Understanding French policy toward Chad/Sudan? A difficult task (3)
This is the third and final posting by Roland Marchal of CNRS/SciencesPo Paris on French policy towards Chad and Sudan.
From Urgence Darfour to Eufor
Kouchner, who had become a good friend of the SLM leader, Abdel Wahid Mohamed al-Nur, wanted to move things on Darfur. The very first day of his installation at the ministry he organized a meeting with Urgence Darfour and other NGOs and as an outcome proposed to organize “humanitarian corridors” to provide food and assistance to the Darfur population. The NGOs working in Darfur, the experts and eventually the UN strongly disagreed: Darfur was not Bosnia. At a meeting he organized with the former in Khartoum, he left the room in anger when the NGOs told him that what they needed first was a political solution in Darfur not those corridors.
Kouchner could have reflected about the discrepancies between what he understood about Darfur and what humanitarian actors on the ground were telling him but this would have been a sign of humility that he was not ready for. He likes to be in the headlines but does not like to be criticized and mocked for his amateurism. He needed to take again the initiative by proposing a new idea. This is how Eufor/Minurcat came out.
The Eufor/Minurcat initiative is at the convergence of three different logics. First, while in June 2007 Khartoum had endorsed the idea of a new international force in Darfur, it had made clear that no Western countries should provide troops. There was no way French politicians could claim any role in that acceptance despite the pathetic summit organized late June in Paris to celebrate an agreement that Beijing succeeded to get, not Paris. So where were the French flag and the twin media-addicted politicians, Nicolas and Bernard? The second trend was the policy pursued by Paris concerning the deployment of UN troops at the border between Chad and Sudan. Paris had convinced the UN DPKO to send a mission in November/December 2006 that had to travel again to Chad in February 2007 because of rebels’ activities in Eastern Chad during their first stay. The DPKO was not enthusiastic about the concept: as always, it had to handle too many operations with too few troops and such an operation had a taste of France using the UN to achieve its own political agenda. So, it designed options that were unlikely and Idriss Déby himself felt not comfortable with a UN operation that would require a political mandate and was perceived by his whimsical neighbour, Mu’ammar Qaddafi, as a possible plot against him. Inclusive dialogue with the armed opposition was absolutely not an option. Although the proposal was refused by Chad, France kept pushing for a compromise between the two less numerous deployments discussed by the UN report and twisted arms at the UN to deprive such an operation of any political mandate.
As described above, Bernard Kouchner was reacting against a previous failure within a context that prohibited humanitarian military presence in Darfur. Chad was not the best option but was not meaningless since more than 250,000 Darfuri refugees were settled there and about 150,000 Chadian displaced. There was little understanding of why refugees and displaced were there: everything was linked to the conflict in Darfur in Kouchner’s eyes. The project was endorsed by Idriss Déby since he was reassured that there were no political strings attached to the operation. Moreover, as the operation was European, France would have a leading role and the UN would give up any ambition to infringe the Chadian political realm. Idriss Déby was right.
Paris wanted to promote the idea because it merged different goals in one policy. Moreover, it allowed Paris that was going to chair the European Union in Chad for the whole year 2008 to show its leadership at the European level and get the EU also to share the financial burden of such an operation. Among diplomats and military, there were also a group that pushed the project as the best way to close the Epervier (Sparrowhawk) Operation, save some money and get these French troops out of a country with such a debatable record.
Amazingly, the discussion among EU member States in Brussels was not as frank as this author would have expected. A number of countries, UK, Germany, Poland, had doubt about a possible French hidden agenda that had little to do with the claimed aim of Eufor. As always, there were remonstrations that but the more reluctant States used financial arguments and did not antagonize the project as such despite strong reservations: the figures of 27 countries for less than 3500 soldiers is a good illustration of this mixed support or opposition, France got in that period, taking also into account that Paris provided more than 50% of the troops. Nobody wanted to appear as not doing much to help Darfur; nobody was convinced that carrying out Eufor met this aim. But, no harm was done.
Without discussing here the operational concept, it is interesting to note how the French military tried to keep the full control of the deployment, keeping the foreign Chief of Staff team in Suresnes (at the outskirts of Paris) and disaggregating the operation between N’djamena and Abéché. While in the early weeks of the planning, the focus was on communal conflicts, banditry and land issues, in summer 2007 the French Military Intelligence reframed the concept: the problem was created by the rebels’ columns and janjaweed. It took months to Eufor to accept that most of the violence and insecurity in Eastern Chad was coming from Chad, not Darfur and that the Chadian officials and military had their good share of responsibility in the predicament of the population. The French general leading the operation in Abéché, Jean-Philippe Ganascia, intended to behave as an European and was heavily criticized by the French Embassy in N’djamena to the extent that in September 2008 many observers thought that he would be recalled in Paris. An unfortunate pressure on the operation was the wish expressed many times by Bernard Kouchner that Eufor success would be measurable by the number of displaced going back home. This created many tensions between Eufor and the humanitarian NGOs.
