Franco-African summit: the scramble for Africa intensifies

By Alex Lefebvre
3 March 2003

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On February 19-21, French President Jacques Chirac hosted a Paris summit of African heads of state, entitled “Africa and France, Together in a New Partnership.” Extending an invitation to many countries traditionally considered outside France’s sphere of influence, Chirac invited representatives from every African country except Somalia. Only one head of state, Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast, who has run afoul of a French intervention force in his country, refused to come or send a high-level delegation.

The global Franco-American rivalry dominated the summit to an unusual degree. Departing from normal procedures, the conference adopted a declaration on the situation in Iraq. Largely echoing the French government’s position, it called for extended United Nations weapons inspections and stressed the importance of the UN in any resolution of the Iraq crisis. The French press praised the declaration as strengthening France’s stance, noting that it was adopted unanimously.

The vote was considered especially important since three African states—Cameroon, Angola and Guinea—are nonpermanent members of the UN Security Council and will vote on upcoming UN resolutions.

Recriminations broke out over the declaration immediately after the conference ended. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, aligned with the US, insisted that he had had no part in discussing it and that it had been “imposed” by the French. On French television, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade claimed that it had been “voted upon”—leaving open the possibility that the French government had confronted the African leaders with a take-it-or-leave-it Iraq declaration.

In a subtle attack on the US, Chirac promised he would propose cutting subsidies of First World agricultural exports to African countries at upcoming trade summits. This issue is quite popular with African heads of state since subsidized First World imports often ruin African farmers. Raising it gave French officials and the French press the opportunity to criticize the US government’s massive 2002 farm subsidy bill, which includes provisions subsidizing US exports to Third World countries. The question of farm subsidies is a longstanding bone of contention between the US and the European Union (EU) at trade talks.

Chirac also promised he would defend the preferential status France has granted to African agricultural exports, despite opposition from the US and the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters.

Chirac’s agricultural proposals also served to shield him from attacks by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had previously criticized him for claiming to care about Africa while preserving the European Common Agricultural Policy subsidies, which effectively shut African farmers out of the European market.

In line with its vicious anti-French attacks over the Iraq crisis, the British press reacted hysterically to the summit. Rupert Murdoch’s Sun tabloid distributed a version of its paper in Paris with a picture of Chirac’s face superimposed on a worm’s body, labeled “Chirac is a worm.”

Most of the British media outlets focused on Chirac’s invitation of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as exemplifying his willingness to deal with undemocratic governments. They pointed out that Mugabe is still technically under a EU ban prohibiting him from visiting any EU countries. French officials retorted that several African leaders had threatened to boycott the conference if Mugabe was not invited.

While attacking the summit along similar lines, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the British Commonwealth is under increasing pressure from two African members, South Africa and Nigeria, to rescind its condemnation of Mugabe. This article was the exception to the rule, however, as the US media largely blacked out details of the conference.

US and British hostility to Chirac’s meetings with African rulers has nothing to do with concerns over democratic rights. Washington and London likewise prop up authoritarian governments and arm proxies in civil wars across Africa. Rather, they are concerned that France may seek to defend its imperialist interests and relations with former colonies more aggressively than before. The Financial Times of London complained that Chirac had “kidnapped European policy” on Africa.

The new conservative French government represents a break with the previous Socialist government on Africa policy. The French newspaper Le Figaro noted that it is closer to sections of the ruling elite that favor a greater military presence in Africa.

Thus far, the reassertion of French interests in Africa has not gone smoothly. France’s military intervention in the Ivory Coast, where it is keeping a force of 3,000 soldiers, occupied much of Chirac’s time during the conference. In the face of escalating violations of the recent Marcoussis peace accords, by both rebel forces and those of President Laurent Gbagbo, Chirac is trying to form a government of national unity, including both rebel and pro-presidential elements, centered on Prime Minister Seydou Diarra.

Diarra, scornfully labeled “the prime minister of France” in the Ivory Coast, traveled to Paris to meet Chirac during the summit. Chirac issued veiled threats of war crimes prosecutions against Gbagbo, claiming that “death squads” were operating in the streets of the port city, Abidjan—claims that Gbagbo immediately contested.

Even if France somehow manages to broker a peace deal to its advantage in the Ivory Coast, it faces a larger problem: attempts to assert its interests in Africa risk provoking a serious confrontation with the US. Most of the African problems discussed at the summit either involve or are related to fighting between French and US proxies.

The summit discussed the problem of transfer of power in Burundi from a Tutsi to a Hutu head of state. In the region, the US has typically backed the Tutsi ethnic group and France the Hutu ethnic group. This was the case, for example, during the genocide in neighboring Rwanda. It is unclear if the Tutsi-controlled army in Burundi will accept the transfer.

It also discussed the problems in Congo-Kinsasha (Democratic Republic of the Congo), where Tutsi rebels from Uganda and Burundi are fighting government forces for control of gold and diamond mines in the eastern part of the country. France has organized support for the government from neighboring countries—Angola and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe—both of which have faced Anglo-American opposition.

The problem of Chad’s involvement in the civil war in the Central African Republic also involves a Franco-American rivalry. The Central African Republic’s president, Félix-Ange Patassé, has called in Ugandan Tutsi forces to put down a revolt partially sponsored by Chad, which hosts a garrison of 1,000 French troops and is considered a French ally.

