France and the New Imperialism: Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa 9780754672852, 2007027816

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FRANCE AND THE NEW IMPERIALISM

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France and the New Imperialism Security Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa

BRUNO CHARBONNEAU Laurentian University, Canada

First published 2008 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Bruno Charbonneau 2008

Bruno Charbonneau has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

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 9780754672852 (hbk)

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 Index

1

175 187

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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

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Acknowledgements This project is the result of my research at Queen’s University (Canada). Of the significant debts I have acquired there writing this book I must first 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 unqualified 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.

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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 financière 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

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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 significance 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 influence). 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 first 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 specific and superficial worldview, but when the “policy,” its official 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

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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 conflicts. 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-defined 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

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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 first 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, influenced, 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 specificities 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 first 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

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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 defined 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 identified the promotion of neoliberal principles and market democracy as a legitimate objective, strategy of war, and as a means to secure peace. Chapter 6 clarifies 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 conflicts as indigenous in origin, and further assume French policy as purely responsive to such conflicts, 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 conflict management an opened “space” to reposition its power and influence, 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-defined, “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 conflicts 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 reflection 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 disfigurements 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

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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 specific 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 reflective 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 reflect the material structures and the interests attached to them. It construes a simplified 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

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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 reflect 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 field 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 affirm 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 definition of legitimate threats. It sets the agenda for the future. It is a strategy of deterrence against those who would want significant change in the ways in which security issues are addressed and change in the character and location of the political. By definition then, as a practice and as a strategy of practice, the field 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 influence, shape, or modify that reproduction, constitute a scientific 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 difficulty 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.”

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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 specific 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 specific issues, problems, consciousness, behaviour, and so on. They make clear what is political and what is not; what is legitimate and illegitimate. They define 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 definition 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 field of security. More importantly, these symbols that define the scope of objects to be “securitized” command specific solutions. In other words, to define 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 fire must be fought with fire. 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-fulfilling prophecies, their remedies will never be appropriate. Briefly 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 redefined 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

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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.

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Chapter 2

The Symbolic State, Security, and Symbolic France Security, as a field 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 construe, 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 specifically, 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 objectification” that grants it legitimacy, authority, and stability as an

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ordering principle for human societies. The state’s mode of objectification 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 flag, 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 confirming 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 find a homogeneous totality with constant specificity. Through the examination of the language, the images, the symbols, and the emotional repercussions, we find that the permanent factors are easily identifiable. Therefore, the image exists in its specific logical discourse and it is in this somewhat immutable symbolic “code” that we will find 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 definition 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.

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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 definite shape; what was a passive state becomes an active process (Cassirer 1946, 37-43).

Symbolic expressions of social realities lead to an objectification 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 benefit 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 dignifies 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 specific situations are strategies, deliberate or unrecognized, for strengthening or undermining support for specific 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 specific 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).

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solution that identifies the state as part of the problem is dismissed and de-legitimized. In short, because the state is objectified 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 first 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 define 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 significance, 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, confirming 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 difficulty in defining the state comes from the elusive, porous, and mobile characteristics of this boundary. Consequently, the solution is not to endlessly redefine 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 definition, personified 3 This does not exclude the fact that the state-as-idea, like all forms, is subject to alternative interpretations and projects.

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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 reflect 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 scientific 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 defies criticism (for example: Wendt 1992, 397). The state is objectified, transformed into an observable entity/object for positivist science to analyze. Therefore, politics is denied because the objectified 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 first element of the symbolic state from which the other elements follow. The state-as-actor reflects the state-society-boundary understanding of social life. As an actor, the state is conceptualized as existing outside society and as being an

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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 defined 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 affirms, 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 reflects 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,

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glide into a limitless future. It is the magic of nationalism to turn chance into destiny (Anderson 1991, 11-12).

The symbolic state finds most of (if not all of) its legitimacy, authority, and popular support in the idea of nation. The national interest, however defined, 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 difficulties 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, influenced, 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.

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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 flawed 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 specifically, the dominant social forces that profit 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 benefit, 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 benefits 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 beneficial for various Franco-African (but limited to elites) social forces. The symbolic state is a theoretical construct, but one with empirical referents. It finds its expression first in political discourse. It is also represented and reproduced by symbols, rituals, and social practices such as the practice of law, the army, the flag, 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

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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 significance 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 first 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

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point is that the ways in which the discourse of the state and security are formulated make it difficult 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 first 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 scientific, 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 specific case, the myth of France – “a certain idea of France” – exerts a strong influence on French foreign policy. But it is an elitist idea that camouflages 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

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4

as solid as the globe” (quoted in: Citron 1991). 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, prefigured 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 specific 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 objectified and personified. 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, personified France exists independently of the French people. It is by definition perfect for France’s special status, or exceptionalism, was granted first by God who chose its kings and then, after the Revolution, by history when it became humanity’s first 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 definition, 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 first 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 first 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).

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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 deficit. 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 defined 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).

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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, Conflans, 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 official figures 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 figures 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.

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long. 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 flag, 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 infinite detail, creations of imagination, of faith, and of infinite 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 fit 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 sanctified 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.

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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 sufficient 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 testifies to French greatness, and its militaristic quality connects the destiny of France to the destiny of its army which it glorifies (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 unified 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.

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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 official discourse. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate the historical experience that defines 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 first 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 dignifies 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 confidence. 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 justifies 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,

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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 flourished 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 significant 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 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.

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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-first 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 reflect, 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 define 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.”

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and should thus not be made to fit the theory. French colonialism was (and remains) about diverse social forces with different and sometimes conflicting 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 definition 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 find 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 official 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 define 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.

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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 profit 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 first 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 pacification of Algeria are obviously one of the greatest affairs in which the nation can embark upon … Even if difficulties 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 first this version of French colonialism was limited to Algeria. In the old colonies, mercantilism was expanding. New trading posts and military outposts

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were created, but many were now being established for political and strategic reasons instead of purely commercial ones. For military officers 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 officers: With its generous and philosophical spirit, France is not only called to be first in shedding light and life on the most savage and remote lands, but the significance of its sea power and of its influence 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 redefined 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) influenced, 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,” pacific, 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 flavour. 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 profits and wages. But even better, this “development” would be in the end beneficial to all of humanity because it would expand the reaches of civilization.

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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 profitability 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 refined 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 (figures represent ordinary years, Marseille 1984, 154). Two remarks need to be made at this point. As Marseille (1984) 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 profitable 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.

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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 specificity 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 first 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 defining 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.”

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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 first 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 find 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 identified 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).

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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 specific 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 first 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, scientifically 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 fifth 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 flora 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

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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 finally 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

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yet partook of the universal identity of a French-defined 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 influences 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 specific 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).

