weapons and ammunitions.
Huchon proposed to step up efforts to “prove” the legitimacy of the war to the
international community in order to resume bilateral military cooperation. as well,
Huchon conirmed the delivery of a secure phone that would let him and General
Bizimungu, the RGF chief of staff, discuss matters without risk of being overheard.
more importantly, huchon emphasized that France could not intervene in favour of
Kigali as long as media opinion supported the rpF, and as long as the political and
military leaders of Rwanda were held responsible for the “massacres.” Consequently,
“the media battle constitutes an emergency.” Lieut.-Col. Rwabalinda concluded:
“These contacts allowed me to investigate how French military cooperation was
uncomfortable to explain to us its reserve for direct intervention because of its
concern for European and American public opinion.”10
it must be said that the document’s authenticity has not been clearly established.
however, other elements seem to corroborate it and to support its authenticity.
For example, on 5 may 1994, four days before the huchon-rwabalinda meeting,
435,000 francs were debited from a Banque de France account to the Rwanda
National Bank for a payment to Alcatel, a communication company. Rwabalinda left
Paris on May 13. Chrétien, a historian of the Great Lakes region, testiied to the CEC
that around that time there was some sort of normalization period of the genocide
and of the interim government. Between about may 12 and 16, Bernard Kouchner
was in Kigali “to save a bunch of orphans in Interahamwe-held territory” because
the “French public was in a state of shock and horror over the genocide in Rwanda
and was demanding action” and because that “action would be a public relations
coup for the interim government” (Dallaire 2003, 367-9). It was a period when Pope
John Paul II openly spoke of genocide (May 15), when Alain Juppé used the term
“genocide” in Brussels (May 16), but also when, in the French media, the notion of
a “double genocide” appeared (May 12-20). The Radio des Mille Collines became
less provocative and suggested that people pick up the corpses and so on (see: Coret
and Verschave 2005, 56-73).
even after the genocide, dallaire met with General Bizimungu in Goma in July
1994 at the Turquoise military camp: “I was met at the airport by Lafourcade, who
asked me to be discreet about how the meeting with Bizimungu had been arranged
10 The document is reproduced in Coret and Verschave (2005, 514-5).
146
France and the New Imperialism
– it might not look so good that the RGF chief was inside the French military camp”
(Dallaire 2003, 473). In August 1994, they met again:
lafourcade provided transport and escorts for me to go and meet augustin Bizimungu,
who had asked to see me. The former RGF chief of staff was now living in a comfortable
bungalow on a hill overlooking Lake Kivu, and seemed totally at home. He was surrounded
by a few senior Zairean oficers, a couple of French oficers and, to my surprise, the same
huge RGF lieutenant-colonel who had come into Bagosora’s ofice on the afternoon of
April 7 (his G-2, or intelligence oficer, a man said to have been deeply involved in the
genocide) … Soon he had launched into his usual tirade against the RPF, accusing them
of genocide and of targeting RGF oficers and their families for execution. He did not ask
me how things were inside Rwanda but gave me an earful about his desire to go back and
sort out the RPF once and for all (Dallaire 2003, 506).
In August 1994, some oficers and oficials in France were planning revenge, trying to
re-legitimize the Mobutu regime, and ighting in the name of a special relationship.
Immunity, Impunity, and Raison d’Etat
On 9 September 1994, when questioned about French support of the Habyarimana
regime, President François Mitterrand stated: “His country was at the UN and he
represented in Kigali an 80 per cent ethnic majority. he was recognized by everyone.
Why would there have been a ban [interdit]? It is France, quite the opposite, which
facilitated the negotiations between the two ethnic groups” (quoted in: Assemblée
nationale 1998, vol. 1, 358). The president’s answer relected a race-thinking
reminiscent of a colonial tradition. Democracy was redeined as the rule of an ethnic
majority. the negotiations that France supported – a fact which the mipr often fails
to mention – are those between a multiethnic opposition and extremists. as former
prime minister sylvestre nsanzimana said on swB/radio rwanda on 15 september
1994: “Negotiations … sound like a mockery. They are mocking people when they
say we must negotiate with the killers. This is tantamount to saying: well, Africans
kill each other all the time. They can negotiate and we will see” (quoted in: Prunier
1995, 334).
while earlier in this chapter i stated that my primary objective was not to
assign blame for the genocide, it should be noted that not to assign blame is here to
perpetuate the symbolic state, to acquiesce to the politics of impunity, to surrender
to the security discourse and to raison d’état, and thus to maintain the conditions
that produced the immunity and impunity which protected those individuals who
committed so-called “errors of assessment.” In that regard, the MIPR is exemplary:
How can we justify such help to Rwanda when it leads one to think that France supports a
logic of war while it considers, on the diplomatic front, that only the opening up of domestic
politics will solve the conlict. It seems that the answer consisted in saying, on the one
hand, that democratization is hard to achieve in a country destabilized by war, and on the
other hand that faced with the certainty of a rpF military victory, it was advisable to allow
the RGF to resist in order to preserve the political and diplomatic negotiation capacity
of the Rwandan government. This stance of France had a double consequence: it did not
Complicity in Genocide
147
fully appreciate the political drift of the rwandan regime; and it was led, in the name of
preserving the conditions for diplomatic negotiations, into a logic of supporting the RGF.
This logic will get it involved in the conlict to such a degree that it will later be criticized
for staying for too long (Noroît), for leaving hurriedly during the setting in motion of the
genocide (Amaryllis) and inally for having returned under the cover of a humanitarian
operation (Turquoise) [my emphasis] (Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 357).
according to the mipr, France was too committed to a diplomatic solution which
required two parties: hence French unconditional military support to the RGF and a
racist regime. So-called “stability” and RGF control over the territory were deemed
necessary prerequisites to make sure that negotiations would go smoothly (Assemblée
nationale 1998, vol. 1, 361). The MIPR’s logic is based on the premise that France
is uniied and indivisible. This explanation misrepresents not only the events, but
it guarantees that no French oficial or military oficer can be held accountable. If
unamir understood immediately that a variety of French agencies and forces were
at work in Rwanda, how could the MIPR overlook that fact? As Major Beardsley of
unamir puts it:
From the reconnaissance mission right through the genocide, it seemed to us [Major
Beardsley and General Dallaire] that there were [French] independent agencies that had
their own agenda. French diplomats, unless they were the best liars, always appeared to
us as genuinely promoting the peace process, the democratization of rwanda, the return
and reintegration of refugees, and so on. they were always constructive. the French
military was the exact opposite; 180 degrees, very, very anti-RPF. They refused to shake
hands or to speak to them at social events. Whenever they came around UNAMIR, they
were incredibly ignorant and treated everyone (except Belgians) including myself with
nothing but contempt. in august 1993, General dallaire met with the French ambassador
and its military attaché who went livid when General dallaire suggested 2,500 troops for
UNAMIR. When the ambassador told him to calm down, the attaché rudely asked the
ambassador who he was to tell him to calm down. we never trusted the French military for
they were too cozy with not only the rGF, but especially with the extremists (interview,
Kingston Canada, July 2005).
The MIPR examined “errors of assessment,” “paradoxes,” “misinterpretations,”
and so on, and it called them “institutional dysfunctions.” The MIPR noted that the
various hierarchies of the ministries of defence, cooperation, and Foreign affairs,
the Elysée, and the African cell inevitably produced “problems of coordination” and
obscured the chain of command. in other words, the mipr cannot – or will not – say
who took what decision. It also wondered how elements of the Rwandan “context”
can be, or could have been, taken into account and integrated into a coherent strategy
(Assemblée nationale 1998, vol. 1, 368).
France did not cause genocide (whatever this could mean), but “France was
the unwitting catalyst of ultimate Rwandese descent into the bloodbath” (Prunier
1995, 353). Prunier wrote these words in 1995. Over a decade later, we may want
to reconsider the adjective “unwitting.” It is necessary to do so in order to address
these so-called institutional dysfunctions and to eliminate these spaces of political
immunity and impunity. Blame must be assigned and justice must prevail because
one must realize that what i have discussed above is not an “exception.” The
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involvement of the French state in Rwanda was not an “exception” or blunder. It is
representative of how the colonial republic operates. it illustrates how the discourse
of the symbolic state obscures the workings of the state-as-practice. To the CEC,
Périès said it well:
it is very interesting to see the operation of the French state at the time of the war of
Algeria or of this extreme case that is the Rwandan genocide. It compels us to question
the nature of our state, including that of the third republic: a colonial state. we could
say: ‘there is a state over there and one here’; but no, it is the same one! … there are
two logics working at the same time where a very strong executive predominates …
a state deeply built on strictly separate systems. it is not a presidential system; it is a
system that wants two states, with parallel structures, without legislative control, without
parliamentary control, where the higher interests of the state are represented. it is the
domain of Raison d’état and of its speciic forces, and in this occasion they appear in a
garish light … All of this call into question the operation of a democratic State (Périès in:
Coret and Verschave 2005, 457).
the case of rwanda sheds light on this parallel state. relations of power are revealed
and individual accountability is made possible. Military oficers, politicians, and
others can only be held personally responsible if we reject the discourse of the
symbolic state and the so-called raison d’état. But similar actions will likely be
repeated by others as long as the domain of raison d’état persists.
chapter 8
hegemonic struggles, hegemonic
restructuring: France in côte d’ivoire
France’s military intervention in côte d’ivoire points to the restructuring of French
hegemony in sub-saharan africa. French military forces were at the centre of both the
military interposition and France’s diplomacy, but their actions were also wrapped
up in a blanket of multilateralism and Africanization. As the French Senate (2006,
44) put it: “The French intervention in Côte d’Ivoire constitutes a kind of laboratory
for change.” These “experiments,” however, seem to have prolonged the conlict and
to have polarized the actors and issues.
launched on 22 september 2002, operation licorne was continuously
(re)authorized through its formal objectives to set up “the necessary conditions
in search of a political solution” (Sénat 2006, 44). France’s engagement was “to
allow Ivorians to deine political solutions” and “their search for African solutions”
(Assemblée nationale 2003b). By supporting the basis of the Marcoussis Accords
that “constitute the only political solution to avoid chaos” France had hoped to
intervene in such a way as to use force to establish peace (assemblée nationale
2004b). Indeed, according to Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin, to
master violence was desirable to achieve peace (Assemblée nationale 2003b). Or,
in the words of Minister of Defence Michèle Alliot-Marie, “a show of force avoids
resorting to force”; the logic being to deter opposition parties from using force to
attain power (Assemblée nationale 2004b).
