Humanitarianism_and_Tradegy

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School of Politics and International Relations, Queen Mary, University of London !

Title: Humanitarianism and tragedy , misrepresentation, colonial legacy and dependency: France’s fait accompli in Africa. !

Student Number:110264620 Word count: 11826 !!!

A Research Project submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree: B.A (Honours) in International Relations

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I have read and understood the College regulations on plagiarism contained in the Student Handbook. The work contained in this project is solely my own and all the sources used are

cited in the text and contained in my bibliography. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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!Abstract: The current debate on imperialism and humanitarian intervention presupposes the end of neocolonial and imperial dependency, and subsequently draws a comfortable line between the international and the local. I argue that the legalistic end of formal colonialisation did not put an end to its spatial imagination and representations of others. In the case of French interventionism in Africa, the continuation of these misrepresentations enables the reorganisation of imperial capacity alone humanitarian lines. A closer look at the complex historical roots of the crisis in CAR renders a much more murky picture that undermines the very understanding of the world as a core-periphery dualist structure. In the case of Franco-African relationship, the preconceived understanding of the end of neocolonial and imperialist relationship conflated a spatial imagination of France’s understanding of the self and its former African subjects that has yet to be decolonised, informed by these notions of self and others, France then embarks on the self-fulfilling prophecy of humanitarian crusade, not only produce disastrous consequence on the society it sought to help but also reproduces patterns of dependency !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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Contents !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Introduction: 3 !!Section 1: A word divided

A world to intervene, spatial imagination and intervention 7

The fallacy of local/international 10

The problem with contemporary HI, reframing our debate 14

!!Section 2: French interventionism in Africa ! !

The colonial legacy of the French Republic 19

French security policy in Africa since decolonisation 23

The tragedy of mere pretension 28

!!Section 3: Case study: Central African Republic, myth and reality !!

A simplistic analogy of the current crisis 33

French complicity in the formation of a predatory political class 36

C.A.R. a ‘local’ failure 39

!!! Final reflection and conclusion 43 Bibliography 47


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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Humanitarianism and tragedy , misrepresentation, colonial legacy and dependency: France’s fait accompli in Africa. !!!!‘..in the colony the truth stood naked, but the citizens of the mother country preferred it with clothes on.’ -Jean-Paul Sartre (1961:1). !!!Accusations of neo-colonialism often coincides with humanitarian interventions in sub-

Saharan Africa, often for the wrong reason. Commonplace polemics on contemporary

interventions in sub-Saharan Africa often recourse to a rudimentary form of economic or

resource reductionism. Africa in popular portrayal remains a mythic construct, a shadow of

humanity’s past before the dawn of civilisation and modernity, a textbook example of

Malthusian tragedy despite being sparsely populated for the most part, above all a calamity.

This essay is not a mere polemic against the commonplace misconceptions of conflicts in

sub-Saharan Africa, it intends to trace beyond the facade of those misconceptions as a


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product of ignorance and racism, but rather as something embedded in a precarious

knowledge economy that informs our very own spatial imagination of the world.

!Comparisons between imperialism and humanitarian interventions are a common theme of IR

reflecting the contemporary anxiety concerning the possibility of fee and equal in the

international (Walker, 2006). After all the notion of ‘intervention’ itself entails a sense of

intrusion in an otherwise enclosed system, whilst the pretext humanitarian justifies it on the

normative basis of a common humanity, after all there are no barbarians in our world today,

only terrorists, insurgents and criminals. What this essay wishes to achieve is to reproduce via

French interventionism in sub-Saharan Africa, a world of binary oppositions and imagined

divisions that remains to be decolonised. As Bayart (2004:458) said, the problem for

Europeans is of a philosophical and cultural nature.