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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 justified 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 officer 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 officers escape the monotonous life of provincial barracks. Colonial officers made contact with new peoples, languages, and cultures. They had more freedom, initiative, responsibility, and authority. Their African field 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 officer changed accordingly. The acts of colonization and pacification led, among other things, to confusion between the officers’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-first 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).

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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 officials 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 difficulties of communication, and the wide-ranging powers given to the “rulers of empire.” The administrators were the governor’s official 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 officials enjoyed almost unlimited authority and responsibility, the colonial service more often than not attracted individuals who were unqualified, 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 first group of colonial functionaries; they are irreproachable, but worse (quoted in: Cohen 1971, 30).

Racism and arrogance were deeply ingrained in both the colonial officer 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 reflected 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

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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 officials 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 officials 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) went inland. Black leaders could be loyal, active dissenters or passive revolutionaries and, especially in the latter case, have enormous influence 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 officers, 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

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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 officer 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 briefly 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, influence, 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 find 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 field 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 defining 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 conflict, 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.

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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 defines 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 (Confidential 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-first 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 difficulty the Africans would have in replacing France as their principal external provider of security and stability.” Grovogui (2001, 439) writes: “the justification of the mission civilizatrice [sic] was the absence of civilizations in the regions of its implementation. The discovery and affirmation of civilizations in such regions would alter the meaning of acts committed in actualizing the mission.” France’s twenty-first 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 justification for French security 8 Jean-Pierre Cot (1984) and Guy Sorman (1993) both quoted in Bancel et al. (2003, 34-8, 89).

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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 first 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 conflicts and problems are meant to demonstrate and emphasize the peaceful and beneficial 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 sacrificed 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 justifies

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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 justified 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 finally 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 defined 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).

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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 definition ‘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 official problem. The problem is Barbarism. It is political and economic backwardness. Consequently, the compelling logic is to endorse and sponsor French-defined modernity through military intervention and cooperation among other things. However, what is obscured by this “common sense” and its related policies is that it reflects 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 conflict 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 officials 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 conflicts of tomorrow … is nothing but the return, in a barely modified 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

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civilizations were to move the threat from the East to the South and to interpenetrate theoretically and practically the fields 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 conflicts 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 reflects 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 horrific effects of military intervention and cooperation, debt, democratization, neoliberal progress, and so on. To paraphrase Lindqvist (1992, 226) on imperialism, “progress” – or modernity however defined 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

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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-justified 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 defines the limits of sociopolitical arrangements – the limits of the political. Consequently, the political can only be defined in ways that authorize and legitimize the overwhelming concentration of wealth and power in the West and, more specifically 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 first part of this book examined how republican France, colonial France, the Other, and the political have been defined and redefined in the last 150 years. I argued that the colonial dichotomy between civilization and barbarism survived decolonization, and is reflected 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, influence, and determine current French security policy in sub-Saharan Africa. In the first 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 officers sincerely believe in their endeavours. Many others, however, seem not to care about

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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 briefly 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 influence 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 redefined 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 defined 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 beneficiary of French hegemony, but its transnational nature which was once limited to France and Africa is being redefined 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 difficulty) to new structures and relations of power and governance. In this chapter, I will first briefly 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 significantly advanced by the Great War. The conflict 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

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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 officials 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 justified 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 firing 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 specifically, 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 reflect the colonies’s war effort. The financial and economic effort was heavier and often excessive. It often

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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: firstly, 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 first 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 confirmed 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

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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 influence 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 influence. 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, financial, 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 financial 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:

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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 fine 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 fight 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 benefit 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 defined 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 financial life, guaranteed outlets and sources for certain articles, a huge monetary zone based on the Franc and finally 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.

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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 satisfied 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 influence 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 final 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 benefit. These are networks, institutions, and organizations that shape, influence, 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 final 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, influence, and determine policy. The writing of the latter was never limited to the offices of the Army, the Ministry of Defence, or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

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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 find coherence in French African policy when there exists so much infighting 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 officials, military officers, 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 benefits to both France and the governing élites of francophone Africa of a continuing projection of French power and influence in the region” (Chafer 2002, 344). France gains grandeur while its African allies profit from a reliable ally that can provide continuous support to hold onto their sometimes fragile power. Verschave defines 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.

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“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 finances 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 fired 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 satisfied 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 confidant, a confidant 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 fields … 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 defined), 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 trafficking, 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 financed, 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.

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The Franco-African complex has traditionally operated through official channels and unofficial contacts and networks. As Chafer argues: A key feature of this complex is that the official and unofficial 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 influence 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 officials 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).

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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 financière africaine (CFA) franc) to the French franc (and now the euro) at a fixed 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 benefits which among others included stable and advantageous rates of exchange especially after 1973 and the return of floating currency rates. But, more importantly, the regime gave France a privileged commercial and financial space, as well as monumental influence 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 fixed 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 difficult 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 officials. 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 official intergovernmental meetings.” There are also the close,

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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 identified as French military cooperation. The objectives and means of the policy were much diversified 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 influence 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 first 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),

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N’Djamena (Chad), Djibouti, and Bangui (Central African Republic). The Bangui base was closed in 1998 after French soldiers were involved in the civil conflict. 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 benefit from it without any official 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 financial 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

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Table 4.1

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 first 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.

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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 fit the official rhetoric and mainstream theories of international relations. It cannot be included within the official 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 scientific 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 influence 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 finds 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 influence 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, financial, 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

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that create a material, technical, scientific, 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 officers with French elites and future leaders create strong personal relationships that will constitute influent 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 identified three levels of traditional French intervention in subSaharan Africa. The first corresponded to domestic trouble or instability. In these cases, French intervention was gradual. Local police forces and gendarmerie intervened first; 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 conflict, 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 flexibility 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.

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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 officers incorporated within the armed forces of the signatory states for decades. These officers 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 fifth 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 first days of decolonization, France deemed it too risky to maintain a significant 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 official objectives of military cooperation – the creation and training of African armies – never materialized. So why did it continue? Why did government officials 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.

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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-sufficient 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 clarified 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 – reflects 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 classification 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:

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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 qualified 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 official 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, officially, under the 1986 Operation Epervier.

