Another French Intervention under UN Cover
The UN News Service, on September 25, 2007 reported that “The Security Council today established a United Nations-mandated, multidimensional presence, which will include European Union military forces, in eastern Chad and north-eastern Central African Republic (CAR) to help protect civilians and facilitate humanitarian aid to thousands of people uprooted due to insecurity in the two countries and neighbouring Sudan.”
The UN News Release said that the UN presence will include a UN Mission to be known as MINURCAT, and an EU military force will be deployed for one year with the authority to “take necessary measures” in support of the UN presence. Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon commenting on the decision said “deployment of a UN-mandated multidimensional presence in Chad and the CAR …could have a significant positive impact on the security situation there.” The peacekeepers will be made of 3,000 European Union troops and 300 UN police. According to reports by the BBC, under the plan drawn up by France, these troops will be tasked with monitoring camps for people displaced by violence.
Both the governments of Chad and the CAR have welcomed the UN force, but humanitarian organizations that work in the region have said France engineered the deployment of the UN mission and have expressed skepticism about a Sarkozy agenda in two former French colonies. Fabrice Tarrit, who, according to the BBC, heads Survie, an association based in France that works to end France’s support of corrupt and undemocratic regimes in Africa, said: “France is not best placed to play peacemaker because historically it has contributed more to war than peace on the continent.”
Roland Van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam’s programme director in Chad, questioned the credibility and neutrality of the force, stating that “if the major component of the forces is French it will not be seen as a neutral force in the country by a lot of stakeholders.” This is a serious concern in light of declarations made by Timane Erdimi, leader of a Chadian dissident group, Rally for Forces for Change. Mr. Erdimi said his men will resist should the peacemakers act as an intervention force. This is not good news for the UN force whose mandate includes an authorization to “take necessary actions,” compounded by the fact that France has recently engaged rebellions in both countries and already has forces stationed there.
In 2006, France militarily intervened in both Chad and CAR when rebellions in both countries threatened their governments. Both governments had also come to power through armed rebellions. A March 31, 2006 Press Release titled “Chad’s ACTUS Condemns French Intervention to Rescue Déby Regime,” which called for the unconditional closure of all French military bases in Chad and all of Africa.
On March 4, 2007, the Reuters News agency reported that rebels in the CAR attacked French Army positions in the northern town of Birao after French forces had bombed their positions killing three rebels. At the time, the rebel spokesman, Ahmat Amadine was quoted as saying “we responded by attacking the French positions and they have also taken several wounded.” In December of 2006, France sent Special Forces backed by helicopters and fighter jets to dislodge rebel fighters from Birao and elsewhere in the Central African Republic, and since then, France has maintained forces in the area.
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 French Forces in Côte d’Ivoire
President Paul Biya of Cameroon has pledged support for the UN mission in Chad and CAR. Both countries share long borders with Cameroon. He said the situation “gravely threatens peace and security of these countries, the security and well being of their populations.”
French forces operating elsewhere in Africa under UN mandates have not been believed to act on behalf of the UN or take its orders to act from the UN chain of command by observers in the continent. They point to French troops in Côte d’Ivoire who ostensibly under UN command, took instructions to attack Ivorian civilians and military forces from the Elysée Palace and not the from commanding UN officers.France’s long history of military interventions on the continent has not help the French who want to be seen as a benevolent force intervening in Africa for the interest of peace in concert with the international community.
In Cameroon, a French military operation called Operation Aramis has been in place for years and typifies the type of intervention Africans point to as unacceptable and demonstrate why French military interventions in the continent must remain suspicious regardless of the cover they assume coming in.
French military interventions into African hot spots, especially in francophone countries, are backed by military agreements signed with the former French colonies before independence. But critics of French interventions in Africa have argued that the military alliances were not really alliance but a means for France to remain in control in their former colonies. They argue, for example, that French interventions have not maintained a consistent policy but act at random depending on French interest and not the interest of the African country, “France has always found both creative and uncreative means to insert itself into African affairs for its own interest” concluded Jules Tambe an African college student from the United States.
President Paul Biya who has pledged to support MINURCAT agreed with President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast, after his address at the 62nd UN General Assembly, that Africans must begin solving their problems by themselves. This echoed the call made by the Chairman of the African Union Commission, President Alpha Oumar Konare, to the UN Security Council that all foreign troops should leave the African continent.
Facilitating France’s endless military interventions in Africa appears to be what a senior British diplomat once explained away to the fact that “The French do not have a parliament or a public that would question what they do” internationally. France’s president therefore has no domestic restraints in pursuing unilateral moves on the continent, especially in the absence of any sort of organized vocal protest from African officials and with the complicity of multilateral organizations like the UN and EU. Some French troops on the continent are still in bases that they have occupied since before independence.
Additional Sources: UN News Service, BBC News, Reuters News Service
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