!The first section of the essay seeks to illustrate a contemporary visualisation of world politics

through misrepresentations and a binary opposition between a structured marginality and a

self-assumed core who acts on behalf of the common humanity. The second section analyses

how colonial spatial imagination and geopolitical ownership has oversaw the transformation

of French interventionism in Africa under the new guise of global liberal governance, where

remnants of neocolonial dependency continues to be reproduced, not necessarily as a result to

metropolitan dominance but an outcome of misrepresentations. The last section is dedicated

to the case study on Central African Republic that seeks to highlight the fallacy of the

artificial separation between local conflicts and external interventions and the persistence of

neocolonial patterns of dependency that is potentially being reproduced by international

efforts to resolve the conflict. In order to illustrate the political consequences of spatial


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misrepresentation which oversaw renewed patterns of dependency being created under the

pretension of humanitarianism: this essay engages with a wide range of academic literatures

on geopolitics, theoretical debates and french security policies in Africa, as well as historical

literatures, reports of NGOs, French official documents and news material to provide some

empirical narratives on an otherwise abstracted argument.

!Through this essay, I wish to redeliver some justice not only to sub-Saharan agencies who are

depicted above all, as pathological and passive; but also to the France of liberty, equality and

fraternity, for they have long been condemned with a grandiose neocolonial scheme they did

not necessarily pursue, not only out of moral imperative, but also as a result of intellectual

and material deficiency.

!!A world divided

a world to intervene, spatial imagination and intervention The securitisation of humanitarian emergencies in the global south, and the current primacy

of managing perceived security threats from problematised localities, convoys a much more

intricate development than a sudden moral awakening in the ‘international’. The end of the

Cold War has allowed substantive space for the prioritisation of conflicts that are described as

low-intensity (but nonetheless produces staggering human cost) on the global liberal security

agenda. This expansion of traditional security agenda has appropriated the management of

‘local conflicts’ as the responsibility of global liberal governance ( Duffield, 2001:2).

However, the new found primacy of humanitarianism is not a result of the ‘discovery’ of


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subaltern sufferings, but informed by a geopolitical representation of the peripheral localities

as threats to the Global North (Dalby, 1998: 309).

!The potentiality for anarchy and chaos in distant and improvised parts of the world to diffuse

and transcend its immediate geographical vicinity is an inevitable outcome of the operations

of a globalised political economy and complex power networks, both formal and informal. In

a sense globalised networks of criminals, terrorist organisations, aid agencies and productions

might have have rendered that the organising principle of power in world politics are by no

means entirely spatially confined. This necessitates a global visualisation which sees the

world as unitary as oppose to disassociated localities in modern political imagination

(Agnew, 1998, Tuathail, 1998:21). The asymmetrical distribution of power, both tangible and

in covert forms as knowledge and common sense, are pivotal to understanding interventions

in ‘local’ crisis by someone acting on behalf of the ‘international’. There might be no

‘barbarians’ in today’s world, or a space devoid of history that requires to be ‘civilised’.

Nevertheless, perceived organising principles of societies ( primordial, religious, etc) have

been problematised, conflicts and sufferings, wherever they are, are appropriated by network

of hegemonic global governance. Conflicts amongst agencies of the global south are

depoliticised, delegitimised, and above all criminalised, coined as genocide, senseless

violence informed by backward sectarian framing or criminal desires. To the advocates of

cosmopolitan policing, the type of conflicts which requires to be managed are qualitatively

different, not because violence itself is not permissible or inherently amoral (otherwise, they

would not have authorise to use violence), but owe to the political economy emerged from

those conflicts, that could potentially disrupt permissible economic activities as the

repercussions of conflicts diffuses through various globalised networks. Mary Kaldor's New


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War analogy is an acute reflection of such understanding of conflicts, where she warned

against the emergence of ‘globalised war economy’ of a predatory social condition that would

ultimately threatens the island of civility (Kaldor, 1999: 117).