Name War of Algeria

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

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

13 August 1980 11 November 1980

May 1980

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

30 October 1956 10 February 1958 17 July 1961 11 October 1969

Beginning 1 October 1954

French military interventions in Africa, 1945-2005

Country Algeria

Table 4.2

29 August 1980 July 1981

17 May 1980

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

24 November 1956 5 May 1959 23 July 1961 3 November 1969

End 1 July 1962

N, H N

A

A N, H C N M N, H A A A A A A C A N, H

C, M A, P N N, H

Type War, N

40

1,200-2,600 600

350

160 12

600

30,000

Troops 80,000 – 400,000

Myrtille EFAO Thiof Manta Comoe Mirmillon Silure Griffon Epervier Hortensia Ellebore Nouadibou Oside Requin Corymbe Noroit Jubarte

Francolin Bérénice Totem

Godoria Baumier MINURSO

Macle Verdier Férule

Somalia CAR Senegal Chad Côte d’Ivoire Libya Chad Guinea Bissau Chad Tunisia Soudan Senegal Comoros Gabon Gulf of Guinea Rwanda Senegal

Soudan Somalia Ethiopia

Ethiopia Zaire/RDC/Congo Kinshasa Mauritania

Zaire/RDC/Congo Kinshasa Benin Gabon

18 October 1991 December 1991 1992

28 May 1991 23 September 1991 October 1991

1991 3 January 1991 24 May 1991

May 1981 8 July 1981 1982 9 August 1983 1984 September 1984 1 October 1984 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

22 February 1992 March 1992 1992

12 June 1991 18 October 1991 in progress

1991 9 January 1991 5 June 1991

December 1993 1991

April 1986 1 June 1989 16 May 1989 20 December 1989 2 June 1990 in progress

May 1981 15 April 1998 1982 7 November 1984 1984 November 1984 1 December 1984 May 1986 in progress

N, P A X

A N UNc

X N N

N, H A N A N A (Chad) A X A A N, H A C A N A N

15 450

4,000 600 25

500

70 60 1,500 1,000 220 850

950

4,000

4,000

1,500

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

Somalia Burundi Somalia

Somalia Algeria Togo

Cameroon Rwanda

Rwanda Niger Guinea Bissau

Somalia Angola Niger

Comoros

continued

Djibouti CAR Sierra Leone Angola Somalia Somalia Zaire/RDC/Congo Kinshasa Angola Senegal

Table 4.2

30 September 1995

January 1995 March 1995 1 July 1995

18 June 1994 November 1994 22 November 1994

February 1994 8 April 1994

20 December 1993 1994 2 January 1994

12 April 1993 October 1993 16 October 1993

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

8 October 1995

March 1995 March 1995 31 December 1995

22 August 1994 November 1994 8 December 1994

August 1998 14 April 1994

15 March 1994 1994 22 March 1994

15 December 1993 October 1993 13 December 1993

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

A, C

N UNc N

UNm N N, H

A N

UNc X N

UNc N, P N

A N, H N N UNm UNm N N N, H

1,070

11 30

2,500 34 42

20 500

220

100

1,100

6

2,400 140

120 130 300

Azalée 2 Aramis Almandin 1 Almandin 2 Condor Algérie Malébo 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

Comoros Cameroon CAR CAR Eritrea Algeria Congo 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

13 July 1998 11 August 1998 15 December 1998

15 April 1998 15 April 1998 7 June 1998

28 November 1997 January 1998 February 1998

15 October 1995 17 February 1996 18 April 1996 18 May 1996 June 1996 November 1996 21 November 1996 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

21 October 1999 27 October 1998 28 February 1999

28 February 1999 1 March 2001 18 May 1999

6 December 1997 January 1998 2003

29 April 1996 21 July 1997 March 2001 2003 8 February 1997 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

23 March 1996 in progress

UNc N, P UNm

R, UNc N, P N, P

N, H N N

X A A A UNm N, P N, P N, H A, R, UNm N, P M N, P N, P UNc A N, P N

1 500 229

220 10 74

46

1,800

34 13

130 300 1,300

64 1,400 2,500 150 129

Limpopo 1 et 2 Mangoro Hudah Sloughi MINUEE

Samsonnette Loma Licorne

Boali Mamba (Artemis)

Providence MINUL Onuci/Calao

Robert Dorca

Mozambique Madagascar Madagascar Senegal Ethiopia

Madagascar Sierra Leone Côte d’Ivoire

CAR Zaire/RDC/Congo Kinshasa

Liberia Liberia Côte d’Ivoire

Gulf of Guinea Chad

2 July 2004 31 July 2004

6 June 2003 1 October 2003 23 April 2004

16 March 2003 3 June 2003

20 May 2001 4 February 2002 22 September 2002

19 February 2000 13 March 2000 8 April 2000 8 May 2000 6 December 2000

24 January 1999 28 January 1999 28 January 1999 June 1999 21 October 1999 30 November 1999 23 December 1999 15 February 2000

6 July 2004 11 September 2004

11 June 2003 in progress in progress

25 September 2003

14 June 2001 10 February 2002 in progress in progress

12 March 2000 22 March 2000 20 April 2000 13 June 2000 in progress

27 December 1999 26 March 2003

28 February 2001 23 June 2000 17 June 1999 2000 1 September 2003 in progress

Source: Collège Interarmées de Défense, , accessed July 2005.

Khor angar Okoumé Recamp Bissau Ardoukoba MINUSIL MONUC Khaya BONURCA

Djibouti Congo Guinea Bissau Djibouti Sierra Leone Zaire/RDC/Congo Kinshasa Côte d’Ivoire CAR

Table 4.2 continued

N N

N, H UNc UNc

A, R UN/EU

N, H UNc A, R

N, H N, H N, H N UNc

A N, P R, UN/ECOWAS A UNc R, UNc A, C UNc

200

173

150

190 1,070

32 2 4,000

37 200

1 7 340 1

490 30 600

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 officially 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 justified by the fact that the cooperation of the cold war was not to work to the benefit 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 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] (Confidential interview, Paris, November 2004).

The acknowledgment and the analysis stay at a superficial level. The abuses remain legitimized by the “necessities” of the Cold War. Furthermore, the colonel’s claim reflects 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 –

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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 significant 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 influenced 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 influences 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 officers 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-fulfilling 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 significant changing of the guard. At different times, these figures 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

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1

reforms. 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 significance led to a re-conceptualization of French involvement. For some reformers, the benefits 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 conflicts, economic failures – all coupled with the inability of African states to come up with solutions, to contain the conflicts, and/or to maintain any appearance of control – was bound to worry French officials. Tied to African states by defence and military agreements, France could end up (and has been) involved in multiple conflicts 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).

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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 official level to this day, French participation in the fighting 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. Significant figures 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 finance, Alfred Sirven. The spotlight was also on the Franco-African complex during a well-publicized and unsuccessful lawsuit for “offence to a foreign

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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 first 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 financial, 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-first century. Globalization provided France with a valuable new method to maintain and restructure its influence 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 financial institutions. It seems that the French Development Agency benefited 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).

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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 financial 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 reaffirmed 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 official 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, financed 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) financed and supplied by the French government. The objective was to move the training of African officers 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, ; accessed 13 June 2007.

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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 difficult 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 difficult 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.