Licorne was also incessantly (re)authorized to protect foreign nationals, to
guarantee regional stability, and, later, to support the united nations operation in
Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI). However, I argue here that the commitment to a political
solution led to the legitimization of an armed rebellion, and thus it contradicted the
objective of “deterring” the use of force in African politics. Furthermore, France’s
actions prolonged the conlict by artiicially dividing the country in two along a
North-South line. This split was solidiied by polarizing the parties and their concerns,
and through promoting the French understanding of both the so-called roots of the
conlict and of what constituted an appropriate “political solution.”
The historical context is a key aspect of understanding fully the case of French
security policy in Côte d’Ivoire since 2002. But unlike the case of Rwanda, it is
the economic dimensions of dependency that played much more heavily in the
establishment of French hegemony and in the evolution towards the crisis. the
seemingly stable and prosperous ivorian economic model was less dependent
upon the use of military force – that is, until it all started to fall apart. in the end,
however, the case of côte d’ivoire reveals the extent to which French policy is about
the same issues of inluence, subordination, and domination. While France might
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disguise its interventions with the language and politics of multilateralism, its recent
involvement in côte d’ivoire suggests fundamental continuities between the logics
of (neo)colonialism and global governance.
Therefore, in the opening two sections of this chapter, I will briely examine the
historical construction of socioeconomic dependency system and how it led to various
crises in the 1990s. the objective is to underline French long-standing practices and
their effects on côte d’ivoire. From there, this chapter will study in detail France’s
actions since 2002. military and diplomatic interferences will be analyzed and shown
to have favoured the French-deined appropriate political solution, and thus to reveal
their primary objective of reproducing French hegemony.
State Capitalism and Dependency in Côte d’Ivoire
Until the 1980s, the word “miracle” was usually employed to describe Côte
d’Ivoire. The country of President Félix Houphouët-Boigny (1960-93) had been
since independence relatively stable, and had shown considerable growth rates.
houphouët-Boigny often boasted for having opted for capitalist development that
he argued compared favourably to the development models of his leftist neighbours
Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Sékou Touré of Guinea, and Modibo Keita of Mali.
he was pro-west, anti-communist, and an ardent capitalist who often sought to
foil any pan-african project. as president charles de Gaulle’s minister of state, he
was no proponent of independence and decolonization. in 1958, he campaigned
against decolonization. houphouët-Boigny argued that economic development was
the priority, and it was impossible without France’s help and support (Koné 2003;
Schwab 2004). In the 1950s, however, his inluence and strategy were constantly
threatened by the rise of communism and radical nationalists. Consequently, in the
end, he favoured a transition toward independence that safeguarded his power. his
strategy was one of cooperation with the colonial master that depended upon stability
within côte d’ivoire and in its relations with France.
in other words, decolonization was not a fracture between France and côte d’ivoire;
it did not mark an end to French hegemony, but a transition to neocolonialism, to
new structures of France-côte d’ivoire relations. For houphouët-Boigny and other
governing elites, the colonial and dependent nature of Franco-african relations were
essential to their status and power; “they need France and have a great deal invested,
politically, economically and often also emotionally, in this relationship” (Chafer
2001, 167).
this dependency was too often forgotten by those referring to côte d’ivoire as
the “miracle” that imploded. Dependency mechanisms and structures were clearly
relected in the workings and institutions of the Ivorian state and economy. It was a
model of development founded on a type of state capitalism built upon the political
and economic mechanisms left by the colonial administration, dependent on foreign
investments, structured around nepotistic, neopatrimonial, and informal networks
and rules, and relying on the stabilizing and strong presence of French troops,
oficials, private entrepreneurs, and so on. In the words of Samir Amin (1967 and
1988), the miracle was “short-lived”; it was “growth without development.”
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Miracle without Development
the inhospitable coast of côte d’ivoire delayed the establishment of european
trading posts. Before the expeditions of Binger, crozat, marchand, and clozel
(1887-99), the territory now known as Côte d’Ivoire was fairly isolated from Europe,
and thus its paciication was slow and ended only in 1915. The French imposed
a model of development that relied solely on european settlers, who themselves
relied upon forced labour. under the leadership of houphouët-Boigny, the Syndicat
agricole africain, which was later transformed into the Parti démocratique de la
Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI), opposed this system from 1944 on.
in French west africa, opposition to the colonial order was often organized
along the lines established by the colonial power, or at the very least in tandem with
it. in côte d’ivoire, in the mid-1940s, the pdci represented an opposition party
with real inluence in France. The PDCI faced political repression in 1949-50 and
a warrant was even issued in February 1949 for the arrest of houphouët-Boigny.
But in september 1950, houphouët-Boigny met with François mitterrand, then
minister of overseas France. in october 1950, the pdci announced that it would
no longer be afiliated with the French Communist Party. From then on, the political
and economic development of côte d’ivoire was one of a strategic alliance between
houphouët-Boigny, his entourage, and France. For some, this became an ideology
of external dependency (Blé Kessé 2005, 16). At the very least, the strategic alliance
indicated the extent to which internal rule in this part of French africa was only
possible with the consent of powerful elites back in France.
It could be argued then, as Amin (1967) does, that the mise en valeur
(development) of the French colony of Côte d’Ivoire started only in 1950, and that
it followed very similar patterns to that of the colonial development of the British
Gold Coast (1890-1950) with similar results. The key difference was temporal: what
had been done quickly in Côte d’Ivoire had taken over 60 years in places like the
Gold Coast and Senegal (Amin 1971, 65-73). Côte d’Ivoire’s economic growth was
indeed remarkable between 1950 and 1965: an approximate growth rate of 9 per cent
per year for the period, 7 to 8 per cent for 1950-60, and 11 to 12 per cent for 196065 (Amin 1967, 266). This “miracle” continued for a while, in particular during the
period 1975-77 when the country was subjected to a boom in primary commodities.
however, it proved to be short-lived.
In one of his earlier seminal studies, Amin (1967) examined the development of
capitalism in côte d’ivoire. he argued that this impressive growth did not, in fact
could not, translate into economic development. This “growth without development,”
as he called it, was largely the result of the development of an economy without a
suficient material base.1 For Amin, the modes of inancing the growth of the Ivorian
economy could not be forever sustained and would jeopardize its future. it was a
“state capitalism” model in which the state’s weight in the economy continuously and
very rapidly increased through public investment and an open-door policy of direct
foreign investments (especially French). Furthermore, it was a state that was not in a
position to act independently of France. For instance, “[p]ublic investment increased
1
Gunder Frank (1966) called it the “development of underdevelopment.”
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by 250 per cent in real terms between 1975 and 1980, representing 21 per cent of the
GDP in 1978 (70 per cent of total investment)” (Sindzingre and Conte 2002, 128).
According to Amin (1967, 269-71), these modes of inancing conveyed the external
dependence of ivorian economic growth. it also meant that côte d’ivoire would
swiftly shift from a stage of development characterized by a net import of foreign
capital to one of exploitation characterized by a negative balance of payments for reexported proits would soon overcome the direct foreign investments (see also: Amin
1988, 184-93). Indeed, the government’s oficial balance of payments indicated that
the total transfers of foreign companies went from 14 billions in 1963, to 18 billions
in 1965, to 26 billions in 1968; an annual increase of 13 to 14 per cent (amin 1967,
285). Consequently, in 1957 only ten companies out of 300 registered in the importexport business were Ivorian (Bouquet 2005, 233); and in 1983, “69 per cent of the
capital was public, 9 per cent private Ivorian, and 22 per cent foreign” (Sindzingre
and Conte 2002, 130).
Social Transformations, 1950-1965
the development of côte d’ivoire was largely based on the priority to export primary
commodities, mainly cocoa, coffee, fruit, and timber. in 1980 for example, agricultural
exports represented 80 per cent of total ivorian exports (sindzingre and conte 2002,
128). Such a model of development had a considerable impact upon Ivorian social
structures. Between 1950 and 1965, considerable social transformations resulted
from the restructuring of the France-côte d’ivoire relationship.
in the country, a class of rich planters appeared in the 1950s. numbering about
20,000 in 1965, they owned almost a quarter of the land and employed two-thirds of
the wage-earning workforce. They had emerged directly from the traditional elites
who had gradually claimed for themselves a kind of private ownership of the land.
