The recent attacks in Paris have prompted wide ranging discussions over the domestic security policies of Francois Hollande’s government. However, it is also worth considering these in the context of French foreign policy towards global terrorism. The last time France hit the front pages for reasons of international terrorism, was surrounding the military operation to oust Islamic militants in Northern Mali in 2013. This mission was known as Operation Serval and finished in July 2014. On July 19 2014, President Francois Hollande announced a ‘new phase’ in the fight against radical Islamic terrorism in Africa, it takes the form of Operation Barkhane. Operation Barkhane is described by the French government as a simple ‘reorganisation’ of French military presence in the Sahel-Sahara region of Africa. However, this simplified gloss is really just covering up what is a complete reversal of recent French policy towards Africa. Six years ago, Nicolas Sarkozy conducted a French defence review concluding that there should be less of a focus on the ex-French colonies of Africa, and a wider “strategic arc” across Northern Africa and the Gulf. The new Operation Barkhane sees 3000 troops permanently based in the region, signalling a natural return to Francafrique, and a reverse of Sarkozy’s conclusions. The shear extent of military infiltration across the Sahel-Sahara in this operation makes it particularly alarming. It sees permanents bases set up in 4 states, with the HQ at N’Djamena, Chad; a regional base in Gao, Northern Mali; a special forces base in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; and an intelligence base in Niamey, Niger. When you visualise this presence on a map, it becomes clear that this strategy aims to search out and destroy jihadist groups, and also to expand the range of French military capabilities, in particular to respond to threats quickly and efficiently. This mission turns its focus away from the nation-building and development objectives associated with the ill-fated war in Afghanistan, and towards a narrow task of “hunting terrorists”. It is a logical development from Operation Serval where the French military had great success in driving AQIM forces out of Northern Mali and severely disrupting their military organisation. However, “hunting terrorists” in the vast space of the Sahel is no easy feat. It requires a vast array of human and signals intelligence, combined with aerial surveillance, to be able to support the complex practicalities of justified targeting. Operation Barkhane has the potential to be hugely destabilizing for two main reasons: Firstly, this approach views often local and regional disputes through the lens of the War on Terror. This has been seen in the case of the Mali conflict, which emerged as a complex combination of a Tuareg nationalist rebellion seeking an independent state of Azawad, and Islamists from Ansar Dine fighting for an Islamic independent state. Above all, both of these groups view their remit as concerned with the state of Mali, different from the global ambitions associated with ISIS for example. The risk lies in pushing groups with localised or nationalistic objectives further towards the global narratives of Islamist militaries. Secondly, it doesn’t attempt to solve the underlying political grievances and issues that give rise to radicalism and militant Islamism. As a result, this limited military approach has the potential to exacerbate the problem driving divisions in already fractured civil societies. The nature of political instability in this region highlights how easy it is for countries to go from being relatively stable to civil wars in a short space of time, as has been recently seen in Mali. The simple presence of permanent military infrastructure and missions is nearly always going to be politically divisive, even if militarily advantageous. This signals an alarming shift that sees the vast ungovernable space of the Sahara increasingly be controlled, watched, and governed not by the states that claim it, but by states from Western Europe. The French military becomes the de facto Saharan policemen, sifting through the population via aerial surveillance between the ‘good’ guys and the ‘bad’ guys. This is the overt exporting of security issues, away from the shores of European states, to the perceived origins of the security threat. Studies of critical geopolitics have to be vitally attuned to such developments which have the potential to be dangerously destabilizing.
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August 2015
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