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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 specific 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 difficult 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 finance its other priorities whatever those may be (Assemblée nationale 2004a, 28). Officially, 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 officers 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 officers and police officers (gendarmerie). Higher military education was given in France and often lasted many years. Specialized and technical training courses were also offered to non-commissioned officers. Most of the training was done at the same time as French officers. The number of trainees is significant 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 defined 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. Officially, the article finances 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).

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Table 5.3

81

Number of trainees by African country, 1999-2004

Angola Benin Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon CAR Chad Comoros Congo Djibouti Equ. Guinea Eritrea Ethiopia Gabon Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea-Bissau Côte d’Ivoire Kenya Madagascar Malawi Mali Mauritania Morocco Mozambique Niger Nigeria Senegal Tanzania Togo Tunisia Zimbabwe Total

1999 27 81 66 24 75 43 80 7 26 38 5 1 5 81 1 1 56

2000 21 99 107 11 90 55 87

2001 23 91 114 9 106 51 84

2002 18 122 173 9 141 49 79

2003 15 137 168 5 192 23 67

2004 9 148 188 14 202 39 83

35 45 10

46 56 9

92 41 7

76 54 4

95 3 3 61

118 4

12 104 2 38

5 90 1 11 45

102 1 80 3 99 49 102 1 20

152

131

78 4 80 2 142

77 2 85

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

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

103 128 75 1 1,381

18 6 117 2 91 69 1,483

63

161 2 41 19 119 6 83 86 2 1,588

Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DCMD.

cooperation officer 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

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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 figures. 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 finances 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 figures are kept hidden behind undefined 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 identified 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 identified (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 identified budget) (Confidential 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 edifice. 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

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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 defining foreign policy. Foreign Affairs is somewhat lost regarding Africa and promotes idealistic visions that struggle to define 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 officer posted to the Ministry of Defence asserted: Despite inflections, 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 officers 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 fight 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 efficient 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 influence 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

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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 officials 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 official 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,

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and among a significant strata in developing countries, there is at best complacency about these issues. This can be attributed to the widespread influence of the neoliberal political ideology (Thomas 2001, 164).

Or, as Duffield (1999, 23) puts it, the neoliberal “teleology dictates that the palliative benefits 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 fine; 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 unified 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. Duffield defines 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 specific 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 (Duffield 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 (Duffield 2001). One of the alleged objectives of global liberal governance is the eradication of global poverty through the “unqualified 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 significant 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 fiercely 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, specifically, 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 modification 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 Duffield (1999, 25) puts it: “rather like the chicken and the egg, development and security have become synonymous in official 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” (Confidential interview, Paris, November 2004). From an official of the French Development Agency (AFD): “We realized that, in any event, in order to eat we first needed to be at peace; thus peace is the priority” (Confidential 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. Duffield argues that the merging of development and security reflects 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, Duffield argues that both discourses contain certain truths. He further asserts: It is in the nature of discourse, however, to rework discrete truths and partial reflections into connected and coherent world views, forms of knowledge that are simultaneously expressions of power. In redefining 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 (Duffield 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 Duffield 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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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 first 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 confirmed) 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 affirming that the causes of the new wars – of today’s African armed conflicts – 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 conflict 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, conflict 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 specificities. In short, “security goes hyperbolic, since any assemblage, organization or population, however differentiated and specified, may become acerbic” (Dillon and Reid 2001, 57). There are two distinct narratives of conventional wisdom that seek to explain the causes of conflict on the borders of civilization, but that also reflect 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 conflict 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 efficient institutions. This view, while failing to form consensus, is very influential especially in regard to African conflicts. 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 conflicts as out of control, as irrational slaughter, and as beyond rational explanation. The new barbarism discourse is also very influential 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 (Duffield 2001, 113).

Echoes of new barbarism can definitely 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 conflict “in the modalities of underdevelopment and its associated pathologies of crime and terrorism” (Duffield 2001, 114). Duffield 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 Duffield 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 conflict while for the development position cultural diversity is not necessarily problematic. It can indeed be invigorating and emancipating (Duffield 2001, 109-21).6 The two positions disagree on the inevitability of violence, but they agree that development reduces violence and conflict. The relationship between conflict and development thus becomes an obvious and unexceptional truism. The association of conflict 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 superficial views on the causes of conflict do not reflect a policy failure. They have to be brief, general in application and easy to understand and communicate (Duffield 2001, 116).

Put another way: “Explaining the causes of conflict 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” (Duffield 2001, 109). Duffield 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 retain 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 conflict. 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 conflicting, 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, pacifier, 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 conflict resolution, stability, and development. Because conflict 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 redefined 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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legitimized. The official 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 significance. 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 officer 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, five years. Whereas the people we send now are there to supervise projects. These projects are agreements drafted between African countries and us, with a specific 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 final 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 fight 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 officers, the elites, so that there is a maximum number of our democratic ideas that we have in common that are passed on (Confidential 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 conflict 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 conflicts 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 finance all projects. Or perhaps French military cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa was successful. Maybe the problem has not been properly defined 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 conflict, 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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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 reflect relations of power. The ways in which conflict, 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 conflict and violence alone. It feeds on them for its legitimacy and authority and thus it participates in the maintenance of a specific 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 redefining social conditions that can cause, contribute, and exacerbate conflict 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 conflict 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

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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 defined as “a set of beliefs about the nature of war and the keys to success on the battlefield” (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 reflects and informs a very specific understanding of conflict, force, and violence which mirrors existing relations of power. Consequently, the doctrine forms, informs, reflects, 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 conflicts. African wars and conflicts 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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and the actual use of the military instrument. According to the white paper, the army was no longer obligated to fight lethal battles in which the total annihilation of the enemy was the key objective. The army had to now adapt to various types of conflict 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 conflict; increased the use of violence as a mean to an end; blurred the boundary between war and crisis; and amplified the appetite for power of diverse despots. In such a situation, the distinction between conventional and non-conventional conflict became almost meaningless. Therefore, the French army had to adapt. It had to take into consideration all types of conflict in which a variety of logics – political, economic, diplomatic, social, ethnic, and religious – confronted each other. Such conflicts demanded a new strategy, doctrine, and force posture. In addition, their resolution was often found within an inter-allied or multinational framework that necessitated flexibility 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 justification 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 conflict zones, human rights, dignity, and life are not considered as “sacred values.” The conflicts of the 1990s exemplified, 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 redefined 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 identifies 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 officials corroborated this. See for example the CDEF’s website, ; the Ministry of Defence’s website ; 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 reflect and reify existing relations of power. They also offer a powerful and compelling argument for the transformation of socalled traditional societies.

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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 defining 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 conflicts before they escalate, on the basis that a modicum of involvement today may save considerably riskier commitments tomorrow. If this seems an oversimplified 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 conflicts 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 officer in the Cameroonian army who graduated from the French military school of Saint-Cyr-Coëtquidan.