But this rural bourgeoisie was not progressive or nationalistic in the sense that the
economic structures and mechanisms did not entice them to invest their proits back
into the ivorian economy. they made enough for some prestige consumption to
reinforce their social status and to invest in the cities (real estates, transports). Yet,
not obliged to invest into an economy emphasizing primary commodities exports,
the rich planters could not take over the role of replacing foreign capital and, indeed,
often resiliently opposed any change to the system strongly supporting houphouëtBoigny (Amin 1967, 73-111). The historical alliance between the planters and
houphouët-Boigny was more or less the merger of the private planter elite with the
administration elite.
the cities experienced a population growth from 7 per cent of the total population
in 1950 to 17 per cent in 1965. the social changes were not as profound as in the
country, but they relected the structure of a dependent societal system. First, the
importance of foreign capital was perceivable in the increasing share of revenues
of big foreign irms, going from 28 per cent to 40 per cent of nonagricultural
revenues. as well, in 1965, 40 per cent of the total salaries coming out of the modern
sector were paid to europeans. Furthermore, the majority of african salaries were
dependent upon the european sector, while the share of the salaries given to public
sector employees kept increasing: public sector salaries represented 20 per cent of
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
153
all african revenues and 42 per cent of salaries in 1950, and respectively 28 and 48
per cent in 1965 (Amin 1967, 153-95). And in the 1980s, the numbers of coopérants
had gone from 1,260 in 1960 to its maximum of 3,901 in 1979 while “foreigners held
80 per cent of the managerial posts and 50 per cent of the administrative posts in
companies belonging to the modern sector” (Sindzingre and Conte 2002, 130).
last, the ivorian miracle attracted many immigrants who drastically changed the
ratio between ivorians and immigrants, as much in the country as in the cities. in
1965, the immigrant population represented about a quarter of the total population,
35 to 40 per cent of the male active workforce, half that of cities, over 60 per cent
of urban jobs outside the public sector, and somewhere between half to two-thirds
of the plantation rural workforce (Amin 1967, 29-45). Most immigrants came from
Burkina Faso and Mali. According to a 1998 census, the total population of Côte
d’ivoire was just over 15 million inhabitants. over four million were foreigners,
representing 26 per cent of the population: including 2,23 million (14,6 per cent)
from Burkina Faso and 792,258 (5,2 per cent) from Mali (Bouquet 2005, 177).
According to Amin, these were the key characteristics of a dependent society.
planters did not have to invest, the urban classes were not rich enough to compete
with foreign capital, and the country’s elites were mainly administrative. By deinition
then, and as far as amin was concerned, it was a regressive system for it could not
lead to a self-suficient and prosperous Ivorian economy:
If we can speak of the development of capitalism in Côte d’Ivoire, we are not authorized
to speak of a development of an Ivorian capitalism. Ivorian society has no autonomy to
speak of; it cannot be understood without the European society which dominates it: if the
proletariat is african, the real bourgeoisie is missing, domiciled in europe which supplies
capital and managers/executives (Amin 1967, 280).
thus, what has often been referred to as houphouët-Boigny’s political astuteness – he
was and is still widely regarded in France and africa as a man of peace and wisdom
– could be said to have also been required and inluenced by this dependency, the
dependent economic structure being built in the 1950s. That is, his “wisdom” might
have been in managing a social model that marginalized most of his people and that
reproduced social and economic conditions of exclusion. in light of the events since
his death in 1993, we might question his legacy for, as Schwab (2004, 62) writes, the
calamities that befell West Africa demonstrate “that his vision was hanging on by
dint of his own ingernails, and that its future was as dim as the design the radicals
sought to invent.”
the stability and popularity of houphouët-Boigny and of his regime could on
the whole be attributed to the “miracle,” to the remarkable economic growth of Côte
d’Ivoire that beneited enough people to reproduce the system (Amin 1971, 90-93).
But it was also heavily dependent on France:
France was the key to what was termed an economic miracle, while Houphouët served
as the poster boy for French economic policy. his open-door policy was especially
open to France. The Ivorian currency was linked to the French franc, France offered a
protected market for the country’s exports, French was the oficial language, and French
capital investment was encouraged and secured. through the 1980s almost 70 percent of
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manufacturing capital was French … The economic support network provided by France
was nothing short of amazing. houphouët utilized the sensational economy, along with
French adulation of his policies, to reinforce his status as a charismatic leader (schwab
2004, 54).
These arrangements meant that the regime was dependent upon “abundant, regular
and reliable ‘allowances’ [rentes]” (Bouquet 2005, 206). But in turn, these were
dependent upon the “special” relationship between Franco-African elites (see
Chapter 4). Put another way, from the start the system was built on transnational
nepotistic-like practices that were born from a mutually beneicial understanding
and relationship, from the restructuring of colonial dynamics after decolonization.
hence, mainstream analyses that, in order to explain the 2002 crisis, emphasized
the decay of the Ivorian state, corruption, self-interested elites, foreign workers,
ethnic and/or religious groups, and so on, seem to miss out on a crucial element:
how postcolonial Ivorian elites could hardly afford to break away brusquely from
France.
Reinventing Dependency: Prelude to Civil War
The rise of the ideology of neoliberalism, the subsequent transformations in the
international political economy, and the increasing inluence of international inancial
institutions had two major effects on côte d’ivoire. First, structural adjustment
programs imposed economic restraints whose consequences were to accelerate
the processes of pauperization and exclusion of an increasing percentage of the
population. France tempered the impact of the adjustments for the irst half of the
1980s, but decreasingly so especially after the death of houphouët-Boigny in 1993.
second, these economic interventions disrupted the historical political alliances at
the heart of ivorian society. they did not, however, shatter the dependent structures
and mechanisms, but indeed reinforced them at the top in the name of economic
liberalization, eficiency, and good governance. In the end, the domain of the political
was greatly reduced. politics became essentially a matter of electoral contests as
a means to diminishing resources. the amalgamation of conditions of austerity
and the shrinking of policy options encouraged more radical politics, exacerbated
xenophobic tendencies, and led to serious sociopolitical crisis and civil war.
The End of a Miracle, 1980-1993
until the end of the 1970s, the cFa franc zone allowed its members to pay for
external payment deicits. But in the 1980s, market liberalization and deregulation
led to an important and rapid fall in prices of primary commodities. with an economic
structure built largely upon the exports of cocoa and coffee, diminishing revenues
meant that the ivorian state had to resort to debt, and eventually the implementation
of structural adjustment programs. the international monetary Fund and the
World Bank presented to Côte d’Ivoire standard adjustment of privatization and
liberalization: dissolution and/or transformation of the state apparatus, reduction of
salaries and compression of personnel, cutbacks in social expenditures, an opening
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
155
of borders, and so on. in the early to mid-1980s, côte d’ivoire served as a successful
example of adjustment for international inancial institutions. But much like the case
of structural adjustment in central and latin america, the success was interpreted
differently by many ivorians. Between 1985 and 1988 the number of ivorians living in
poverty increased by 16 per cent, internal demand decreased by 19 per cent between
1981 and 1988, and “the balance of payments deicit rocketed from 50 billion CFA
francs in 1987 to a record level of 700 billion in 1989” (B. Campbell 2002, 159).
The programs reduced investment, unemployment increased signiicantly affecting
the young above all, and the outstanding debt reached 11 billion dollars in 1990
(B. Campbell 2000 and 2002; Sindzingre and Conte 2002). France softened the
demands and the impacts of these adjustments by, among other things, bailing out
iscal deicits (Conte 2005).
The IMF and the World Bank wanted to “integrate” Côte d’Ivoire into the world
political economy by eliminating rents and distortions, but houphouët-Boigny wanted
to protect foreign irms and the postcolonial model of development/dependency.
The overall orientation of the irst three adjustment programs … was to prove in large
measure compatible with the prolonging of the essentially ‘political’ mode of economic
management of the country’s resources throughout the post-independence period. the
general orientation of the conditionalities introduced with the irst three structural
adjustment programs was not only relatively compatible with the overall liberal orientation
of the country but it served also to legitimize the reshaping of certain alliances in power
to the detriment of others (B. Campbell 2002, 161).
B. Campbell argues that adjustment programs attacked a good number of those
embedded interests who had greatly beneited from the regime, especially the
students and the teachers. houphouët-Boigny’s regime instrumentalized the
structural adjustments in order to de-legitimize the opposition of the most articulate
social groups by presenting their demands and critics as corporatist (B. campbell
2002, 162-4).
Furthermore, the privatization of over 30 state-owned companies after 1987
seemed to contract the political base by reducing “the volume of the rent and the
number of beneiciaries defending their claims” (Sindzingre and Conte 2002, 142).
State-owned companies were sold to “friends.” The large French irms, supported by
the historical Franco-Ivorian relationship (strongly defended by Houphouët-Boigny),
got the lion’s share. They reinforced their presence, particularly in the key sector
of water, electricity, and communication. At the dawn of the twenty-irst century,
France Télécom had acquired 51 per cent of Citelcom (now Côte d’Ivoire Télécom)
and orange was the biggest cellular phone company in côte d’ivoire. Groupe
Bolloré owned 67 per cent of sitarail which operated the railway between abidjan
and Ouagadougou, and was in almost monopolistic position in transportation (Saga),
and tobacco (Sitab). Air France held 51 per cent of Air Ivoire. Bouygues, through
its subsidiary saur, bought the concession for the electric company ciprel and 25
per cent of the companie ivoirienne d’electricité, and controlled the national water
company sodeci. total and elf owned 25 per cent of sir (Société ivoirienne de
rafinage). Last, the banking sector was shared between BNP, Crédit Lyonnais, and
Société générale (Bouquet 2005, 251; International Crisis Group 2004, 9-11). In the
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France and the New Imperialism
end, a strong argument can be made that privatization reinvented ivorian dependency.