!The hierarchical organisations of spaces based on essentialised forms of representations is

what created borders and divisions (Agnew, Corbridge, 1995:22), which in turn produces the

local/international dichotomy within the global visualisation of world politics. Seen in this

light, humanitarian interventions, itself a product of this global visualisation, reflects an

understanding as to what constitutes as a problem and requires containment by the network of

hegemonic global governance. The existence of the structured marginality, in the context of

this work being Sub-Saharan Africa, that requires management and containment is not an

indication that the basis of power is entirely spatial. Quite the contrary, it is an acute

manifestation of the non-territorial and networked nature of global governance (Duffield,

2001). Devoid of localities who are perceived as sources of instability, the ‘international’ of

which networks of global governance seeks to manage would become meaningless. That is to

say, the understanding of what is conceived as a ‘reasonable humanity’ (Ashley, 1989:303)

that delivers international peace and security (Dably, 1998:307) is constructed against its

binary oppositions. This spatial representation alone denotes more than ethnocentrism and

simple bias, it presupposes a capacity to manage that representation.

!Agnew and Corbridge provocatively proclaimed that “ the singular trait of modern

geopolitical discourse is its representativeness of ‘others’ as backward or permanently

disadvantaged if they remain as they are’ (Angew, Corbridge, 1995:49). This essay is

cautious of polemical response to the politics of representation per se, as an inescapable


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condition of contemporary international relations. However, it is aware of the political

consequences of particular modes of representations, and how they inform and affect

agencies’ behaviour. We should also be cautious of the political nature of knowledge. This is

not to say that the material world itself is trapped in a perpetual state of postcoloniality,

assuming that there was an ‘original’ world consisted entirely of self-determine natives , and

that it could still be materialised through the reversal of historical trajectory. Nevertheless the

problematisation of certain parts of world and its people, in conjunction with supposed

capacity and knowhow to manage, yields a potentially destructive combination. Grovogui

(2002) demonstrated what he called the ‘myth of Westphalian system’ continues to influence

understanding of African agencies and the framing of political crisis on the continent, where a

Westphalia-derived morality of sovereign states in the international is continuously used to

problematise African polities blaming much of continent’s problems on its own

incompetence. Against this zone of danger and sufferings, saw the establishment of an

international, a common humanity of grand narrative, an ultimate source of technological

knowhow, developmental assistance and capacity to manage the numerous complex

humanitarian emergencies amongst many localities. What was conveniently omitted is that

the categorisations and indoctrinations of this ‘international’ (let us not call it an empire yet)

has depoliticised material and discursive divisions as managerial problems that can only be

resolved through the international, rather than as something inherent to the hierarchies

produced by the very international.

The fallacy of the local/international !A comprehensive of analysis of the roots of Sub-Saharan conflicts in relations to the various

interpretation of international political economy and the historical development of


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postcolonial African societies is over-ambitious given the scope of this essay. Nonetheless, it

can be observed that there is nothing organic and spontaneous about the maintenance of the

reasonable humanity. In the past few years, armed ‘international’ intervention has been used

to contain ‘local’ African violence, in Congo, Somalia, Mali and most recently in Central

African Republic, all of which denotes the hegemonic representation of order and what is

permissible in the international, and the need to manage and maintain that vision. There is

certain truth in Dably’s claim that the construction of today’s liberal international order is

linked with the militarisation of global politics (Dably 1998: 301). What is inherently

problematic for many is not the intrusion of sovereign space that remains the most important

organising principle of international politics, since in many cases the state ‘collapses’

according to standards of the reasonable humanity and the international. At the core of the

debate over the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention this work engaged with (Cunliffe,

2012, Paris, 2010, Campbell,1998, Walker, 2006, Cooper, Turner, Pugh, 2011), was whether

these the political consequence of interventions remains convergent with the stated

commitment of humanitarianism. In other words, whether interventions in local conflicts on

humanitarian grounds is qualitatively different and independent of the context of hierarchical

structures of the international, described by many as imperial and exploitative.