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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 fitted 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 configuration with a maximum of flexibility. 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 specific 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 identifies three key characteristics that borrow from “traditional” military

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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 briefly 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 defined as the protection of the French life-style, values, prosperity, and quality of life. France becomes strongly concerned by influx 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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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 deficit 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 unspecified 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 justification 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 first and foremost based on the fundamental principles of war. These principles combine to form two general approaches. The direct approach seeks to fight 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 fight. These classical principles of war were complemented with new concepts on the use of force that reflected, 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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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 defined in the official 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” conflicts 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” conflicts 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 defined belligerents in such conflict 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 conflict offered is superficial 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 conflict 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 conflict 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).

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According to Francart, the end of the Cold War completely altered the nature of conflict: Conflicts between states were replaced with many intrastate or trans-state conflicts. The logic of these conflicts 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 fighting disconcerting for the traditionally organized armies (Francart 2002, 16; see also CDEF 2007, 12).

Conflicts 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 conflicts has evolved and it implies an evolution of the nature of political and military answers (Francart 2002, 55).

For Francart, so-called “traditional” conflicts 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 conflicts are now first 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 conflict 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 conflict are predominantly indigenous. From his perspective, the problem comes mostly from a democratic deficit. The democratic state tolerates and can manage conflicting 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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In a sense, these “civilizational” and cultural conflicts 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 conflicts are not exclusively driven by a logic of power and material interests. The actors fight in the name of values and specific 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 confirm this analysis by stating that, in these conflicts, 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 defines 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).

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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 specific vision of the political order with its existing relations of power. In other words, his distinction reflects and reifies 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” conflicts 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 conflict 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 conflict 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 conflict 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 defined adversary. Consequently, the commanding officers 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-defined, the commanders must pierce their rationality or irrationality because they cannot be considered as neutral elements (Francart 2002, 178). The commanding officers 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 officers 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 military 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 first to geographical space. The strategic hills, valleys, and rivers must be identified 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 conflict. 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).

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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 conflicts 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 conflict 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 specific 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 conflict 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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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 objectifies and personifies 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 first and foremost a threatening thing that needs to be controlled. This objectification 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 identifies three forms that the masses takes when personified 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 influenced, emotional, and intuitive stereotype who is incapable of the same kind of rationality as men. Combined with the first 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 fulfilment … the closer the goal is, the more she becomes dynamic and uncontrollable; her destructive rage is often characterized by fire (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 fight is the partner of tomorrow that we will necessarily make a partner in the resolution of the conflict: 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 fickle 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).

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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 “transform” 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 artificial and controlled masses – and the “natural” uncontrollable crowd. Potier (2005) concludes that the reduction of every social manifestation, movement, or group to an objectified 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 financially 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 influence strategy, using all the functions of the State (or States) apparatus … It is a question of influencing globally and universally with the appropriate vector … The ‘psychological operations’ function is the other significant 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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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 signification 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 justification 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 identifies three modes of psychological operations that are differentiated according to their degree of intensity. The first 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, significantly, through the use of management and marketing techniques and campaigns. The second mode of mystification 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 influence over the perception regarding the conflict, 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).

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Francart writes that democracies cannot use alienation methods. Mystification methods must be used carefully and all three modes must respect specific principles even though they can be circumvented if necessary.10 The a priori assumption is that democracies are, by definition, legitimate actors to intervene in any conflict. 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 influence is carried out through several means, from cultural influence 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 defined as systemic techniques (its formal expression) to impose a specific 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, mystification, and alienation) have the 10 The principles are: freedom of thought and expression, truthfulness, credibility, distance vis-à-vis the conflict, 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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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 influence. 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 influence,” 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 firing his gun. They also represent a French foothold for future political and economic profits.

11 There is little research on French ACM. What has been published so far are often the works of military officers 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 first 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.

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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 defined 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 conflicts 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 conflicts; 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, redefines, and implements RECAMP. The EMA promotes the concept with the help of the RECAMP ambassador; it defines the actions of the foreign armies that wish to participate; it creates the multinational exercises and it defines 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 officers 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 redefined 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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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, exemplified 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 affirmed 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 official 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 Kofi 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 conflicts and crises; 2) the international community’s preoccupation with violent conflicts 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-conflict 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 first feature: training. The training of high-ranking officers 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 flexible according to the particular demands of the signatory states of bilateral assistance accords. The French schools at Compiègne for staff officers, Tours for

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administration and logistics, and Montpellier for infantry training all offered specific training modules for peacekeeping.12 The Koulikouro ENVR in Mali was the primary training ground for the African officers 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 officers at the battalion level, and staff officers for multinational brigade command. The objective was to teach to African officers 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 officers 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 first 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” (Confidential interview, Paris, November 2004). The RECAMP cycle lasted approximately 18 months and consisted of three key meetings. The first 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 final preparation conference and which aimed to train staff officers 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 find in the official documents that concern RECAMP. However, and oddly enough, when I visited the DCMD in November 2004 the two officers 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 financial help of the Canadian International Development Agency. The number of officers 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 official website:

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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 first 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 significant 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 camouflage and/or as a process that re-legitimizes French military cooperation. RECAMP shifted the military cooperation discourse from one

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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 officers 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 insufficiencies 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 conflicts. 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 officer told me, “because there is no one to give it to, but we should nevertheless not confuse the current picture with the final objective” (Confidential interview, Paris, November 2004). Sadly, very few (if any) French scholars and government officials 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 flexible 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, fifteen, 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 difficult to miss the superficial 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 difficult to conceive of RECAMP as other than an operation of camouflage 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 (Confidential 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 conflict and violence. The common ways in which conflict, 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 exemplified 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.

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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 fitted 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 conflict 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 indefinitely 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 officials, military officers, 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 define 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 defined as military/security in nature. Political solutions are too often undermined because the problem is described as one between irreconcilable forces. The conflict, 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 conflicts. 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,

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the genocide was the effect of a rational political decision made by political actors who were supported by France. However strongly the French government officially 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 “final 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 firmly 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 officials 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 redefined 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 client-

1 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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patron one. It was therefore possible to be “tutsified” or “de-tutsified” 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 “scientific canon” that governed German and later Belgian colonial administrative decisions. The accepted scientific 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 fine 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 modified the meanings and social purposes of these groups. Under Belgian rule, these distinctions acquired a racist connotation and became more inflexible. 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 classified 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 specified 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.