Among others, it increased the inluence of foreign capital in key sectors of the
economy and the number of african salaries and revenues dependent upon foreign
irms.
whereas houphouët-Boigny had been previously able to reinforce his power,
he was unable to repeat this feat after the 1987 crisis when côte d’ivoire stopped
paying interest on its external debt, and after the 1987-9 “cocoa war” when he tried
to inluence world cocoa prices. In fact, under the pressures of the IMF and World
Bank, Houphouët-Boigny halved the guaranteed price of cocoa to planters, thus
marking the end of the historical alliance between the regime and the planters at the
heart of his clientelist system. He also announced important cuts (up to 40 per cent)
in parastatal and civil service wages and an extra 11 per cent tax for the private sector.
the impacts of this resulted in general manifestations and contestations exacerbated
by corruption scandals such as the 300-million dollar building of the notre dame de
la Paix cathedral in the president’s home village of Yamoussoukro.
This irst phase of adjustments had signiicant political effects. In short, they all
pointed to the increased inluence of external agents in setting economic policy, in
redeining the role of the state, and in various direct interventions into the decisionmaking process (B. Campbell 2002, 160). In 1990, this inluence took two forms.
houphouët-Boigny introduced a multiparty system, and in the following elections
he won with 82 per cent of the vote. largely to please international donors and
creditors, in april he appointed alassane ouattara as prime minister and as chair
of an inter-ministerial committee in charge of improving the economy. ouattara
was called by his adversaries the “IMF’s boy” as he had been the director of the
IMF’s Africa department. For Abrahamsen (2000), like many African examples, the
Ivorian experience showed the two key assumptions of the development discourse:
structural adjustments are conducive to democratization and, second, economic
liberalization and democratization are mutually related and reinforcing processes.
In short, what was promoted was a minimalist deinition of democracy that was
limited to multiparty elections while neoliberal economics were heralded as good
governance and inherently democratic.
Because democracy and economic liberalism are conceptually linked in the one concept of
‘governance’, the possibility of conceiving of potential contradictions between the two is
virtually impossible within the parameters of the discourse. to be in favour of democracy
is simultaneously to be in favour of free market economics and structural adjustment.
The fact that the two may at time conlict, so that for instance economic inequalities
generated by capitalist competition may undermine political equality and the functioning
of democracy is rendered inconceivable by the fusion of the concepts. it also follows from
the above deinition of governance that democracy will lead to good governance only if
the electorate chooses governments that adhere to a free market ideology. This is of course
an inherently undemocratic stipulation, in that it attempts to restrict the scope of political
choice. it entails, in short, an a priori determination of economic model and a regulation
of constituents’ preferences to second-order importance (Abrahamsen 2000, 52).
with the death of houphouët-Boigny in december 1993, the global governance
project in côte d’ivoire accelerated. it generated not only political instability, but
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
157
it also contributed to the contraction of the political base and thus to a drift towards
xenophobic authoritarianism.
The Effects of the Global Governance Consensus, 1993-2002
the global governance project of democratization and economic liberalism in côte
d’ivoire never seemed to have considered, or deemed important, the historical legacy
of the dependency model upon which ivorian society had evolved since the 1950s.
ouattara became a politician with the stated ambition to become president. he came
up (and lost) against the president of the National Assembly, Henri Konan Bédié,
avowed successor to houphouët-Boigny. hence, the combination of this political
clash and the social problems brought by the adjustments meant that the neoliberal
reforms were never completed. in 1992, international funding to côte d’ivoire was
suspended. Only France continued its inancial support with 78,2 billion CFA francs
in 1992 (240 millions euros) and 126,7 billions in 1993 (390 million euros) (Conte
2005, 223).
in september 1993, French prime minister edouard Balladur announced his
Abidjan doctrine that stipulated that French inancial aid would now be conditional
upon prior agreements with the imF. But it was January 1994 that really symbolized
the end of an era. France had claimed that it would never dare impose devaluation of
the CFA franc as long as Houphouët-Boigny was alive (Garandeau 2002). The 50 per
cent devaluation signaled what Sindzingre and Conte called the oficial “division of
labour” between France and international inancial institutions:
In 1993, after many years of deicits, France no longer had the means to pay out increasingly
higher sums which did not serve development purposes but were used to reimburse
the multilateral donors. The resumption of relations between the BWI [Bretton Woods
institutions] and the change from private to public inancing became urgent. A ‘division
of labour’ emerged between the Bwi (economic credibility, binding of governments
by multilateral arrangements) and the ex-colonial power (political inluence, privileged
relations and networks), and French aid was tied to the adoption of a programme with the
Bwi. thus reinforced, the conditionality was swapped between donors who suspended
their disbursements if there was a delay in the signing of agreements with the Bwi
(Sindzingre and Conte 2002, 135).
helped by an increase in the prices of cocoa, coffee, rubber, and cotton, for a while
devaluation got the process of growth going again (Garandeau 2002). But, much like
what Amin (1967) had observed during the 1950-65 period, this economic growth
was fragile. it was too dependent upon high international prices as the 1998 return
to lower prices demonstrated. Moreover, despite signiicant inancial aid accorded
in 1994 and 1995, côte d’ivoire was still reimbursing more than it received: 57
million dollars in 1994, 20 millions in 1995, and 135 millions in 1996 (Garandeau
2002). Devaluation and high international prices had essentially beneited the
dynamic sectors of the economy that were oriented toward the exports of primary
commodities. Consequently, it aggravated urban poverty and reinforced former
redistributive practices. Between 1989 and 1995, income per capita decreased by 12
per cent (Garandeau 2002).
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France and the New Imperialism
a few months before the fall of president Bédié, after many years of effort,
the Bretton Woods institutions inally got their panacea: the dismantlement of
caistab (Caisse de Stabilisation et de Soutien des Prix des Produits Agricoles).
created by the colonial administration in the 1950s, it was at the centre of the
regime’s redistributing strategies by determining producer prices and acting as an
intermediary in world markets. The coffee industry was liberalized in October 1998
and the cocoa industry in august 1999. caistab was abolished by decree in January
1999. According to Conte (2005, 226), the privatization of these industries allowed
American multinational corporations to enter the Ivorian market, thus distancing
the local elites from France and reducing resources for local elites. in other words,
privatization presented an opportunity for the possibility of more exclusive control
of international holdings by an ivorian minority. as B. campbell puts it:
the dilemma for those in power until the overthrow in 1999 was that, if they respected
the reforms recommended by the Bretton woods institutions, they would have been
denied precious resources, notably those of the Caisse [Caistab], which were critical for
political regulation; but if they did not respect these reforms, they risked the withdrawal
of resources essential to economic recovery (B. Campbell 2002, 168).
these contradictory imperatives may explain the 1990s drift toward authoritarianism,
the intolerance vis-à-vis political opposition, and the xenophobic propensities.
As Abrahamsen (2000, 77) writes: “The promotion of democracy and economic
liberalism as one and the same thing may not only cause political instability and
hence jeopardize the survival chances of democracy … but may also lead to a form
of democracy that has very little relevance to and implications for the majority of
citizens.” The contradictory imperatives did not disappear after the 1999 coup d’état,
nor after the starting of civil war in 2002. in fact, they were at the heart of the
“political solution” promoted by France.
Regulating the Political: Authorizing France’s Interventions
At the end of 1998, the IMF suspended its inancial assistance to Côte d’Ivoire. The
Bretton woods institutions increased pressures on the Bédié government to reimburse
its loans and to tone down its xenophobic rhetoric around the concept of ivoirité. But
in front of the National Assembly on 22 December 1999, Bédié took a tougher stand,
based on strong ethno-nationalist sentiments, vis-à-vis the international donors and
creditors. The next day, a few soldiers took to the streets to demand the payment of
past due salaries. on christmas eve 1999, General robert Guéï overthrew the Bédié
government.
despite condemning the coup, France sent tremors through its pré carré by
refusing to save the Bédié regime. For Smith (2002), this nonintervention was
the result of multiple factors: the Chirac-Jospin cohabitation, the lack of Ivorian
and international support for Bédié, and a general exasperation of his xenophobic
strategies. it could also be interpreted as the further integration of France within the
institutions and mechanisms of global governance for, in paris, in time Bédié was
perceived as a less than reliable partner for implementing reforms.
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indeed, the events following the coup seem to corroborate such an interpretation.
For B. campbell, the challenge of the interim government was colossal: to hold
elections while building a new social contract founded on legitimate redistributive
practices. However, “The country seems to be caught in a vicious circle: the popular
legitimacy of the transition depends upon the government’s ability to open the
political space by relaxing constraints, with the risk of discrediting the regime in the
eyes of inancial backers” (B. Campbell 2000, 150). In April 2000, Guéï declared
that the payments of wages to civil servants and military personnel were essential
for political stability. But at the same time, he had to make major cuts in the state’s
budget to accommodate international donors and creditors. Following France’s
initiative, the european union made all future cooperation conditional upon a rapid
transition to democracy. A few weeks prior to the October elections, unsatisied
with the process of transition to democracy and reproachful of the exclusion of 14
candidates (including Ouattara), the European Union, the United States, France,
and Canada decided to suspend their inancial assistance. These contradictions were
relected on the actions of the transition regime which had quickly turned to the
rhetoric of ivoirité to dismiss political opponents.
on 22 october 2000, laurent Gbagbo was elected president even though, as
he admitted himself, the conditions of the elections were calamitous. France
immediately issued him a severe warning against any attempt “to thwart the will of
the Ivorian people” (Garandeau 2002). Despite international reservations about his
regime, Gbagbo acquired some legitimacy through popular and military support.
in February 2001, France announced the partial resumption of its cooperation, and
was hard at work trying to normalize relations between Côte d’Ivoire, the members
of the European Union, and international inancial institutions. Nevertheless,
Gbagbo’s regime inherited the same contradictions produced by the promotion of
democratization and economic liberalization. He too quickly resorted to the violent
and xenophobic rhetoric of ivoirité for it served his purposes. as the international
Crisis Group noted (2004, 4), such hate rhetoric diverted attention from the pillage
of the Ivorian economy and, in the longer term, it served to disqualify political
opponents by monopolizing the resources of power.