To a large extent, Eufor was a public relations success for the French The mission despite its cost (between € 900 million-1 billion) did not face major casualties and offered to the European public the well appreciated pictures of European soldiers bringing peace and aid to destitute people. The situation in Darfur deteriorated throughout the period but journalists wanted to promote the good job done by their national contingents and hardly connected the Eufor fragile achievements with the lack of perspective on Darfur conflict. Despite a number of incidents between the Chadian local administration and Eufor, the French Embassy contained the tensions and the experience was good enough to convince Idriss Déby that he could accept a UN force, when the European mission was over in March 2009. Again France made sure at the UN HQ that Minurcat II would not have any political mandate. No journalists investigated how much the infrastructures built by Eufor and handed over to the Chadian State were rented by the following Minurcat II: European taxpayers would have been happy to know their contribution to Idriss Déby’s military apparatus…
Supporting the ICC or playing realism?
The end of Eufor mission in Chad was a relief for Bernard Kouchner. At that time, he was attacked in a book on his consultancy activities commissioned by African heads of State. He especially needed to distance himself from Idriss Déby, whom he had proposed to write a study on Darfur in December 2006. When pundits and journalists asked questions about the long term impact of Eufor, he stated that he was proud of what he did and that those who criticized him would do so forever anyway. As a detailed promotion of Eufor achievements would have raised question on the sustainability of the improvements and the situation in Chad, the best strategy was to move to ethics and discuss the ICC indictment of Omar el-Bashir. Doing so had only advantages. This kept the attention out of Chad, put moral values at the forefront and could reconcile the superficial vision of the Darfuri predicament with the priorities set up by Bernard Kouchner. Again moral values were mobilised to just prove how great our policy and policy makers are.
The Elysée Palace had quite another set of priorities. As in many countries, the Foreign Service in France is cautious about the ICC because it knows some of its structural flaws and certainly does not like to have a possible autonomous actor inviting itself into an already complex game. But the political understanding was also different. At the Elysée Palace, Abdel Wahid al-Nur sounds like a demagogue who is playing the most extreme cards because he is in the West, not in the IDPs camps sharing the insecurity of his fellow Furs. Khalil Ibrahim, the JEM leader, is not seen more positively: a good political son of Hassan Turabi, whose ambition is to destabilize the whole Sudan, not to reconcile Darfur and Khartoum through a peace agreement. In their views, the NCP is no better but a long time interlocutor that cannot be changed at this stage. Even Idriss Déby, beyond his personal courage, is not seen as a good guy in town, though the best one among the current players. The only policy for the Presidential team seems to act in good coordination with Tripoli to dismantle the Chadian armed opposition (seen as a pure tool of Khartoum), improve somewhat governance in Chad in order to disconnect the Darfur and Chad crises and get an agreement in Darfur that does not jeopardize long term interests in Sudan (also in terms of preferred interlocutors).
Meanwhile Bernard Kouchner is dealing with his many conflicts of interest and deteriorating image among the French public, the Elysée Palace is also facing contradictions. First, Libya is not an easy partner that can share concerns and solutions. Qatar is more popular than Riyadh in Tripoli, yet not so appreciated because it diminishes Libya’s role. Idriss Déby has lost prestige in Tripoli after he repeatedly criticized Libya and the AU (currently chaired by Tripoli). Second, Idriss Déby has his own agenda that several times already left some of his French supporters voiceless. Governance has not improved in his country and there is even less hope it will now that he was able to beat the rebels in May 2009 without a strong French support. The implementation of the August 2007 agreement with the civilian opposition – a true mantra of French diplomats – is at best debatable and has not yet produced any confidence in free and fair elections that anyway are recurrently postponed. His relations with the Darfur insurgent groups have become deeper and more problematic than ever as witnessed by the attacks on Kornoi and Umm Baru when JEM was reinforced by Chadian soldiers who also brought military hardware. Third, the international attention Chad got due to Eufor and Minurcat produced unpredictable effects. For instance, on several occasions other European military intelligence services contradicted information provided by Paris to Brussels: suddenly, even the French had to be accountable in Chad! These incidents won’t deteriorate into a crisis within the EU for sure but the political cost for Paris is real. Should the stalemate both in Darfur and Chad deserve it?