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The cultural mythology in Rwanda painted the Tutsi as foreign invaders. This belief justified 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 identified themselves as refugees in 1990. The political immobility, the racial ideology, the repressive climate, and the regional infighting 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 first 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 finally collapsed in 1986. Tin prices also collapsed between 1984 and 1986 and led to the closing down of tin mining which intensified the economic crisis. For the élite of the regime there were three sources of enrichment: coffee and tea exports, briefly tin exports, and creaming off foreign aid. Since a fair share of the first 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 intensified (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 financial 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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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 defined 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 definitively 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 specified that French personnel were appointed by France with the consent of the Rwandan government, with the senior French military officer 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 modification was justified 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 modified. The term Gendarmerie was replaced with Rwandan Armed Forces. French military assistance was extended officially to all Rwandan forces. But this amendment came two years after the de facto modification caused by the RPF attack of October 1990. When questioned

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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 modification 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 briefly 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 first 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 officials and officers 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 briefly 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 confirmed. 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 satisfied 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 officer 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). Officially, 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, testified 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 officially 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 testified 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 conflict, it would have in all likelihood confined 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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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 officers, 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). Officially, 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 officially 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 confirmed that the Presidential Guard had its French military advisers who knew each other by their first 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.

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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 testified 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 confirmed 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 confirmed 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 difficult to distinguish between soldiers and militia. Forges interviewed French soldiers who could not tell the difference. She assumed, however, that career soldiers and officers 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 officer 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 fixed 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 reflected 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 officer 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 officer confided 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 confidential manner.” Another officer 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 specifies 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 specific meaning: “operational sectors” means a grid pattern designed for tight military control; “recruitment of a great number” signifies popular mobilization; “reduced time for basic training” signifies 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 influence’. 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 official 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

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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 testified that the discussions between the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Cooperation about the command of Operation Noroît reflected doctrinal difficulties 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 influence 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 influence 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 officers from Belgium, Israel, Latin America, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Spain shared their expertise. Périès explained that many Argentinean officers were trained in Paris and then worked in Argentina with French officers integrated to Argentinean headquarters. Beginning in 1959, the Argentinean Staff, under the supervision of French officers, 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 officers 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 find 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 identified 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 flight, 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 filled 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 unified 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 identifiable 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 first is the most obvious if predisposed to diverse interpretations. It is the higher-level “advising” of highranking French officers who participated closely and actively in the Rwandan decision-making process. These French officers 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 officially so far to corroborate these accusations. It is the direct actions of French soldiers who operated

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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 officer 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 officer personally in charge of advising the RGF chief of staff. Maurin testified 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 for 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 officers 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 testified to the MIPR: regarding the military sphere, if there was a very official 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 officers advised Rwandan commanders. While the report sometimes reads as specific and clear, at other times it reads as if every high-ranking French officer 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 reflects 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, specified 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 fire. 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 fired 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 officer 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 infiltration. 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 define ‘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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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 difficult 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 official 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 difficulties, 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 trafficking (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).

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Table 7.1 Year 1987 1988 1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994 Total

CIEEMG approved weapons transfers, 1987-1994 Weapon

Number

Rockets 68-mm Milan 2 firing posts Milan 2 antitank missiles Rockets 68-mm Mortars 120-mm Munitions 120-mm Grenades Mortars 60-mm Milan 2 firing 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.

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Table 7.2 Year 1990

1991

1992

1993

1994 Total

139

Arms transfers authorized by AEMG, 1990-1994 Weapon Munitions 60-mm Milan firing posts Pistol 22 LR Cartridges 22 LR Revolvers 357 Magnum Munitions 357 Cartridges Rockets 68-mm Munitions 9-mm Rifles 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.

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Table 7.3

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 Officially, 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 superficial for it does not examine many crucial aspects, it analyses superficially 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 officer, 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 first 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).

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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 five 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 fighter-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 confidence 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 finish 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 flags, 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).

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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 officer of the COS, Capt. Marin Gillier, later confirmed 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 significant 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 fight 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 fight the RPF (Interview, Kingston Canada, July 2005). Some of these French officers 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. Dallaire later received a memo from general Lafourcade that stated he had no 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 first place.

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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 officer 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 fight and defeat them … Lafourcade had to rein Thibault in and, to his credit, he did, publicly rebuking his subordinate commander. He clarified 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 of 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 staff officers were divided. On the ground, officers had to differentiate humanitarian

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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 conflict 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, who was tried by the Rwandan justice system, condemned, and executed (Coret and Verschave 2005, 213-7).

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Two of these important participants in the genocide were also officially 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 confirmed 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, testified 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 – 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: 10 The document is reproduced in Coret and Verschave (2005, 514-5).

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France and the New Imperialism 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 officers, a couple of French officers and, to my surprise, the same huge RGF lieutenant-colonel who had come into Bagosora’s office on the afternoon of April 7 (his G-2, or intelligence officer, 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 officers 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 officers and officials in France were planning revenge, trying to re-legitimize the Mobutu regime, and fighting 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 reflected a race-thinking reminiscent of a colonial tradition. Democracy was redefined 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 conflict. 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 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 conflict to such a degree that it will later be criticized

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for staying for too long (Noroît), for leaving hurriedly during the setting in motion of the genocide (Amaryllis) and finally 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 unified and indivisible. This explanation misrepresents not only the events, but it guarantees that no French official or military officer 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 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

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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 specific 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 officers, 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 conflict 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 define 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 conflict by artificially dividing the country in two along a North-South line. This split was solidified by polarizing the parties and their concerns, and through promoting the French understanding of both the so-called roots of the conflict 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 influence, 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 briefly examine the historical construction of a 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-defined 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 influence 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 upon 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 reflected 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, officials, 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 pacification 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 influence 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 affiliated 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 sufficient material base.1 For Amin, the modes of financing 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 financing 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 profits would soon overcome the direct foreign investments (see also: Amin 1988, 184-93). Indeed, the government’s official 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 profits 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 reflected the structure of a dependent societal system. First, the importance of foreign capital was perceivable in the increasing share of revenues of big foreign firms, 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

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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 definition then, and as far as Amin was concerned, it was a regressive system for it could not lead to a self-sufficient 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 influenced 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 fingernails, 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 benefited 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 official language, and French capital investment was encouraged and secured. Through the 1980s almost 70 percent of

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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 beneficial 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 influence of international financial 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 first 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, efficiency, 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 deficits. 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

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of borders, and so on. In the early to mid-1980s, Côte d’Ivoire served as a successful example of adjustment for international financial 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 deficit 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 significantly 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 fiscal deficits (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 firms and the postcolonial model of development/dependency. The overall orientation of the first 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 first 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 benefited 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 beneficiaries defending their claims” (Sindzingre and Conte 2002, 142). State-owned companies were sold to “friends.” The large French firms, 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-first 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 raffinage). 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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end, a strong argument can be made that privatization reinvented Ivorian dependency. Among others, it increased the influence of foreign capital in key sectors of the economy and the number of African salaries and revenues dependent upon foreign firms. 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 influence 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 first phase of adjustments had significant political effects. In short, they all pointed to the increased influence of external agents in setting economic policy, in redefining the role of the state, and in various direct interventions into the decisionmaking process (B. Campbell 2002, 160). In 1990, this influence 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 definition 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 conflict, 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 definition 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