Representations of Civil War
on 19 september 2002, former soldiers who had been associated with General Guéï’s
junta in 1999 made an attempt to overthrow Gbagbo’s government. it now seemed
clear that the Mouvement Patriotique de la Côte d’Ivoire (MPCI) was a military
operation designed to remove Gbagbo and that it subsequently developed a political
platform with Guillaume soro as its political leader. the movement had been created
in January 2001 by staff sergeant ibrahim coulibaly, who had masterminded the
failed coup d’état. the planners and leaders of the group had sought refuge and
support in Burkina Faso. Ivorian soldiers who had been political victims of Guéï
or Gbagbo joined the movement in Ouagadougou. The deserters were well lookedafter by their hosts, made no secret of their plans, and even circulated tracts in
Ouagadougou which proclaimed the preparation of the armed rebellion. Burkina
Faso also provided logistical support and weapon supplies for the rebellion, lying
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France and the New Imperialism
arms and munitions directly to Bouaké. It would also seem that President Blaise
Compaoré operated in concert with Libya, which offered inancial support, and with
charles taylor’s liberia which opened a second front in october supporting western
“rebels.” Indeed, the involvement of Compaoré, through his brother François and his
entourage, seems undeniable (Banégas and Otayek 2003; International Crisis Group
2003; Marshall-Fratani 2004; Smith 2003).
French military reaction to the coup was without delay. On the irst day, prepositioned forces (about 600 troops) deployed to protect French, American, and
other foreign nationals (Assemblée nationale 2003a). They were reinforced after
the launch of operation licorne on 22 september. in January 2003, the French
forces were composed of 2,571 soldiers, 14 helicopters, three transport planes, and
172 troops from senegal. French licorne forces increased to 4,000 troops later that
year, and up to 5,300 in november 2004. however, despite the defence accords
signed in april 1961, France did not intervene to defend against foreign aggression,
but oficially to answer the Ivorian government’s call for military support. In other
words, France did not recognize the involvement of Burkina Faso. On 2 October, the
Minister of Defence presented the conlict as “a purely Ivorian internal affair.” It was
only on 11 December that Paris denounced “any foreign meddling or interference”
that threatened the integrity of ivorian sovereignty, but without any indication as to
what and whose foreign involvement they were talking about (Smith 2003, 117). And
yet, on 9 november 2004, defence minister alliot-marie explained to the Foreign
Affairs Commission that Burkina Faso’s inluence was essentially inancial and that,
in any case, “Burkina Faso had henceforth contributed to the surveillance of the
borders” (Assemblée nationale 2004b). In a sense, the legal conundrum generated
by the defence accords was no more, as the French senate explained, because on
the one hand, and contrary to Gbagbo’s interpretation that France should intervene
against foreign aggression, “the analysis of French authorities underlined, as far as
they were concerned, the necessity of the political process”; and because, on the
other hand, the new environment of the post-Cold War era meant that “the actual
case of external aggression is dificult because it could very well come from another
state, friend of France” (Sénat 2006, 9-10).
France never denied publicly any foreign interference, but it has yet to repudiate
the myth that this was a case of the army’s mutiny that turned into a political rebellion.
In fact, common representations of the conlict were often given credibility and
authority for they often worked in France’s favour: they authorized and legitimized
French intervention. there were two intertwined discourses that both focused on
so-called internal causes of the conlict. The irst was the developmental malaise
that focused upon bad governance, lack of democratic processes, entrepreneurs
of violence, and other failed-state-like explanations. The second revolved around
the new barbarism rhetoric which focused on the North-South divide, making the
conlict about a clash of civilizations between religious and ethnic groups. While both
discourses contained elements of “truths,” from its position of dominance France
suppressed other aspects (dependency economic structures, foreign involvement,
French interests, and so on) that suggested that the underlying objective of France’s
“political solution” was to alleviate and reconcile the disruptive consequences of
neoliberal development in côte d’ivoire.
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161
the developmental malaise discourse was particularly apparent in the continuous
emphasis put on elections as a way to end the crisis. the advocated solution was the
creation of a government of national reconciliation for which the ministries would
be distributed equally among the various parties. This was to present the political
debate as one about good governance and technical eficiency, thus excluding a priori
social reforms toward more equitable redistributive practices. The Marcoussis Accords
relected this regulation of the political. Signed on 24 January 2003 in France by
representatives of all the ivorian political parties, the accords stipulated that ivorian
public authorities needed to adopt a number of legislative reforms that were understood
to be fundamental to the conlict, but at least for some of them, not so much for their
content as for the Ivorians’s lack of comprehension of their content and because of the
reluctance of political authorities to implement them. most importantly, the accords
established the criteria of eligibility for the presidency as they also redeined the
constitutional powers of the parliament and government; the presidency losing power
to the beneit of the prime minister (Gaudusson 2003, 42-5).
France repeatedly asserted that the basis of any sustainable peace was the
marcoussis accords (for example: assemblée nationale 2003b, 2004b, and 2005c;
Sénat 2006). In other words, technical and juridical considerations were prioritized
instead of political ones. the French senate could not have put it more succinctly:
“Thus, military intervention abroad concerns the core of the questions of governance:
it is a matter of dissuading the opposition parties from attempting to accede to power
through force and to encourage governments to guarantee the effectual characteristic
of the electoral competition” (Sénat 2006, 45). From this perspective, Gbagbo
symbolized “bad governance” and thus needed to be replaced or, for lack of such an
option, to limit the president’s power (for instance: assemblée nationale 2004b and
2006a).
The new barbarism discourse relects the Huntingtonesque depictions of French
military doctrine (see Chapter 6). To the French Senate Commission on crisis
management in Africa, chief of staff of the armies General Henri Bentegeat identiied
two major types of crisis: those linked to bad governance and the dificulties to
manage successions, especially in West Africa; and those generated by “ethnic
or religious fractures and affecting particularly the problématique of the relations
between the Islamic world, the Arab world, and the Black world” (Sénat 2006, 55).
in regard to côte d’ivoire, the new barbarism discourse was strongly symbolized
by the “zone of trust” (zone de coniance) established by the French army early
in 2002 between governmental and rebel forces. the line was sharply drawn and
divided the country in two on a North-South axis. But the military “buffer zone”
rapidly construed an imaginary space of north-south confrontations where the
North became Muslim and the South Christian. It was a spatial coniguration that
authorized its management by French and international military forces, and that also
legitimized an armed rebellion; a necessary step for France’s political solution.
This is not to argue that there were no religious or “ethnic” problems. As Schwab
(2004, 60) writes: “Until 1993 few religious problems seemed to exist, although they
clearly lay dormant. Bédié, however, created the concept of ‘ivoirité,’ or ivoirianness.
it was, in effect, a concocted distinction between ‘pure’ christian ivoirians from the
south and Muslim ‘immigrants’ in the north.” But it is also important to keep in
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France and the New Imperialism
mind, as the history of rwanda tells us, that ethno-nationalist hatred can reach high
levels of violence.
nevertheless, it seems clear that the christian-south, muslim-north
confrontation is more iction than fact. According to the 1998 census, of the 15,4
million inhabitants 39 per cent were muslim, 30 per cent christian, and 12 per cent
animist. approximately 86 per cent of the total population lived in the south of the
country where 93 per cent of all ivorian christians were found. however, 77 per
cent of muslims also lived in the south, and only 23 per cent in the north. abidjan
alone accommodated 20 per cent of all ivorian muslims. and yet this distribution is
misleading for, while in the north muslims represented 56 per cent of the population
(compared to 14 per cent Christian and 16 per cent animist), in the South Muslims
represented 35 per cent against 33 per cent christians. lastly, according to the
census, 98 per cent of the “immigrant” population (71 per cent Muslim) lived in the
South (Bassett 2003; Bouquet 2005, 172-95).2
as stated earlier, all discourses contain certain truths, but they are also forms of
knowledge that relect relations of power. Galy argues that hasty analyses retreat
into outdated approaches to understanding political crises like in Côte d’Ivoire. The
events are considered from the perspective of the single country and are theorized
through lenses of ethnicity, endemic violence, and failed/weak states. For Galy, this
discourse relects a Western perspective of governance which escapes all historical
critique or analysis (Galy 2004). In redeining the crisis (or civil war) according
to the developmental malaise/new barbarism binary form of knowledge, from its
position of dominance France has suppressed the “external” aspects of the conlict,
and thus was able to promote an implicit program of action. as the French senate
concluded:
to contribute to the stability of the continent, in the absence of any credible alternative
for the moment, France will have to be present on african theatres for some time still. a
complete disengagement would be disastrous. The void created would be illed by others,
perhaps not as inclined toward a multilateral approach and, above all, the handover to
local actors is far from ready … By necessity for africa and for europe, africa and the
crises that affect it must remain one of the priorities of France’s action abroad. (sénat
2006, 49-50).
in other words, in light of all of the above, in côte d’ivoire France implied that
order and stability in africa could only come from european modernity and military
interventions.