French Policy toward Chad/Sudan
It is interesting to sift through what Roland Marchal calls rough analysis of the discrepancies of French policy towards Chad/Sudan. His thesis is based on speculative dysfunctional institutional settings due to President Sarkozy’s poor management of the French foreign policy and on undetermined French’s interests in the region. It is strange that while he is trying to present discrepancies he does the opposite in much of his arguments. The analysis is contradictory and therefore leading to wrong conclusions. There are a lot of discrepancies that we feel need to be challenged.
To start with, the author stated that the French Presidential Palace has been adamantly supporting Idriss Deby and trying to disconnect the Darfur crisis from the Chadian one. It doesn’t take any intelligent political analyst to understand that France keeps good relation with the Chadian president as long as he remains a good ally and doesn’t antagonize her interests in Chad or the region. France has a military cooperation deal with Chad and not a mutual defense treaty. As far as she is concerned she has neither shown in her political statements nor in her behavior what would indicate separation of the Darfur issue from that of Chad. On the contrary France understands very well that the two problems are interlinked and the solution of one rests in the other’s capital. The Doha initiative has been the work of France together with the Arab League and the African Union and she has sent Ambassador Issa Marrow as a permanent envoy to Doha to oversee the success of the negotiations. France as a stabilizing factor of Chad and the region could not ignore the presence of Chadian rebels in Darfur.
Furthermore Mr. Fillon French Prime Minister in May 21, 2009 said that Sudan is responsible of political troubles in the neighboring Chad and the solution of N’djamena unrest lies in Khartoum. He stated: “Everyone can see very well that the solution to the problems of Chad is not to be found in Chad.†he said during a discussion with students at the international relations institute in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé. He continued:”They are to be found in Sudan, they are to be found in the resolution of conflicts which affect Sudan and its neighbors,†referring to the six years conflict in Darfur.
In the last posting Marchall wrote: ‘there was little understanding of why refugees and displaced were there: everything was linked to the conflict in Darfur in Kouchner’s eyes.’ It is here that the author contradicted himself clearly by proving that France doesn’t separate the Darfur and Chadian crises from each other.
The indication that France gave Abdel Wahid the refugee status is an incorrect statement as far as my understanding is concerned. He lives in Paris on exceptional leave to remain subject to periodic renewals and is not yet recognised as a refugee.
To say that French troops protected Khalil Ibrahim’s forces while being in Chad willingly or not is pure figment of bizarre thinking. I would be glad to know when, where, how and why would JEM need the protection of French troops? On the contrary, JEM fighters would be needed to support French troops to provide stability and protection against Chadian rebel incursions into N’Djamena. JEM forces were indeed at the gates of N’Djamena in April 2006 and February 2008 as stabilizing force against Sudanese backed rebels trying to oust a legitimate regime.
In paragraph 5 the author wrote; ‘On one side, in Khartoum an open normalization with Washington reduced the value added of the relations with Paris.’ US have not normalized relations with Sudan since 1994 up to this moment. There are exchanges of intelligence between the two counterparts but normalization with the US remains the dream of the Sudanese regime.
The retired ambassador and French Special Envoy for Sudan Henri Benoît de Coignac was one of the few experts who predicted the failure of the Abuja agreement while other diplomats applauded. He maintained vigilant presence in Abuja and made good relations with both JEM and SLA which provided him with better understanding of their stance to engage France for possible future solutions to Darfur crisis. To state that he lacked experience is an unfair conclusion to the man’s role.
That the attack on N’Djamena in April 2006 took the French army by surprise is a fib and doesn’t add up at all. If the author means direct involvement of the French army was left until late then the argument may be accepted. It was all in the media and the progress of the Chadian rebels on French’s satellites was available to France as well as to the Chadians and others. It is left for the author to understand that the Chadian way of conducting war is not the orthodox Western style. Bizarre as it may be, Chadians base their response on waiting until the enemy gets into the gates and then confronted. It may confuse others that the Chadian army was taken by surprise. It was not.
To state that over the last 30 years, only France and Libya have had a say on Chadian politics lacks reasons. The role of Sudan and the USA has been sidelined. Sudan has been playing major roles in Chadian politics since the latter’s independence and almost all Chadian regimes were molded in Sudan. President Idriss Deby deployed his forces from Sudan and the decisive battles against Hissain Habre were fought in Darfur before his advance into N’Djamena. His regime continued to support Bashir until very late when he realized that the latter was planning to oust him.