!In order to critically engage with the political consequences of humanitarian intervention on

the localities it claim to have sought to securitise and protect, it must be situated in a context

as to how spaces are represented and problematised by the network of hegemonic global

governance. That is to say, humanitarian intervention is the manifestation of a particular

modes of knowledge, where killings in certain places by certain actors are pathologiesed and

treated as qualitatively different by a higher authority that possesses capacity to manage and


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knowhow to peace and prosperity. We should not be surprised that this self-assumed higher

authority is situated in New York, Paris or Geneva and seek to manages violence and chaos

on the streets of Bangui or Kinshasa. The treatment of the ‘local African’ and the

‘international’ as two distinctive entity not only led to the problemtisation of the former

permitted by material reality in world politics, but also preventing us to appreciate the

‘complex hierarchies of the international itself’ (Grovogui, 2002: 334). What was omitted

through the international/local dualist representation of space, was that the hegemonic

organisation of the global space, might itself serves as both the source of problematisation

and ‘problems’(dependency) of the structured marginality, the local, situated on the

boundaries of the reasonable humanity. Not only is it difficult to distinguish the boundary

between international and the local in the context of many Sub-Saharan African conflicts

where belligerents are facilitated by transitional networks and often operate beyond the

political boundaries of the troubled state, the survival of the regimes involved in those

conflicts also depends on the support of various actors under the murky guise of the

‘international community’, not to mention identity invoked in cases of sectarian violences

sometimes resonates with demographic composition of neighbouring countries. Whilst the

aforementioned point will be addressed in detail, in this essay, I wish to highlight another

problem with the local/international framing.

!The very disassociation between the ‘outside’ actors acting on behalf of the global security

community and their conflict-torn local host societies created by this dualist division, readily

subscribed by many as an unquestionable imagined divisive line in world politics, leads our

inquiry towards a dangerous theoretical limitation of mainstream International Relation: that

despite numerous challenges to the centrality of the modern states in our understanding of the


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international by transnational power networks of finance, illicit trade, migration, insurgents or

production chains, the state remains at the centre of political imaginary. Whilst this might not

come as a surprise when we decipher the logic behind state actions, it becomes worryingly

problematic when it is employed in our understanding of armed interventions in complex

‘emergencies’ in the Global South. Whereas conventionally, relative ‘anarchy’ is a

characteristic of the international and order is the condition within a sovereign space; the

outburst of intrastate conflicts after the Cold War, as David Campbell argued, disturbed the

international cartography of international order and challenges conventional geopolitical

modes of representation (Campbell, 1998:497). The conflicts in the Global South and their

subsequent problemtisation and the attempts by networks of global governance to manage

those conflicts devoid of direct territorial ownership have challenged the statist understanding

of the international. However, the imagined territories of the state continue to play a central

part in contemporary visualisation of world politics, as the the international/local framing

suggested, it has reversed the source of anarchy from the international to the state that has

‘failed’ to emulate capacities of states in more affluent parts of the world. The comfortable

premise of dividing the world along the imagined political boundaries between

national,regional and international continue to operate and inform conventional

understanding of Sub-Saharan African conflicts. The most important political consequence is

that through pathologising African states as the source of African sufferings informed by

often tendencious historical understanding over the origin of both Western and African

‘sovereignty’ (Grovogui,2002). This ‘local’ framing of the conflict, facilitated by statist

understanding of world politics is a manifestation of various spatial representations used to

construct the structured marginality of humanity.

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Needless to say, this core v.s. periphery analogy, presented in a contemporary fashion as

international/local is reminiscent of the history of colonialism and imperial expansions,

which previously saw of colonial subordination of these problematised localities. The

understanding of southern conflicts informed by two seemingly separate but nonetheless

convergent interpretation, first being the barbarism analogy popularised in Kaplan’s (1994)

provocative doomsday prophecy manifests itself in more eloquent academic writings of Mary

Kaldor (1999) where the island of civility must contain the predatory social conditions of

mindless slaughter. The second being the developmentalist position, that conflicts in the

marginality is owe to under developmental malaises where the lack of economic

opportunities in term breeds pathological and criminal social condition (Reno, 1997). Both

analogies embarked from a common premise constructed upon the dualist position of

civilisation against barbarians, where the root cause of conflicts in these societies situates in

the inertia of the traditional society of backward value and practices, all of which castigated

their own downfall. As previously stated, we are concerned with the political consequences of

spatial practices, in terms of both representation of spaces and its materialisation, in this case

being how armed intervention is informed by representation of violence in a particular social

context. Whatever explanation is used, identity politics, sheer criminality, corruption or self-

inflicted environmental degradations, the conflicts are localised, seen as something inherently

autochthonous to the society concerned. It is at this juncture, where the grand narratives of

common humanity is evoked, selective international morality and norms are prioritised, and

some people are framed as barbarians (Walker, 2006:72), others as victims, not only victims

of irrational violence and miseries, but also victims of their own backward, static social

conditions (Wai, 2012:40).