The poisoning of international relations arising from the US war drive against Iraq is intensifying the scramble for Africa, which, in turn, is further exacerbating the rivalries between the major capitalist powers. Despite verbal claims of concern for peace, military interventions by France and others seeking to secure natural resources or strategic positions will give rise to more of the civil warfare, social dislocation, indebtedness and poverty that are already devastating Africa. They also bring mankind closer to the point when the increasing tensions between the imperialist powers themselves assume military forms.

UN and US back French intervention in Ivory Coast

By Chris Talbot
12 February 2003

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France has received international backing for its intervention in its former colony, Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) where a civil war has been raging for five months. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that “welcomes the deployment of Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) forces and French troops” and endorses the peace agreement signed by both the government and rebels in the current civil war.

Ecowas countries have been very reluctant to be involved in the conflict and have so far sent only 200 troops, though this is set to increase to 1,500. Imposition of a power-sharing government that is supposed to end the conflict is very much a French effort, whose troops in the country now number more than 3,000. The deal has met with little success as President Laurent Gbagbo, on his return from signing up to it in Paris, claimed it was only a series of “proposals”. His supporters have attacked French citizens and their property.

UN backing is vital to the French intervention, giving the necessary gloss that they are acting on behalf of the “international community”. Supporters of both sides in the conflict, especially the pro-government demonstrators, have charged France with neo-colonialism, and within France itself fears have been raised of being drawn into a Vietnam-type situation. President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin are both keen to reassert French influence in Africa. Not only was the Ivory Coast a key focus for French investment and a centre of economic activity in West Africa, but new discoveries of oil and increasing oil production in West Africa lend the region strategic importance.

The Security Council resolution could not have been passed without the backing of the United States. The decision to support France marks a shift from the position at the beginning of January when US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that UN backing for Ecowas or French troops in Ivory Coast was “inappropriate”. Taken together with British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s comments at the recent Franco-British summit (“I express my full and complete solidarity with France for its treatment of the situation in Ivory Coast”), the change in US attitude may well be part of horse trading in winning French backing for war against Iraq.

As the Washington Post put it, explaining the resistance in Ivory Coast to the Paris peace deal: “Chirac might well explain to President Bush that some foreign interventions are worth the risk, nevertheless. To which the American leader might respond: Cher ami, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you about Iraq.”

The US had also previously “expressed concern” that the two rebel groups operating in the west of Ivory Coast were receiving support from Liberia, a charge also made by the Ivorian government. Liberia is regarded as a “rogue state”, being under UN sanctions for its role in trading so-called “conflict diamonds” and supporting the rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Yet France invited Liberian president Charles Taylor to its Paris peace talks, and brought the rebel factions from the west into the peace agreement along with the main rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of the Ivory Coast (MPCI), that controls the north of the country.

Although the previous Jospin government in France ignored dubious elections and recognised the Gbagbo government as legitimate two years earlier—there are close connections between the Socialist Party in France and Gbagbo—Chirac calculated that a government including the rebels as well as opposition leader Alassane Ouattara, whose support is in the Muslim north, was the best way of achieving a measure of stability. Gbagbo and his supporters have been stoking up a chauvinistic campaign based on the Christian south, and their own Bete ethnic group, against northern Muslims and immigrants. To have given full backing to the government could well have placed France in the same situation as in Rwanda in 1994—supporting a regime that was committing mass ethnic slaughter.

The United Nations human rights agency has just released a report revealing that death squads operating in the Ivory Coast are made up of “elements close to the government, the presidential guard and a tribal militia from the Bete ethnic group of President Gbagbo.” Attacks on Muslims and foreigners have been organised by government supporters and bodies of executed people have been found in a forest near to the commercial capital Abidjan.

Last week the body of a well-known comedian and political opponent of the government, Kamara Yerefe, was found riddled with bullets in Abidjan. His family say that he was taken away for questioning by government gendarmes. For the first time in the last few weeks a demonstration of oppositionists took to the streets of the city and attacked police.

There have been signs that the Gbagbo regime, which had recognised the weakness of France’s position prior to its receiving UN and US backing, is now retreating from outright opposition to the Paris agreement. For two weeks there have been daily protests in Abidjan by government supporters against the agreement, and Gbagbo’s wife, a leader of Gbagbo’s parliamentary grouping, said on radio that the agreement has been rejected by “all Ivorians” and that “France should mind its own business.”

But when Gbagbo eventually made his expected television speech to the country, he stated that the agreement was “a basis to work on.” His shift in attitude doubtless reflected the new US willingness to support France. However he continued to maintain that MPCI rebels could not be given the key defence and interior ministerial posts in a new unity government, though rebel leaders insist this was a key part of the Paris agreement. If relations between France and the US continue to deteriorate over the question of Iraq, it is probable that Gbagbo’s attitude may change again.

The situation in Ivory Coast remains highly volatile. It seems unlikely that France can impose stability on the country in the immediate future because the country is becoming the focus for much wider international differences between France and the US.

A meeting of Ecowas leaders in the political capital of Ivory Coast, Yamoussoukro, to begin putting together a coalition government, was boycotted by the rebel groups. Rebel leaders said there was no need to reopen negotiations and accused Gbagbo of refusing to accept the Paris agreement in full. They are threatening to march on Abidjan within a week, warning, “If France is not capable of making President Gbagbo apply the accord, then it must face the consequences.”

Thousands of westerners and French citizens have now fled from Ivory Coast, although about 15,000 French still remain. Several hundred people have been killed in the civil war and more than a million displaced. Whilst the cease-fire between the government and the northern rebels appears to be holding, there are reports of fresh fighting in the west of the country, close to the Liberian border.

© 2003 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted)

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