Francois Hollande's adventure in Mali has signalled that the French policy of "Francafrique” is all but over, says Saurabh Kumar Shahi
It feels like only yesterday when Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency, Francois Hollande, while trying desperately to outsmart incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, was promising a complete overhaul of French foreign policy, including clamping down on military adventurism in Africa, which France has historically seen as its playground. To give him his due, he did expedite troops pullout from Afghanistan. More importantly, just weeks ago, Hollande refused permission to intervene militarily in its former colony, Central African Republic, where President Francois Bozize was forced to accept a power-sharing deal with insurgents who looked set to take over the state. However, something changed this winter.
Mali, another former French colony, has been in the line of fire for quite some time now, mostly because of some inadvertent indirect actions of France itself. France under Sarkozy had enthusiastically supported Islamists against Gaddafi. These Islamists then ethnically cleansed the Tuaregs, a sort of Berber people, who were part of the rainbow Libyan armed forces. The Tuaregs were then driven back to their traditional homelands in Northern Mali. Armed with the leftover Libyan army weapons, these Tuaregs assembled in northern Mali to claim their own state. As the Mali government dithered, the Algerian Islamists saw an opportunity to shift their base away from Algeria where they were being hunted by the Algerian forces. They moved to northern Mali to apparently support the Tuareg revolt, but then took over themselves. France was quiet until last week when the Islamist forces advanced into positions in central Mali and captured Konna, that left the capital Bamako, still 600 km away, vulnerable, if the French are to be believed.
With the Mali government still dithering, Hollande ordered the first military strike of his career. As this story goes to print, France has deployed 550 troops; C-160 transport aircraft and attack helicopters and has carried out several sorties of Rafale jets bombarding the rebel bases and frontline, managing to slow the speed to their advance. However, the retaliation was more severe than the French commanders had thought and France lost one attack helicopter and some men in the initial fight. Three other helicopters were damaged and rendered out of action. Sources suggest that the French decision of strategic bombing and other air attacks without decent ground support will prove to be disastrous.
In days to come, Hollande is going to face problems on several fronts. First, the almost complete and across the board support inside France will change if the victory is not swift. According to sources, the victory will not only be late to come but might not come at all. The quality and training of French Special Forces was exposed just weeks ago when a French mission to rescue a French hostage, an agent of the French secret service DGSE, from Somali Islamists was botched up, leading to the death of another personnel and capture of another without recovering the first. It was later revealed that the French special forces involved in the botched mission were spotted the moment they landed in Somalia, a couple of kilometers from where the hostage was being held, leading to a tip-off that helped the rebels quickly arrange men and machines. It just added another embarrassing legend to the reputation of an Army that has historically shown great enthusiasm for surrenders without a fight.
Second, Hollande's policies have increasingly started matching those of Centre and Centre Right parties. His last eight months have been disastrous with ratings comparable to what Sarkozy had. The more he turns right, the more he loses his traditional votes. Says John Rees, an independent political analyst based in Paris, “There is very little difference between Sarkozy's response over Libya and Hollande’s response over the Mali crisis. That is sad because Hollande promised so much. Its his inability to deliver on the domestic front, his inpability to live up to the high hopes that many in France hoped that he would deal with austerity, which has driven him into an incredibly reckless foreign policy in the hope that it would bolster his poll ratings. These gambles sometimes work but in recent history in Europe they have often turned out to be incorrect.”
In fact, the admission of mistake has already started coming with an unnamed Elysee Palace official being quoted to have said, “What has really struck us is how up-to-date their equipment is, and the way they've been trained to use it. At the start, we thought they would be just a load of guys with guns driving about in their pick-ups, but the reality is that they are well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armed.”
It feels like only yesterday when Socialist Party candidate for the French presidency, Francois Hollande, while trying desperately to outsmart incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy, was promising a complete overhaul of French foreign policy, including clamping down on military adventurism in Africa, which France has historically seen as its playground. To give him his due, he did expedite troops pullout from Afghanistan. More importantly, just weeks ago, Hollande refused permission to intervene militarily in its former colony, Central African Republic, where President Francois Bozize was forced to accept a power-sharing deal with insurgents who looked set to take over the state. However, something changed this winter.
Mali, another former French colony, has been in the line of fire for quite some time now, mostly because of some inadvertent indirect actions of France itself. France under Sarkozy had enthusiastically supported Islamists against Gaddafi. These Islamists then ethnically cleansed the Tuaregs, a sort of Berber people, who were part of the rainbow Libyan armed forces. The Tuaregs were then driven back to their traditional homelands in Northern Mali. Armed with the leftover Libyan army weapons, these Tuaregs assembled in northern Mali to claim their own state. As the Mali government dithered, the Algerian Islamists saw an opportunity to shift their base away from Algeria where they were being hunted by the Algerian forces. They moved to northern Mali to apparently support the Tuareg revolt, but then took over themselves. France was quiet until last week when the Islamist forces advanced into positions in central Mali and captured Konna, that left the capital Bamako, still 600 km away, vulnerable, if the French are to be believed.
With the Mali government still dithering, Hollande ordered the first military strike of his career. As this story goes to print, France has deployed 550 troops; C-160 transport aircraft and attack helicopters and has carried out several sorties of Rafale jets bombarding the rebel bases and frontline, managing to slow the speed to their advance. However, the retaliation was more severe than the French commanders had thought and France lost one attack helicopter and some men in the initial fight. Three other helicopters were damaged and rendered out of action. Sources suggest that the French decision of strategic bombing and other air attacks without decent ground support will prove to be disastrous.
In days to come, Hollande is going to face problems on several fronts. First, the almost complete and across the board support inside France will change if the victory is not swift. According to sources, the victory will not only be late to come but might not come at all. The quality and training of French Special Forces was exposed just weeks ago when a French mission to rescue a French hostage, an agent of the French secret service DGSE, from Somali Islamists was botched up, leading to the death of another personnel and capture of another without recovering the first. It was later revealed that the French special forces involved in the botched mission were spotted the moment they landed in Somalia, a couple of kilometers from where the hostage was being held, leading to a tip-off that helped the rebels quickly arrange men and machines. It just added another embarrassing legend to the reputation of an Army that has historically shown great enthusiasm for surrenders without a fight.
Second, Hollande's policies have increasingly started matching those of Centre and Centre Right parties. His last eight months have been disastrous with ratings comparable to what Sarkozy had. The more he turns right, the more he loses his traditional votes. Says John Rees, an independent political analyst based in Paris, “There is very little difference between Sarkozy's response over Libya and Hollande’s response over the Mali crisis. That is sad because Hollande promised so much. Its his inability to deliver on the domestic front, his inpability to live up to the high hopes that many in France hoped that he would deal with austerity, which has driven him into an incredibly reckless foreign policy in the hope that it would bolster his poll ratings. These gambles sometimes work but in recent history in Europe they have often turned out to be incorrect.”
In fact, the admission of mistake has already started coming with an unnamed Elysee Palace official being quoted to have said, “What has really struck us is how up-to-date their equipment is, and the way they've been trained to use it. At the start, we thought they would be just a load of guys with guns driving about in their pick-ups, but the reality is that they are well-trained, well-equipped, and well-armed.”
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