According to the “desire-to-please” narrative of the West, military interventions are not against Islam or its traditions. Rather, they are positioned as endeavors "to protect them from terror and poverty." Meanwhile, these people continue to live as they have for decades, between the hammer of the West and the anvils of the dystopian.
Hasn't the West learned from the "Shock and Awe" operation in Iraq 20 years ago, militarily speaking? That mission was accomplished according to then-U.S.-President George W. Bush, but its consequences are still boiling up even to this moment in fractured and divided Iraq. Consider also the Libyan debacle, whose alibi, like the Malian Serval operation a decade ago, was to liberate innocent civilians from the hands of tyrants and bring democracy. The French national security team in the Elysee Palace felt sure about Serval's operation and the objectives of a short war like the Neocons convinced George W. Bush to invade Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.
As a result, President former French President Francois Hollande acted like an ideologue, where foreign policy analysts expected him to reestablish a "French realpolitik" foreign policy in West Africa and the Sahel region. However, it is now evident that Muslim lands have become conflict zones and spheres of influence for international and regional superpowers, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya or Mali and now Niger, for the latter, a probable deja-vu operation would end by reshaping the Sahel countries to be fitted according to the interests of international and regional superpowers. A new great game vision is on the horizon.
In a time when Muslims and Arabs thought Western powers in particular France had gotten it in the aftermath of what the West called Arab uprisings in 2011-2021 the “Arab Spring,” a young street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi's courageous solo gesture of despair in Tunisia defeated al-Qaida and its “franchise,” and Daesh terror group’s members in the entire MENA and the Sahel region.
Thus, France's Operation Serval and Operation Barkhane in Mali were more about reviving the colonization sentiment and reframing the sub-regional lands into micro-states. Consequently, the narrative of human rights and democracy is like the one of fighting terror and poverty just a banal media selling point. Nonetheless, the majority of the Malians were in favor of these interventions, as were the Afghanis, the Iraqis, and the Libyans. Certainly, these dystopians deserve to be eradicated, but not with the West's military strategies, e.g., war, as a continuation of politics by other means.
Did not France support dictators for decades in Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central Africa and Cote d’Ivoire, whose human rights credentials are the result of the ongoing anti-French sentiment, and political and geo-economic strategy decline among a new young generation of the military and political elite, civil society and media across Francophone Africa. It is a new post-colonial Neo-Africanism that is overwhelmingly nourishing the sense of full liberation from France and ending the French hegemony.
So, terrorism is no longer a valid argument because, in the end, the West's means allow it to thrive, for instance, in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Mali and Niger who knows where next. Nigeria, whose president has become a vocal and hawkish leader in the irrelevant the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) sub-regional organization, pushing for a military intervention in the neighboring country Niger, following last month's military coup against ousted President Mohamed Bazoum.
The ECOWAS is making the case to fight terror and bring democracy as if the entire 15 members’ presidents were elected under the Swiss system. In northern Africa (Maghreb region), the Daesh terror group al-Qaida and Boko Haram are just as senseless as their agenda because the West had an opportunity to finish them off and end the paranoia of the Neo-cons paradigm in Washington, D.C., and their minions in MENA and the Sahel regions.
The antidote was the dynamic of change that took place in the Muslim and Arab world. People were toppling regimes and electing a new generation of leaders and political elite, including constitutionalist religionists, who themselves were learning the “checks-and-balances” principles, unlike these extremist radicals who are cashing checks and leaving entire countries unbalanced. Moreover, the French military conducted multiple interventions in Chad, Mauritania, and, most recently, in Mali and Niger to protect friendly regimes or to protect its own citizens.
Thirty-three years ago, in La Baule, France, former President Francois Mitterrand gathered African leaders for an orientation speech about the end of the Soviet Union, and the rest of the Cold War superpowers’ struggles and consequences. In the name of the Perestroika. “So the story is still unfinished. It must be said that this wind will go around the world. We already know it well: one of the poles freezes or heats up and voila: the entire globe feels the effects. President Mitterrand told the African leaders.
He continued, “It is not for France to dictate some constitutional law that would be then de facto imposed on people, who have their own consciousness, their own history, and who must know how to lead toward the universal principle that is democracy.” It sounded promising and President Mitterrand’s wisdom did not resonate well in Rabat, Kinshasa and Abidjan.
However, in 2007, in Dakar, Senegal, France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy outlined his vision of France-Africa relations. He focused mainly on the colonial past, which called: it was evidently wrong, but it could not be held responsible for Africa’s problems, and Africans should look to the future rather than dwelling on the past.
Two contradictory speeches explain well France’s arrogant African policy is still based on paternalism and patronage which the populations in the region are saying it’s enough. French President Emmanuel Macron, whose West Africa policy is a fiasco, did enhance the attitude of his successors, his military operation Berkhane with its Special Forces like Serval operation failed because of Paris’ cold shoulder attitude toward Algiers. Paris, however, instead of cooperating with Algiers is still a strong pillar for the French authorities in their war on terror. A war that Algiers has a solid argument to deal with because of its long experience in this field that needs more intelligence work and coordination.
Paris and Algiers have cooperating and coordinating on this issue for decades. Lately, French Special Forces' “success” following the assassination of an al-Qaida leader in Maghreb was orchestrated with the help of Algerian intelligence service with their French counterparts.
The African Sahel is emblematic of a region suffering from multiple drivers of conflict, and threats to stability that have diverse origins and take on many different forms. Radical armed and separatist groups, migrant afflux, cross-border smuggling and trafficking networks, add to the challenges posed by extreme poverty and underdevelopment, rampant climate change, and weak governance. The unfolding of instability takes place against the background of a troubling post-colonial legacy.
In summary, France must end its neo-colonial strategy via discredited leaders and proxies. If France believes, it can stand alone in its war on terror in the African Sahel, it learned nothing from the Vietnam and Algeria wars or Afghanistan for the Soviets in 1989, and later Iraq and Afghanistan again quagmire for the U.S. post-9/11 strategy. However, France’s current West Africa strategy is more about a struggle for an exit and humiliated tragedy.
*North Africa expert at the Center for Middle Eastern Strategic Studies (ORSAM)