“The Colonial Present”: French Interventions
overall, France’s involvement in côte d’ivoire was founded on principles that
beneited the rebels to the detriment of Laurent Gbagbo, and that promoted global
2 Bassett (2003) focuses on American and French media’s representation of the conlict
as a north-south, christian-muslim one. he argues that these media misrepresentations
exacerbated the stereotypes that inluence our views of African conlicts.
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
163
governance in the form of the marcoussis accords. the actions of France were not
as obvious as in the case of rwanda, and their effects not as destructive, but they
give resonances to “old” colonial practices: today’s practices of global governance,
of the “colonial present” (D. Gregory 2004).
while Gbagbo was in rome, on 19 september 2002 rebels launched an offensive
on the cities of Abidjan, Bouaké, and Korhogo. They seized Bouaké and Korhogo,
but were repelled from Abidjan. On 6 October, governmental forces (FANCI) began
an assault on rebel positions in Bouaké, but after reportedly having penetrated into
the centre of the city on the 7th, they were driven back to the outskirts. General
Bentegeat testiied that the initial French forces were engaged in the North to protect
foreign nationals, especially around Bouaké and Yamoussoukro. A total of 3,000
persons were evacuated from the rebel-held zone, but, according to Bentegeat, it
also occurred to the French military that they had to prevent the rebels from taking
or encircling Abidjan and Yamoussoukro so as to avoid a civil war. French forces
established a buffer zone whose arrangements was tested a few times by rebel
forces (Assemblée nationale 2003a). Thus on the 17th, governmental forces and
MPCI rebels agreed to a ceaseire to be monitored by France. But on 28 November,
previously unknown rebel groups called Mouvement Populaire du Grand Ouest and
Mouvement pour la Justice et la Paix opened a second front in the west, on the
border between Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. For Marshall-Fratani (2004, 29), the war
never really happened between mpci and Fanci forces after the creation of the
French buffer zone. The “real” war came to Côte d’Ivoire from this new front, from
forces supported by charles taylor’s liberia.
it could be argued that, indeed, the French military intervention prevented a northsouth civil war and limited the bloodshed. nonetheless, France did not recognize the
aggression coming from Burkina Faso and Liberia. Asked if it was known where the
logistical support of the northern rebels came from, Bentegeat stated that there was
no absolute certainty, that transnational arms traficking to the beneit of the rebels
and FANCI had been observed, and he had nothing incriminating Burkina Faso
(Assemblée nationale 2003a). The emergence of new groups supported by Charles
Taylor did not change a thing because, as Duval (2003, 238) argues, to recognize
foreign involvement and meddling meant to acknowledge threats to Côte d’Ivoire’s
territorial integrity thus making it dificult to ignore the defence accords. But as
France denied foreign inluence, it reportedly stopped, with American help, Nigeria
from sending reinforcement to Gbagbo (Sada 2003, 328).
So how does one explain the engagements between French and rebel forces?
it seems that the legitimacy of the armed rebellion evolved rapidly from denial to
formal recognition (Smith 2003, 119). For Foreign Affairs Minister de Villepin, if
the objective was reconciliation, it was imperative “to propose to those [MPCI] with
the bulk of military power enough attractive responsibilities so that they accept to
disarm” (Assemblée nationale 2003b). Or as President Jacques Chirac allegedly
said: “[Gbagbo] imagines that he has an army when he does not have one anymore;
he believes to be in power when he is not anymore” (quoted in: Laloupo 2004). Both
seemed to be in contradiction to Bentegeat who reported that, despite governmental
forces being unevenly spread out throughout the country since some members had
taken part in the rebellion, their airborne capabilities offered “tangible military
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results” and their rapid intervention force was “very sturdy” (Assemblée nationale
2003a).
in any case, the French-imposed zone of trust produced an imagined political
space for legitimacy. that is, by splitting the country, France created a political
“North” distinguishable from the political “South” that was identiied, associated,
and thus represented by the rebels. As Smith (2003, 120) puts it, “As the months
went by, the territory conquered by the [MPCI] transformed itself into a source of
legitimacy in the eyes of France.” But it did much more than that. Coupled with the
refusal to acknowledge foreign involvement, the French military intervention not
only created the north-south confrontation, but also the conditions that rendered
the “political solution” possible. The credibility of such a solution depended upon
having two politically legitimate groups. and as such, France could then pretend to
arbitrate a dispute between distinguishable, legitimate, and indisputable actors and
claims. Put another way, France could afirm to work for African stability (AlliotMarie in: Assemblée nationale 2004b), “to serve Africans of Côte d’Ivoire” (Villepin
in: Assemblée nationale 2003b), and to be an “impartial force” (Assemblée nationale
2007, 30). Of course, it was inherently contradictory for it also sent the message that
you could shortcut your way to power by taking arms.
this process of legitimizing an armed rebellion was formalized in January 2003.
On 3 January, in order for Gbagbo to accept France’s “indispensable emergency
measures,” among which was the holding of a peace conference in Paris, Dominique
de Villepin met with Gbagbo and ended up threatening him with legal proceedings
in front of the International Criminal Court (Smith 2003, 113). The very next day,
de Villepin lew to Bouaké, met with the rebels, and gave them ipso facto political
legitimacy. Basically, in Bouaké, France was telling the rebels: “we understand the
basis of your demands, but we cannot support a takeover by force; a president is
appointed by an election” (D’Ersu 2007, 91).3
Between 15 and 24 January 2003, invited by the French government, the so-called
signiicant Ivorian political parties met in Linas-Marcoussis. The agenda was very
close to the rebels’s (now amalgamated as Forces Nouvelles) demands: questions of
nationality and identity, the status of immigrants, presidential eligibility, and property
ownership; constitutional amendments for the resolution of the crisis; methods of
disarmament and/or reintegration of rebels; and the procedures for future elections.4
except for the Forces nouvelles’s claim for Gbagbo to resign, the similarities were hard
to miss (Blé Kessé 2005, 119-21). Furthermore, as Gaudusson argues, the negotiations
surrounding the presidency and the constitution offered the opportunity to redeine
the powers of the president. indeed, the marcoussis accords limited them with three
clauses: the president lost the power to name or to dismiss the prime minister; he had
to delegate a large number of the executive’s prerogatives to the government of the
prime minister; and, in “reforming and restructuring defence and security forces,” it
3 To D’Ersu (2007, 92), a French diplomat said: “We will legitimize the rebels’s ight,
on the condition that it is only political … We thus demanded a general ceaseire from the
rebel groups, including those of the West.”
4 the marcoussis accords are widely available. For instance: <http://www.diplomatie.
gouv.fr>
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
165
was implied that the president gave away the powers attributed as commander in chief
of the armies to the proit of the government (Gaudusson 2003, 42-4).
while with marcoussis France was promoting its political solution of
democratization and economic liberalization (disguised as the “new” French African
policy), the mindset of the authorizing agents had not moved far from its colonial
past. France had indeed stabilized côte d’ivoire, and in the process put a stop to
some of the violence. But, as later events have pointed to, France had also stabilized
côte d’ivoire so as to resume its integration into the structures of French hegemony,
global circulation, and dependency.
Diplomacy of Multilateralism
multilateralism is commonly understood to be a laudable and legitimate means
through which to engage in diplomacy. it might well be so, but it cannot be properly
understood outside the political order in which it exists. the multilateralization
of crisis management in Côte d’Ivoire suggests two conclusions: irst, despite its
tentative “Africanization,” African crisis management (mediation and intervention)
proved to be highly problematic by its nature and signiicantly dependent upon
Western inancial and military support. Secondly, United Nations’s participation
often simply amounted to an extension of French involvement.
after weathering an attempted coup in 2001, Gbagbo’s strategy in 2002 was
based upon a refusal to share power with an armed rebellion and thus, if necessary,
upon a military response supported by France. For Gbagbo, the initial ecowas-led
mediation (29 September 2003 to December) was very risky as he feared a deeper
regional involvement by countries which were hostile to his regime and supported
the rebels and/or his political opponent ouattara. he also worried that mediation
and intervention would lead to the legitimization of the rebels by protecting their
territorial gains (Sada 2003, 323).
French diplomacy supported (or instrumentalized) African organizations in
mediating the conlict (Smith 2003, 121). Presided by Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal
since december 2001, ecowas was politically mobilized from the beginning of
the crisis. on 29 september, a contact group composed of togo, mali, niger, Ghana,
nigeria, and Guinea-Bissau met and was presided over by togo’s Gnassingbé
Eyadéma. But after negotiating the 17 October ceaseire, the group was unable to
overcome many obstacles. internal rivalries made the experience laborious and
uncertain. In particular, the battle for leadership was ierce between Wade, whose
country had been excluded from the contact group, and eyadéma. as well, for
certain leaders, mediation was to be brokered by the African Union, not ECOWAS.
however, it was the intransigence of the rebels who, armed with the belief in their
military superiority (as aforementioned a conviction supported by some French
oficials), that made radical claims that were unacceptable to Gbagbo (Blé Kessé
2005, 154-61; Sada 2003).
ecowas announced the creation of a contingent at the end of september, but
the force was late in taking form. Only on 18 January 2003 were 172 Senegalese
deployed, to be reinforced by 1,100 troops on 6 march. But sending troops did
not make the force operational, or even capable to deploy in Côte d’Ivoire. Its
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France and the New Imperialism
dependence upon the inancial support of international donors (United States, France,
and other European countries) for equipment, communications, logistics, planning,
and deployment was almost total (Sada 2003, 329). The force was later integrated
into the unoci contingent on 5 april 2004. But even the un force, numbering
6,240 troops in 2005, was utterly depended upon the French military. as Bentegeat
stated, if Licorne troops were to be repatriated, “UNOCI would actually be unable to
perform its mission” (Assemblée nationale 2006a).
