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PARIS: France sent more troops to Ivory Coast this week amid a deepening rebellion, prompting newspapers and commentators to ask whether the nation once known as the gendarme of Africa was back on patrol.
The centre-right government of Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin ordered paratroopers into Ivory Coast on Tuesday to reinforce some 700 crack troops already in the West African country, a former French colony.
Their first mission to help evacuate thousands of foreign nationals following a failed coup two weeks ago was a success.
Now French soldiers and men of the Foreign Legion have reinforced positions around the country.
The swift deployment, coupled with quick, unambiguous backing for the democratically elected government of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, signalled what appeared to be a shift in France’s policy towards its former colonies in Africa.
“The change is clear,” said Roland Marchal, senior research fellow at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) in Paris. “It is a break from Jospin’s doctrine of non-intervention,” Marchal added.
Soon after winning power in 1997, Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin toured Africa, ushering in a new era of ties he said was based on “fraternity, not paternalism”.
“Under Jospin, there would have been a military intervention to evacuate foreign nationals and nothing more,” Marchal said.
Jospin’s election followed a murky period of French involvement in Africa, particularly its role in Rwanda in 1994 where rights groups accused Paris of failing to halt genocide.
France’s close links with the Hutu government in the 1990s led to accusations it had trained and then shielded Hutu forces responsible for the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The days of post-colonial intervention sanctioned by presidents from General Charles de Gaulle to Francois Mitterrand, were at an end. In 1997, French newspapers ran headlines announcing “the end of French Africa”.
When trouble broke out in the Congo capital, Brazzaville, in 1997 French forces evacuated foreign nationals and withdrew.
With the “gendarme’s” badge commanding more derision than respect, French President Jacques Chirac fell in behind Jospin.
CHANGE OF GOVT: Chirac’s re-election this year and a centre-right government in power means both can sing from the same song sheet on foreign policy.
France has dug its heels in against pressure from the United States to back a tough UN Security Council resolution on Iraq. It has responded quickly to requests by Ivory Coast for help.
The language also appears more forthright. Chirac said in a speech on Monday France had to assume its responsibilities and that might mean having to fight a war.
On Ivory Coast, Paris insists it is merely honouring a military accord it has with most of its ex-colonies in Africa and is just providing “logistical support” and trying to help maintain stability.
Apart from Ivory Coast, France maintains troops in Africa in Djibouti, Senegal, Chad and Gabon.
No longer the strutting former colonial power, analysts say France may, in the longer term, seek to prevent crises exploding in Africa with help from its European partners, cooperating more with African institutions and funding African peacekeeping forces.—Reuters