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The problem with contemporary humanitarian intervention, reframing our debate !Seen in this light, what then distinguishes contemporary armed interventions by agencies of

the ‘international’ from the history of colonial expansion, aside from the absence of direct

territorial ownership. The similarities between humanitarian interventions and colonial

adventures are all too familiar for those who reads history backwards, to those critics, the

mission civilisatrice is very much alive today. In a sense, such claims do holds some truth

where geographical differences are essentialised as ‘temporal schema of modern and

backwardness’ (Tuathail, Dalby, 1998:20) coupled with an invasive, penetrative power

network with both the will and capacity to intervene in places consisted entirely of victims

and perpetuator. At face level, the spatial representation which continue to portray the non-

west others in subordinating forms of classifications and appropriations (Spurr 1993, quoted

in Salter, 2004:19) and the limit of our political imagination where ‘modernity becomes the

answers to all political questions ‘that are to be accounted for its absence’ (Dably, 1998:307).

It is difficult to ignore the intellectual convergence of contemporary global visualisation and

spatial representation with that of the mission civilistrice where Hegel proclaimed that

!‘ there is nothing harmonious with humanity to be found in (African character)” (Hegel,1830 in 1956: 93). !!To Cunliffe (2012), the parallel between today’s intervention and historical experiences of

imperial expansion is not a coincidence , the absence of resources/immediate economic

benefits does not mean that peacekeeping operations today has no economic value behind,

the aim is to consolidate regional security and prevent local conflicts from spoiling into areas

where the imperial/interest congregate. This is similar to a Foucaultian analysis in the sense


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that contemporary intervention is a renewed attempt to reintegrate, police and control a

problematised population to smooth out the operation of global capitalism (Duffield,2005,

Dilon, Reid, 2001 ). Paris (2010) is critical of such criticisms where weaker societies are

restructured in accordance with the imposition of the international, and argues that despite the

similarities between contemporary practices and imperialism, today’s (genuinely

humanitarian) interventions differs in the sense that the main driving force behind is the

altruism and moral imperatives. This naturally sparked criticism that once again today’s

intervention practices are primarily informed by the need of global capitalism and focusses

strongly on instrument of state coercions in order to create the necessary condition for

development (Cooper, Turner, Pugh, 2011). This debate over the legitimacy of humanitarian

intervention is highly oriented on the intention behind humanitarian interventions and the

managerial capacity of the ‘international’/imperial is presupposed. For both critics and

proponents, everyone is subject to the misrepresentations of local conflicts, either as a result

of lack of understanding or as the result of an insidious attempt of domination. As Walker

argued, the difference between legitimate/humanitarian interventions, and illegitimate/

imperial interventions are determined by whether the priority is assigned by sovereign space

or by the systems of state (Walker, 2006:73).

!What statist argument of imperialism (Cunliffe,2012), omitted was the networked nature of

global governance and ignoring the influence of moral imperatives imposed through civil

society and the incongruence of interests amongst powerful states and agencies at the core.

As for post-structuralist and ‘liberal’ arguments as Chandler acutely pointed out that both

advocates of liberal governance and its poststructuralist critics constructed subjects of global

liberal governance through constructing a non-territorial ‘right regime’ (Chandler, 2009:61)


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as either a regime of emancipation or as regimes of domination for the poor and voiceless.

Whilst for the former this regime is pivotal to safeguard individuals from the violence of

sovereignty, for the post-structuralist critiques this allowed individuals everywhere to be

managed and regulated. The contestations are constructed upon a binary division between the

local/individual and an international/imperial. This not only creates a politically charged

analytical tool for one to romanticise one side as either a global force for good or as

resistance against imperial domination. What slipped out of the debate is how

misrepresentations have continued to operate till this day either as a source of justification for

imperial domination, or as the key explanation behind the failures and limitations of

humanitarian interventions. As Charbonneau stated (2013), this is crucial because the

misrepresentation of space and metropole/international peripheral/local binary was

historically employed to justify colonialism and imperial expansion.