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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 financial 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 financial 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 official “division of labour” between France and international financial institutions: In 1993, after many years of deficits, 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 financing became urgent. A ‘division of labour’ emerged between the BWI (economic credibility, binding of governments by multilateral arrangements) and the ex-colonial power (political influence, 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 significant financial 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 benefited 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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A few months before the fall of President Bédié, after many years of effort, the Bretton Woods institutions finally 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 financial 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 financial 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, unsatisfied 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 financial assistance. These contradictions were reflected 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 financial 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 seems 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, flying

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arms and munitions directly to Bouaké. It would also seem that President Blaise Compaoré operated in concert with Libya, which offered financial 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 first 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 officially 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 conflict 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 influence was essentially financial 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 difficult 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 conflict 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 conflict. The first 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 conflict 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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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 efficiency, thus excluding a priori social reforms toward more equitable redistributive practices. The Marcoussis Accords reflected 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 conflict, 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 redefined the constitutional powers of the parliament and government; the presidency losing power to the benefit 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 reflects 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 identified two major types of crisis: those linked to bad governance and the difficulties 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 confiance) 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 configuration 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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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 fiction 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 reflect 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 reflects a Western perspective of governance which escapes all historical critique or analysis (Galy 2004). In redefining 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 conflict, 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 filled 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 benefited 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 conflict as a North-South, Christian-Muslim one. He argues that these media misrepresentations exacerbated the stereotypes that influence our views of African conflicts.

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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 testified 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 ceasefire 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 trafficking to the benefit 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 difficult to ignore the defence accords. But as France denied foreign influence, 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 identified, 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 affirm 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 flew 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 significant 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 redefine 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 fight, on the condition that it is only political … We thus demanded a general ceasefire from the rebel groups, including those of the West.” 4 The Marcoussis Accords are widely available. For instance:

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was implied that the president gave away the powers attributed as commander in chief of the armies to the profit 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: first, despite its tentative “Africanization,” African crisis management (mediation and intervention) proved to be highly problematic by its nature and significantly dependent upon Western financial 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 conflict (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 ceasefire, the group was unable to overcome many obstacles. Internal rivalries made the experience laborious and uncertain. In particular, the battle for leadership was fierce 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 officials), 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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dependence upon the financial 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 conflict. Second, the events of November 2004 seemed to reveal the partiality of France. Colonial Complex or Reflexes? 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

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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 ceasefire 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 unjustified 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 clarified is who planned and ordered the attack.

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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 fired “warning and deterrent shots” from their tanks and helicopters, used 20-mm shells, grenades, and mines. The Ivorian government affirmed 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 fire 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 fired warning shots, then deterrent shots and, finally, shots in particular at the first 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 Charlesde-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 officers, 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 fired 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 fire “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 fire 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 fleeing the firing (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

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tank column got “lost”? Gbagbo believed so and so did certain French officials according to D’Ersu (2007, 99). In any case, the events of November 2004 shocked many French officials, especially those who had unofficially 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 officers 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.

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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 influence and presence is still conceived of as choices between binary typologies of developed/backward, order/chaos. As Said argues: Every single empire in its official 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 defined 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 exists. The recent restructuring of France’s power and influence 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 unifies it under a single political economy outside modernity, in a coherent and two-dimensional image of backwardness and/or

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chaos. 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 influences continue to be significant 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 significant 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 find 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 specificity even if it remains strongly influence by this overarching Orientalism. My analysis of French interventions in Rwanda and Côte d’Ivoire underlined both the specificities of each case and their overarching Orientalism.

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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 influence 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 influence 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 flows, 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” (Duffield 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 flexible 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 fiasco, Franco-African dynamics have been constantly criticized. Nevertheless, French hegemony survives and is constantly reformulated, re-legitimized, and re-authorized in the name of

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France, progress, and civilization. Consequently, this book did not focus on the official objectives of French security policy, but on its actual practices and the interests served by these practices and associated discourses.

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Index Abidjan 155, 162-3, 167 Abidjan doctrine 75, 157 Africanization 5, 114, 149, 165, 172 Alliot-Marie, Michèle 149, 160, 164, 167-8 Amaryllis see military intervention (France) Amin, Samir 31, 87, 150-3, 157 Balladur doctrine see Abidjan doctrine Balladur, Edouard 75-6, 96, 143-5, 157 Barbarian 27, 44, 47 barbarism 3, 36, 46, 49, 74, 88-90, 104, 122, 160-2 Beardsley, Brent 130, 142, 147 Bédié, Henri Konan 157-8, 161 Belgium colonial administration 124 in Rwanda 121, 123-4, 126, 133, 147 military advisers 131 at Paris Ecole de Guerre 133 military intervention 128-9 Bentegeat, Henri (gen.) on Licorne 163, 166-7 on types of African crises 161 Bouaké 160, 163-4 Bretton Woods institutions 62, 75, 86, 157-8 Britain 33, 112, 114 Burkina Faso 62, 81, 153, 159-60, 163 Césaire, Aimé 44-5 CFA franc 59, 75, 154-5, 157 Chad 61-2, 65, 67-9, 72, 75, 78, 81, 141 Chimère see military intervention (France) Chirac, Jacques 55, 76, 83, 91, 158, 163, 166-7, 169 civilization 3, 20-3, 31-6, 41, 43-7, 49-50, 53, 74, 85, 88, 92, 104, 122, 174 clash of 46-7, 89, 102 civilizing mission 1, 30-2, 35-7, 43-4, 53, 62, 88

colonial consciousness 37, 51, 62 colonialism 3, 29-39, 41-5, 47, 50-2, 121, 150, 172 Colonial Pact 31 Colonial Party 37, 39, 42 colonial present 162-3, 171 colonial troops 43, 51, 130 Force d’action rapide 98-9 Groupement d’intervention de la gendarmerie nationale 131 Marine troops 43 Régiment étranger de parachutistes 128, 130 Régiment parachutiste de l’infanterie de marine 129-30, 135 colonization see also colonialism as French ideology 33, 35, 43-5 concept 31 of the military 39 Commandement des opérations spéciales (COS) 130, 132, 141-2, 168 Commission d’enquête citoyenne 127, 133, 136, 140, 145, 148 Compaoré, Blaise 160, 166, 169 Congo-Zaire 61-2, 68-72, 76, 125, 140, 143 Côte d’Ivoire dependency system 149-65 growth without development 150-1 Cox, Robert 5-6 critical theory 5-6, 173 Dallaire, Roméo 131, 135, 141-3, 145-7 Direction de la coopération militaire et de defense 73, 76, 78-82, 91, 113, 115 Djibouti 60-2, 68, 70, 72, 78, 81, 115 decolonization 1, 3, 4, 38, 42, 47, 49-60, 63, 65, 93, 99, 110, 117, 122 Côte d’Ivoire 150, 154 of the international 42 Rwanda 123-4