France’s own diplomatic efforts were multilateralized, but this happened rather
late. it seems that, at least at the beginning, France made the united nations and its
Security Council work in its favour. In December 2002, France called upon the UN
high commissioner for human rights to investigate the september assassination
of General Guéï and other acts of violence, thus opening the door to the rebels’s
“genocidal rhetoric” and their allies, like Blaise Compaoré who compared Gbagbo
to Slobodan Milosevic. But as Smith (2003, 124) writes: “France could have been
more credible as a guardian of human rights … if paris had been as vigilant vis-à-vis
the rebels.” During the Marcoussis negotiations, President Chirac even brandished
the possibility of bringing Gbagbo in front of the international criminal court. it
was only after marcoussis failed that the security council authorized the French
deployment on 4 February 2003. on 4 april 2004, the ecowas forces were
integrated into the newly created unoci through resolution 1528 of 27 February
2004. however, licorne forces were not for that mission. rather there were in place
to support unoci.5
according to Guy labertit, member of the French socialist party and national
representative to africa from 1993 to 2006, from the start France convinced the
african union and the united nations to shoulder the responsibility of its policy
so as to disguise the Franco-ivorian postcolonial confrontation. it was the French
ambassador to the United Nations Jean-Marc Rochereau de la Sablière who wrote the
security council resolutions. For labertit, Gbagbo had resisted houphouët-Boigny
for 30 years without resorting to arms and had said too much. hence, his accession
to power symbolized an affront to the Franco-African complex (Labertit 2007).
labertit’s claims can be corroborated in two ways. First, as stipulated above, from
January 2003 on, in the eyes of the so-called international community all legitimate
political solutions included the implementation of the marcoussis accords which
were portrayed as addressing the “root causes” of the conlict. Second, the events of
november 2004 seemed to reveal the partiality of France.
Colonial Complex or Relexes?
For the French government, the legitimacy of licorne was never in doubt (for
instance: Assemblée nationale 2005a, 2005b, and 2004b; Sénat 2006).6 starting as
5 interestingly, the French senate seems to mislead us about the un mandate of French
troops by implying that they were authorized under such a mandate as soon as september
2002. See Sénat (2006, 6, 45).
6 moreover, after repeating the indisputable credibility of the marcoussis accords, in
January 2005 the French national assembly rejected a proposition to create a commission of
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
167
early as october 2002, demonstrations against their presence were organized. in
november 2004, however, France became de facto belligerent and subsequently lost
most of its diplomatic credibility.
the events of november 2004 underlined both the divergence of opinions in
paris between Foreign affairs and defence, and the primacy of the latter in matters
of French african policy. on 4 november, ivorian governmental forces launched an
attack (Operation Dignité) under the pretense of the resistance of the Forces Nouvelles
to disarm. the offensive was not a surprise in paris for prior preparations had been
going on for weeks. D’Ersu (2007, 98) reported that Chirac had called Gbagbo on the
3rd to rebuke him, to unambiguously express his disapproval, and to warn him that the
French army would respond. According to D’Ersu (2007, 98), the Elysée, Defence,
and Foreign minister michel Barnier were strongly set against operation dignité,
while French ambassador to côte d’ivoire Gildas le lidec and Barnier’s cabinet
reckoned that it might put an end to political stagnation. In any case, neither French
nor UNOCI forces reacted to the end of the ceaseire which “provoked the discontent
of the Forces Nouvelles’s partisans who, on 6 November 2004, attacked the French
camp near the city of man, in the west of the country, demanding the departure of the
French contingent and accusing the licorne Force soldiers of being the ‘accomplices
of Gbagbo’s regime’” (Amnesty International 2006).
This attack went unnoticed, however, for on the same day at around 2 p.m., two
Ivorian Sukhoï airplanes bombed the French military camp at Baouké, killing nine
French soldiers and one american citizen.7 on the orders of General henri poncet,
commander of licorne forces since may 2004, and with the consent of General
Bentegeat, the airplanes were destroyed after landing (D’Ersu 2007, 86). Chirac then
ordered the total destruction of the remaining ivorian airforce (it was done before 10
p.m. according to Alliot-Marie; Assemblée nationale 2004b). According to Amnesty
International (2006), the majority of Ivorians interpreted the act as unjustiied for
they had not yet heard of the initial attack and of French casualties. Rumors of
a French coup started spreading when French forces took control of the Abidjan
airport on the same day. On the 8th, a French armoured column “got lost” and found
itself in front of president Gbagbo’s residence, thus adding to rumors of a coup and
mobilizing many Ivorians to take to the streets, which led to attacks upon French
citizens and property. during the period of november 6th to 9th, French forces used
their lethal weapons twice.
on the night of 6-7 november, the local media in abidjan called upon ivorians
to protest the French military attempt to take the airport. To Amnesty International,
a representative of the French embassy defended the mission by stating: “If the
ivorian military had control of the airport, they would have been able to prevent the
evacuation of our nationals” (Amnesty International 2006). Thousands of protesters
enquiry into the conditions of the French intervention in Côte d’Ivoire since September 2002
for the following reasons: too much information fell under secret défense, the responsibility
was above all Ivorian, and such an enquiry might impede the peace process (Assemblée
nationale 2005a, 2005b).
7 The intent seemed to have been very clear: to attack French forces. What has yet to be
clariied is who planned and ordered the attack.
168
France and the New Imperialism
congregated around the charles-de-Gaulle and Félix-houphouët-Boigny bridges
that connected the city to the airport. to deny them access to the two bridges, French
forces ired “warning and deterrent shots” from their tanks and helicopters, used
20-mm shells, grenades, and mines. The Ivorian government afirmed their hospitals
reported 57 deaths and 2,226 injured. on 30 november, alliot-marie admitted to
“about twenty civil and military deaths” (Amnesty International 2006; Assemblée
nationale 2004b; D’Ersu 2007). Weapons ire was rationalized as necessary to secure
the airport and to send “a signal to the crowd.” On 3 December, on the radio station
africa no.1, alliot-marie declared:
First of all, these crowds did not arrive there spontaneously: they were to a very large
extent incited by the media which advocated racism and hate. moreover, these crowds
were controlled and led by people armed with three types of weapons: kalashnikovs,
pump-action shotguns and pistols. these people were therefore going to demonstrate with
the intention of a real confrontation. at that time, we decided that, in order to avoid direct
clashes between soldiers and a crowd that wanted to retake control of the airport and
therefore prevent evacuation, and to avoid clashes which could have resulted in hundreds
of deaths, we decided to carry out deterrent operations on the bridges providing access to
the airport. in particular, we used helicopters. and, as is always the case with the French
military, the helicopters ired warning shots, then deterrent shots and, inally, shots in
particular at the irst vehicles ahead of the demonstrators in order to stop them (quoted in:
Amnesty International 2006).
watching with his defence attaché, licorne helicopters machine-gunning the
Charles-de-Gaulle bridge, ambassador Lidec said: “Colonel … I am ashamed to be
French” (quoted in: D’Ersu 2007, 85).
after things had settled down on the 7th, the strong presence of French troops
near the President’s residence on the 8th reignited some protesters. While the tanks
had gotten lost, according to the French military, licorne made hotel ivoire the focus
of its efforts to evacuate foreign nationals. The hotel was less than a kilometer from
the President’s residence. The tanks were relocated in front of the hotel where 300
troops took positions, including snipers and elite COS troops. According to Amnesty
International (2006), French oficers, faced with protesters demanding their departure,
were thinking about moving to Hotel du Golf. According to the French military, on the
morning of the 9th, protesters gave them an ultimatum, asking them to leave before 3
p.m. It was at around that hour that French forces ired on the crowd. The reasons for
such a reaction are unclear. as tensions mounted, the French military argued that they
acted in self-defence, while ivorian protesters and gendarmerie claimed that French
forces opened ire “precipitously, if not indeed in panic.” Amnesty International
admitted being unable to answer the question, but concluded:
Whatever the reasons prompting soldiers of the Force Licorne to open ire in front of
the hôtel ivoire on the afternoon of 9 november 2004, it left a large number of dead
and wounded. Some of the victims were killed by bullets or were trampled underfoot by
demonstrators leeing the iring (Amnesty International 2006).
D’Ersu argues that, as commander of Licorne, General Poncet took a lot of
initiative. did the general open a window of opportunity for a coup when the French
Hegemonic Struggles, Hegemonic Restructuring
169
tank column got “lost”? Gbagbo believed so and so did certain French oficials
according to D’Ersu (2007, 99). In any case, the events of November 2004 shocked
many French oficials, especially those who had unoficially approved of Operation
dignité. But what seemed to leave a bigger impression was the repatriation of
French citizens from côte d’ivoire; France as victim of Gbagbo’s war.8 the amnesty
international report went unnoticed in France. and yet, the events seemed to reinforce
the African cell’s determination to get rid of Gbagbo, as it also tried to take control
of the management of the crisis.