!Naturally, historical sensitivity to the legacy of colonialism and imperial expansions which

gave rise to the present day international marked by highly unequal distribution of both

material capacity is pivotal. Nevertheless, examining the context of which humanitarian

interventions are legitimised and understood through binary construct against that of

colonialism brings us to the very premise of ‘humanitarianism’ itself. However, this does not

signify that this work is a mere polemic that intends to reduce humanitarianism and all of its

altruistic claims is a mere smokescreen for a neo-colonial scheme. It is an attempt to re-

politicise the normative framework of humanitarianism that was erected as an answer to

political questions surrounding the intrusion of sovereign space by the intervener as

Campbell (1998:501) acutely pointed out. Humanitarianism, at times enforced by the security

apparatus of the hegemonic network of global governance, far from being an unchallenged


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force for good on behalf of a common humanity (who is not so common in all

measurements), as the earlier chapters of this work indicated, is found upon highly subversive

representations of societies in the structured marginality. In a sense, the problematic

representations themselves embody the continuation of Western colonial fantasy, that decades

after formal decolonisation, western understanding of the world remains to be decolonised.

Nevertheless, this does not imply that our analytical framework found upon spatial

representations that gave rise to a structured marginality is ambitious enough to underpin the

whole of Sub-Saharan Africa in perpetual postcolonaility, subjugated to its former colonial

maters through neocolonial links. It is rather, equipped to deduce that the international/local

division and all of its associate forms of (mis)representation of ‘local’ societies cannot be

essentialised and depoliticised. Instead, they should be treated as renewed attempts by the

network of hegemonic global governance to dictate the social condition of the marginality,

spatial representations infused in commonplace understanding of world politics, cannot be

separated from the political (Darby,2004:4).

!To conclude this section, these particular modes of spatial representation which operates to

sustain metropolitan understanding of the self and its presupposed superiority over the others.

This essay does not wish to engage with the ethnical political question regarding

humanitarian intervention, nor does it cast doubt over the genuine desire to alleviate human

sufferings. However, it remains cautious over the normative framing of interventions that as

we’ve demonstrated rests upon problematic spatial imagination, where the representation of

the subjects of intervention have depoliticised subaltern misfortunes that are often results of

historically developed structural inequality and patterns of dependency. These representations

reflect the material practices that seek to both separate the local from the international and the


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desire to manage them. This is what sparked the comparison between imperialism and

humanitarian intervention, where international management of local conflicts entail far more

than a simple moral imperative. However altruistic these interventions might wish to be (let

us not assume that they are mere pretension within the scope of this essay), if informed by

innately problematic understandings of local conflicts, the capacity and political will to

intervene might in term produce disastrous consequences for local societies.

!!

!!!French interventionism in Africa

The colonial legacy of the French Republic !The current Fifth Republic emerged out of the institutional crisis induced by violent process

of decolonisations in Indochina and particularly the Algerian War, nevertheless the

decolonisation of territories did not necessarily equate to the decolonisation of spatial

imagination for generations of french political leaders. The historical role of France on the

continent and its continuing military presence alongside existing trade, cultural and personal

links with African elites and the presence of a large domestic Africa diaspora and the

presence of some 240,000 french nationals living in Africa renders that the continent remains

pivotal to how France situate itself in relations to the ‘others’ (Melly, Darracq, 2013). In a

sense preconceived ‘colourblindness’ and historical separation between metropolitan France

and its colonial possessions are yet to be properly addressed. The increasingly globalised

world order is placed in sharp contrast with a french society that remains racially/culturally

fractured where migrants from its former colonial possessions remains not socioeconomically


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marginalised (Dine, 2008:174) but also problematised. To give a readily available example,

‘Migrants’, who are legal French residents are coined as ‘failure of integration’,

institutionalised through the establishment of Conseil à L’Intégration set up by the the

socialist government of Rocard at 1989. Bovcon in his article (2009) demonstrated that