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defence accords see military cooperation democratization 42, 47, 124, 146-7, 156,7, 159, 165, 172 La Baule 74-5 development aid 4, 56, 58-9, 77, 89, 118 as modernity/civilization 18, 32, 54, 74, 86, 118 as linked to security 4, 43, 74, 82-4, 86-8, 117-8, 172-3 colonial 32-3, 43, 93, 151 dependency 43, 155 in Côte d’Ivoire 150-7 developmental malaise 88-90, 102, 160-2 France’s policy 4, 30, 32, 54 neoliberal version 84-6, 88, 155-7, 160 underdevelopment 89, 151 Ecoles nationales à vocation régionale 78, 80, 113-5 Etat-major des Armées 82-3, 113-4 Europeanization 173 European Union 75, 91, 100, 114, 116, 159 Ferry, Jules 34, 36, 39 Foccart, Jacques 53-8, 74, 76 Forces Nouvelles 164, 167, 169 Francart, Loup (gen.) 102-11 Françafrique 56, 58, 144 Franco-African (security) complex 30, 48, 50, 55-6, 58-60, 66, 76-7, 83, 122, 166 franc zone see CFA franc Gaulle, Charles de 25, 51-4, 56-8, 61, 63, 83, 131, 168 Gbagbo, Laurent 159, 161-7, 169 globalization 4, 6, 45, 62, 75, 77, 84-5, 87-8, 90 global governance 2, 4, 5, 42, 50, 65, 73, 83-90, 119, 150, 156-8, 163, 173 definition 85-6 Gramsci, Antonio 26, 49 Guéï, Robert 158-9, 166 Habyarimana, Juvénal 125-30, 135, 137, 144, 146 Houphouët-Boigny, Félix 56-7, 74, 150-7, 166, 168 Hugo, Victor 36

imperial colonialism 29-32, 34-5, 37-8, 42, 45, 51 International Monetary Fund 75, 84, 125, 154-8 La Baule see democratization Lafourcade, Jean-Claude (gen.) 141-3, 145-6 Lanxade, Admiral 132, 135, 143 Liberia 71-2, 78, 160, 163 liberal war 73, 88 Licorne see military intervention (France) mastery of violence mastery of armaments 106-7 mastery of forces 106 mastery of humanitarian assistance 106-7 mastery of information 106, 109-10, 112, 118 mastery of the masses 106-9, 115, 118 mastery of violence 94, 97, 101-2, 104-9, 111, 115, 117-8 Mbembe, Achille 44 militarization of Africa 50, 82 of colonialism 39 of policy 74, 82, 119 of politics of intervention 112, 122 military cooperation agreements 55, 57, as part of Western strategy 4, 62-4 concept 60, 63, 65-6, 99 defence accords/agreements 55, 60-1, 64 military assistance accords 55, 60-2, 65 the new military cooperation 77-84, 90-1, 113-6 with Rwanda see Rwanda military doctrine see also mastery of violence strategy of prevention 95-101, 105, 113 strategy of projection 95-101, 113 strategy of protection 95, 97, 99, 101 military forces (France) see colonial troops military intervention (France) operation Amaryllis 70, 147 operation Chimère 135 operation Licorne 72, 78, 113-4, 149, 160, 166-9 operation Noroît 69, 128-30, 133, 135, 144, 147

Index operation Turquoise 70, 76, 98, 131, 1403, 145, 147 Ministry of Cooperation 54, 58, 61, 76-7, 79, 145 Ministry of Defence 55-6, 61-2, 66, 78-80, 83, 117, 137 Ministry of Foreign Affairs 55-6, 61, 76-81, 83, 87, 118 Mission d’information parlementaire sur le Rwanda 126-9, 131-2, 135-7, 140-1, 146-7 Mission of Military Cooperation (MMC) 61-2, 73, 76, 79 Mitterrand, François 55, 74, 76, 128, 132-3, 141, 143, 145-6, 151 Mitterrand, Jean-Christophe 58, 76, 128 Mouvement patriotique de la Côte d’Ivoire 159, 163-4 neocolonial arrangements 4 dependence 53, 91 system/order 54-5, 91 neocolonialism 118, 150 neoimperial world order 173 new barbarism 88-90, 160-2 new imperialism 172-3 new wars 20, 42, 87-8, 101-2 Noroît see military intervention (France) Orientalism 26, 42, 172 Ouattara, Alassane 156-7, 159, 165 Paris Colonial International Exposition 37-8 Parti démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire 151 Pasqua, Charles 55-6, 58, 76, 82 racism in colonial administration 40 in international relations theory 45-7 link with colonization/empire 36, 44-5, 88 RECAMP 4, 50, 67, 72, 74, 78, 91, 94, 113-19 Rwanda France’s military cooperation 126-40 Rwandan Governmental Forces (RGF) 12830, 132, 135-7, 141-3, 145-7

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Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) 125-30, 132, 135-7, 142-7 Said, Edward W. 13, 20, 26-7, 29, 45-6, 85, 171 secret services (France) DGSE 130, 144 SDECE 57 securitization 2, 7-8, 11, 48-50, 99 security reproblematization of 84, 87-8 security dependency 18, 65 Senegal 41, 51, 60, 62, 69-70, 72, 75, 78, 81, 141, 151, 160, 165 Soro, Guillaume 159, 169 State state-as-actor 3, 15-8, 27 state-as-practice 3, 11-15, 17, 26, 148 state-society boundary 14-5 symbolic state 3, 6, 11-9, 26-7, 49, 55, 57, 63, 116, 121-2, 146, 148, 172 Symbolic France myth of France 20-5 State project 21-5 True France 24-5, 38 symbolic state see State Togo 60, 62, 70, 74-5, 81, 165 Turquoise see military intervention (France) UNAMIR 130, 141-2, 147 UNOCI 78, 149, 166-7, 169 United States American corporations in Côte d’Ivoire 158 American initiatives in Africa 114, 116 collaboration with France 114, 159, 163, 166 influence in Africa 75, 112 on colonization 52 position on France-Africa relations 55, 63 Verschave, François-Xavier 1, 55-6, 58-9, 66, 77, 82, 128, 131, 133-6, 140-5, 148 Villepin, Dominique de 143, 149, 163-4 Walker, R.B.J. 7, 13, 16, 45 World Bank 75, 84-5, 125, 144, 154-6 Zaire see Congo-Zaire