The links between Chirac and Gbagbo were very much severed from then on. In
october 2005, security council resolution 1633 extended Gbagbo’s mandate by a year,
assigning him a prime minister with stronger powers, and created the international
Working Group which became responsible for the peace process.9 in paris, it was
hoped that prime minister charles Konan Banny, whose candidacy had been strongly
supported by chirac, would prepare the post-Gbagbo era (assemblée nationale
2006b). But in 2006, French diplomacy was humiliated when resolution 1721 was
reformulated as to make it almost meaningless, and when the French plan to transfer
most of the executive powers to Banny was rejected by most of the members of the
Security Council, including all of the permanent members (D’Ersu 2007, 102).
Conclusion
only time will tell, but it would seem that, in the end, Gbagbo won all. after every
French, african, and other multinational mediation had failed to bring peace (or
imposing peace), in December 2006, President Gbagbo proposed a Plan national de
sortie de crise which called for a direct dialogue with the Forces nouvelles (he had
offered the same in October 2002) and suggested the termination of the zone of trust.
After a month of “direct dialogue,” on 4 March 2007 in Ouagadougou (Compaoré
was the new president of ECOWAS), Gbagbo and Forces Nouvelles leader Soro
signed an agreement that anticipated the formation of a new government in the near
future and the departure, in time, of licorne and unoci. on 29 march, president
Gbagbo named by decree Guillaume soro as prime minister of côte d’ivoire. and
in april, French and unoci troops began retreating from the zone of trust. and
yet again, it did not stop Gbagbo from insisting upon “the necessity of the French
presence in the country and to invite all those who had left it to come back” (quoted
in: Assemblée nationale 2007, 31).
8 in november 2004, i was conducting research and interviews in France. ten days after
the destruction of the ivorian airforce on the order of the French president, i had lunch with
six French military oficers and one civil servant. While the conversation was very diplomatic,
the overall tone was one that suggested that France had been the victim of an unprovoked
attack. No one even mentioned the French actions against the demonstrators.
9 The International Working Group did not fare much better for, after announcing on 15
January 2006 that the december 2005 government’s mandate did not have to be prolonged as
Gbagbo had decreed, it led to more bloodshed when the Jeunes Patriotes, a group of ardent
Gbagbo supporters, attacked UN personnel and buildings.
chapter 9
conclusion: France
and the new imperialism
In this book, two intertwined arguments were presented. First, I argued that a
long-term examination of French security policy in sub-saharan africa underlined
fundamental continuities between the colonial past and the “colonial present” (D.
Gregory 2004). France has reached backward to colonial modes of governance so
as to restructure and reproduce hegemonic Franco-african dynamics. the whole
question of French inluence and presence is still conceived of as choices between
binary typologies of developed/backward, order/chaos. As Said argues:
Every single empire in its oficial discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that
its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and
democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. and, sadder still, there always is a
chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as
if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery
and death brought by the latest mission civilisatrice (Said 2004, 873).
indeed, i argued that French security policy has often produced insecurity, instability,
destruction, and misery. But this was no causal argument as if to say that without
France there would have been security. Beyond the dire human consequences, it
has generated insecurity in the sense that the practices of French security policy are
constitutive of the environment, conditions, and events deined as order/disorder,
developed/backward, stable/unstable, security/insecurity, and so on. In other words,
French practices of security cannot be dissociated from the African “environment”
in which it functions, for they participate in the production, reproduction, and
restructuring of the social conditions that lead to “crisis management” and “military
intervention.”
second, i argued that French security policy in sub-saharan africa could not be
properly understood outside the global political order in which it exits. the recent
restructuring of France’s power and inluence has been in accordance with presentday conceptions of political order whose one key characteristic is the persistence
of the concentration of power emanating from the west. in France, debates over
whether or not France has “lost” Africa and/or on how it can reinvent and strengthen
its presence are rather common (for example: Banégas et al. 2007; Glaser and smith
2005; Sénat 2006). But the debates imply that “Africa” is “France’s” to own, manage,
and/or intervene. the simple act of discussing sub-saharan africa as if it was a
single, coherent, and homogenous entity uniies it under a single political economy
outside modernity, in a coherent and two-dimensional image of backwardness and/or
172
France and the New Imperialism
chaos.1 the stage is then set to the continent’s subordination to peculiar French wills,
wishes, and wants. Colonialism authorized conquest and domination by claiming
a “right” and “duty” to civilize. The so-called weaknesses and failures of African
states are the license to police, control, and transform african societies.
the new imperialism is a concept often associated with american supremacy, but
it also encapsulates the most recent and multinational (but mostly Western) attempts
at transforming the discourses and practices of power. While American inluences
continue to be signiicant in the current global climate of Western hegemony,
the american state is but one aspect of an increasingly integrated and globalized
western world order that is best articulated, but not exclusive to, the american state.
as such, military and economic integration between and within states and societies
is a signiicant aspect of the world order (Charbonneau and W. Cox 2008). Hence,
the new imperialism has French, British, american, and other versions, but overall
it points to a convergence and consensus about the newest mechanisms, discourses,
and practices to re-legitimize and re-authorize the concentration of power emanating
from the west (for instance: hardt and negri 2000; harvey 2003; panitch and leys
2004; Mooers 2006). The new imperialism promises great deeds, progress, peace,
and development for everyone. it also condones pensée unique – a doctrinaire
approach to achieve “civilizations.”
what stands out about contemporary conceptions of global order is their oneness. observe
the way particular doctrines, each with its own constituency and lineage, come together
to outline a larger project. simply to name the discourses tells a story: neoliberalism,
democratization and good governance, civil society, the role of the third sector and the
internationalization of philanthropy, social development and the conditionalities of aid,
humanitarian intervention in complex emergencies. a grand narrative if ever there was. it
holds out the prospect of global management along with the promise of popular ratings:
elements of a blueprint, yet humanised and often appealing to immediate need. there is
also a oneness in another aspect: that of one world. the vision is of peoples everywhere,
linked together, bound for a single destination. Its evangelical appeal meshes neatly with
the reassertion of Western leadership (Darby 2004, 7).
the symbolic state construes an imaginary of global politics as the interactions
of unitary states. By doing so, it sanctions multilateralism and africanization as
passive, democratic, and thus legitimate processes and mechanisms to the global
management of development and security. in the multinationalization of discourses
and in the multilateralization of practices, what are in fact very often transnational
social forces ind opened spaces of legitimacy and authorization for the management
of the world order. put another way, these concepts hold an implicit program of
1 i am guilty of the same charge but for other reasons that, i hope, do not participate in
the orientalization of Africa. Because the topic of this book is France, and not sub-Saharan
Africa per se, it makes sense to discuss of French African policy because, in any case, the
policy is formulated and theorized according to the stereotypical understanding of africa as
a coherent unit. However, in practice, the policy acquires some speciicity even if it remains
strongly inluence by this overarching Orientalism. My analysis of French interventions in
Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire underlined both the speciicities of each case and their overarching
orientalism.
Conclusion: France and the New Imperialism
173
action; they are in fact active processes and forces determining and shaping world
order.
France is an integral part of this neo-imperial world order. within this context,
France has not “lost” anything in Africa. It has reformulated and restructured its power
and inluence according to rules and norms of global liberal governance. Moreover,
because of its unique position and experience on the African continent, the French
military will tend to gain more inluence and importance the further it integrates
global governance networks. While it faces serious political and institutional
challenges, the europeanization of the French military apparatus in africa seems to
be underway (for instance: Sénat 2006). But the politics of the new imperialism work
to block systemic change in North-South relations. To address the putative threats
(war and shadow economies, non-state illicit networks, migratory lows, and so on)
to world order, development was securitized: “it operates as a security mechanism
that attempts, through poverty reduction measures, conditional debt cancellation and
selective funding, to insulate [advanced] mass society from the permanent crisis on
its borders by making the latter more predicable and manageable” (Dufield 2005,
157). In other words, France is integrated into a neo-imperial world order that seeks
the continuation of the neoliberal project and stability on its borders. it is a neoimperial world order that France has not just been merely integrated into, but is a
world order that France has helped to construct.
Conclusion
This book sought to strengthen and to participate in the development of an IR critical
theory research project. i embraced the normative nature of my argument in order to
engage, and to entice others to engage, in a politics of social change that begins with
raising consciousness about issues such as this. the exercise was not exclusively
theoretical, but largely political by pointing to where resistance and opposition can
be effective and lexible enough to accommodate the continuously changing relations
and structures of power.
This book was not interested in devising a more acceptable or better French
policy of military intervention, nor was it constituted as an argument against French
intervention per se, and nor was it conceived as to solely put the blame of african
political problems on western and French shoulders. instead, it sought to illustrate
the social and political effects of espousing one depiction of a given social reality
rather than another. in other words, it aspired to draw attention to the production and
reproduction of relations of power, identities, and discourses that have underwritten
French hegemony and have proscribed dissent in sub-saharan africa. the conclusion
is not that French security policy has somehow failed, but that to emphasize upon
its perceived failures and imperfections is to pursue the wrong line of investigation
– it is to maintain the spaces of immunity and impunity. The problématique was
thus to inquire into who and what are served by the so-called failures and blunders
of security policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Since the Rwandan iasco, Franco-African
dynamics have been constantly criticized. nevertheless, French hegemony survives
and is constantly reformulated, re-legitimized, and re-authorized in the name of
174
France and the New Imperialism
France, progress, and civilization. Consequently, this book did not focus on the
oficial objectives of French security policy, but on its actual practices and the
interests served by these practices and associated discourses.
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