POLITICS-FRANCE: Africa Policy Loses its Way

by Julio Godoy

PARIS, Nov 6 (IPS) - The French continue to follow dubious policies to maintain their influence in Africa, analysts say.

”The French government has avoided making the choice between reinforcing its presence in Africa and leaving its former colonies in the continent for good,” says Stephen Smith, Africa expert with the daily Le Monde.

”In Paris nobody seems to know what to do about Africa,” he says. ”In the complicated world of African politics, France is neither able to trace the right line, nor retreat.”

France is keeping up its old policy of ”only exploiting the natural and geopolitical resources of the continent,” says Francois Xavier Verschave, author of several books on the French government's African policy, including Noir Silence and La Francafrique. ”In Paris, many continue to believe that Africa is their private garden, where they can do whatever they want, where all crimes are possible and where impunity reigns.”

Criticism of French policy comes at a time when France is trapped in the imbroglio in its former colony, the C- te d'Ivoire. France is giving military support to the elected government of Laurent Gbagbo, and at the same time protecting opposition leaders from death squads apparently directed by Gbagbo's regime.

French military intervention in the civil war in the Côte d'Ivoire has been decisive. France not only ordered troops to the country, it also provided military equipment to the badly equipped government army.

France claimed that its military presence in the West African country was intended only to protect French and other foreign citizens. But French soldiers helped block the advance of rebel troops from the north. This action saved the capital Yamoussoukro and the Atlantic port Abidjan from the rebels advance.

It also gave the government of Laurent Gbagbo time to reorganise its army and negotiate a cease-fire from a position of strength. Gbagbo's representatives and the rebel forces reached an ”accord of principles” last week to end the civil war.

”Given the regrettable state of the Forces Armées Nationales de Côte d'Ivoire (Fanci, the country's official army), you can say that only French intervention stopped the rebels' move towards the capital and Abidjan,” an African diplomat in Paris told IPS.

France is bound to give military support to the Côte d'Ivoire government under a treaty of defence cooperation signed in 1961, a year after the Côte d'Ivoire gained independence. Under this and another treaty signed in 1978 whose contents remain secret, France is bound to assist the Côte d'Ivoire militarily ”to keep the order”.

Similar agreements bind France to other regimes in Africa. These have led to ill-fated interventions, as in Rwanda and the Central African Republic in the 1990s.

While militarily supporting Gbagbo's regime, France is at the same time protecting opposition leader Alassane Outtara from pro-government hit squads that killed former dictator Robert Guei. Outtara has been living in the French embassy in Abidjan since the civil war broke out on September 19.

Guei was killed during the night of September 19. Official forces tried to enter Outtara's house at the same time. But Outtara and his French wife escaped to the neighbouring German embassy. They were transferred to the French embassy later.

English-speaking mercenaries were reported directing the rebel forces. This led to suspicion that neighbouring English-speaking countries such as Liberia were trying to destabilise the Côte d'Ivoire.

Critics of French policy say foreign policy makers in Paris have often seen an Anglophile presence in its former colonies as a reason to intervene. Such interventions have been motivated also by an interest in protecting its access to oil and other natural resources.

French analysts cite Angola as an example of such intervention. Angola is not a French speaking country, but it is rich in oil and diamonds, and has drawn the biggest investment by the French oil company TotalFinaElf in Western Africa.

TotalFinaElf operates the world's largest offshore oil platform, the Girassol, in Angolan territorial waters. This source is expected to add 200,000 barrels of crude oil a day to Angola's output.

But judicial investigations in Paris over what has come to be known as Angolagate have soured French-Angolan relations. French and Swiss prosecutors accuse two gunrunners of providing the Angolan government of Jose Eduardo dos Santos weapons in exchange for partial control of natural resources.

”Angola has given France important oil concessions,” says Charles Pasqua, former French minister of the interior, and an architect of the African policy. But now Angola ”is about to fall into the hands of the United States..”

The U.S. is clearly trying now to take the place of France. The U.S. government has been improving relations with Angola in recent months. Angolan President dos Santos, a former Marxist-Leninist, was in Washington early this year, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Angola in August.

Powell also visited Gabon, another oil-rich former French colony. The visits did not go unnoticed in France. (END/2002)