Finally I totally agree with the author on his statement; ‘Therefore, on many aspects this analysis may appear speculative and hard evidence tenuous.’ It is true that too many speculations are made without substantial evidences. Researchers do not need to dig on unsupported assumptions.
The mystery of French policy toward Chad and Sudan is resolved more readily on appreciating the basis of “Françafrique” which can be summed as, “nothing for Africa except through Paris.” In this regard it is in fact no different to the policy of Mu’ammar Qaddafi and his policy toward his neighbours. The objective of the policy, or more correctly, the habitus, is not to identify a concrete solution to a particular political problematic, but to maintain the relevance of France. How else can one explain the appointment of Djibril Bassolé, that loyal policeman, as chief mediator for the Darfur conflict? Under this premise we also identify the point of consensus among the factions contending for the control of the Françafrique policy.
Dr. Marchal said it all. He hit the nail on the head and said loudly what many only discuss in private in the living rooms. The French role in Francophone Africa, specially in Chad, has been very detrimental to peace, stability, security and the well being of populations. Everything is done by the French to protect their “pre-carre” ( area of influence) and maintain the nebulous Francafrique which is nothing else but a powerful mafia filled with criminal of all sorts. As long as the same policies are in place, it’s hard to imagine a sustainable peace coming back to the triangle of death Chad-Sudan-CAR.
French policy towards Chad and Sudan has long been a mystery to me — which is why I asked Roland Marchal to contribute this essay to “Making Sense of Darfur.” France’s economic interests in the two countries do not seem to be sufficient to explain the recent surge in French interest and the depth of its involvement.
A few years ago I would have speculated that French interest in Chad was driven by the northern periphery of the Congo civil war and specifically the military base in CAR. In 2003, Idriss Deby obliged France by ensuring that a suitably aligned government was installed in CAR. But this fails to explain why France was ready to make such a dramatic commitment to the Deby government in 2007 and 2008, at a time when that government had wholly abandoned its erstwhile commitment to even a pretence of democratization. Given the fragility of the highly personalized regime and the physical frailty of the president, why should France invest so much?
If Marchal is correct, it would appear that deep down, French policy may be superficial, driven by certain principles and views about France’s role in the contemporary world (whether or not applied dispassionately and impartially is another question) and some lingering reflexes of a former colonial power, as much as by material interests. One thing is certain: France remains a power, albeit perhaps an aspirational power, in the Nile Valley today as it was 110 years ago.
Interesting narrative — a bit snarky but the targets of said snarkiness are quite deserving. The major problem is the overall “problem” posed, causing the author to overplay a weak hand. There’s no mystery, nor anything “difficult”: this seems Françafrique of the most classic type. The original sin seems laid out in Alex de Waal’s justification (above).
“If Marchal is correct, it would appear that deep down, French policy may be superficial, driven by certain principles and views about France’s role in the contemporary world (whether or not applied dispassionately and impartially is another question) and some lingering reflexes of a former colonial power, as much as by material interests.”
High foreign policy is not rational when viewed from outside the privileged circle of government? I’m shocked to hear that there is gambling going on at this establishment!
I would suggest that even a cursory reading of French colonial historiography had long ago put to rest any notion that France as a unit acts in some rational fashion, what with them being collections of millions of neurotic individuals. Henri Brunschwig moved us past such notions in the 1960s, when historians were totting up the numbers of aggregate profit and loss the French Imperial venture in Tonkin and crying “these numbers don’t add up!” Just because it’s a daft unprofitable thing for a “nation” to do, doesn’t mean that it can be very profitable for influential individuals.
_Of_course_ France is deeply invested in their man in N’Djamena (Bangui, Libreville, Niamey…) even if that makes it hard for Total to do business in Sudan. And will be. No mystery.
For a nation with such a strong statist history, it is astonishing to observe the way in which French policy in Africa has come to resemble an NGO program. The actions of both Sarkozy and Kouchner are like those of an activist NGO, seeking publicity and the adulation that comes with adopting a mediagenic position based on some universal principle.
At the UN Security Council recently, the French Permanent Representative was outraged that the UNAMID Joint Special Representative dared to compared Sudan and Chad. Sudan, he said, had committed genocide, and how dare he compare that with Chad. Others might contest the comparison in the other direction: Sudan has a government of national unity, an institutionalized ruling party, international scrutiny of its budget, scheduled elections, and is engaged in a peace process with its Darfurian opposition (albeit one that is going nowhere under the mediation of a French nominee). Chad has none of the above. The French ambassador’s argument was the sort of cheap point-scoring one might expect from a Save Darfur spokesman not from a diplomat.
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