French expatriates evacuated from Cote d’Ivoire still refer to themselves as ‘repatriates’ (a

term that was applied to the returnees from Algeria after the war) and demanding

compensation from the french state for their financial losses during the Ivorian crisis. This is

not a simple and passive revival of colonial past, but an indication that colonialism has been

reconstituted in the collective memory according to the preoccupations and needs of the

individuals living in France and in its former colonies (Bovcon, 2009:295). This ‘colonial

theatre’ at home (Dine, 2008:179) in covert forms of hegemony as knowledge and self-

identity is detrimental to the spatial imagination of french subjects and how the world is

constructed, interpreted against their own notions and understandings of their own

geographical setting (in metropolitan France or in Abidjan), and it is to a degree, manifested

in Franco-African security policy, a point this essay shall return to.

!Even in metropolitan France, the Fifth Republic of liberté, égalité and fraternité, culture and

way of life are intricately tied to de jure citizenship, and the understanding of inside and

outside, justified and depoliticised through a moral framework that elevates the individual in

a spatial, cultural and economic vacuum (bears some resemblance to the appropriation of

individuals everywhere by liberal cosmopolitism). This is a trend that is not only confined to

France, in a sense resonate with the the regime of sovereign morality in the international

which saw a ‘global community of increasingly standardised states’ as Reno put forward

(Reno,2009:210). Non-westerners in the socio-economic sense is castigated as examples of


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failed integration domestically and portrayed as victims of incomplete capitalist modernity

and savages who threatens international order and stability internationally. This does not

mean the current international morality and social hegemony in capitalist western society is a

camouflaged racist discourse, for that signifies nothing but intellectual laziness, but the

current themes of IR with its focus on states, governance and international policy economy

do signify a problematic sense of ‘colourblindness’. Historically, racial representations been

infused in the organisation of economic and political life which has led to the asymmetrical

distribution of political and economic power alongside primordial divisions. This work has

emphasised in various places that it does not cast doubt over the the sincereness of

progressive social forces which sought to overcome inequality in all spectrums of human

relations. However, as Chin argued in his thoughtful (and blunt) work, that in our very

attempt to undo present day inequalities with historical roots that are deeply racially

implicated, our understanding of the ‘problems’ of the ‘others’, who are the subject of our

salvation or negligence, entails historically rooted prejudices (Chin, 2009:94-95).

Ethnocentrism is by no means not a phenomena confined to (western)capitalist modernity,

but it does become a problem when misrepresentation materialises into actions. The

implications provided by the two examples given previously suggests the permutation of

spatial and cultural misrepresentations undeniably tied to the history colonial and imperial

expansions continue to inform the contemporary French understanding of citizenship,

benchmarks of civilisation, rights and state responsibility, constituted within an imperial

imagination of space (Cooper, Stoler, 1997:1-37).

!Without degreasing into a debate revolving the ‘colourblindness’ of IR and the problematique

of cultural imperialism in France, both of which remains well beyond the scope of this paper.


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The purpose of this section is to illustrate the intricate connection between geopolitics,

knowledge and subordinative forms of representation of the ‘others’ which permeates all

spectrums of social relations that involves the ‘others’ (Salter,2004:223). This notion is

important for us to understand the context of which French intervention takes place in, that

state military actions, rather than governed by putatively universal rationality (as realists

would argue) might be a result of particularistic self-understanding (Cooper, 20005:64). This

is important to specifying the ‘Frenchness’ (we shall address the ‘Africaness’ in later

chapters) of France interventionism in Africa instead of diffusing it entirely in analogy of an

ahistorical networked liberal governance, conflating France as one of many identical agents

of the ‘international’ of which the ‘local’ African agencies are subordinated to. Arguably,

France has generated its own sense of Globalness (Lévy, 2000:) inextricably linked to the

universality generated through the concept of Francophonie (Dine,2008:175). Whereas a

linguist link is undeniably a result of imperial expansion and a result of various forms of

colonial and neocolonial social conditions, the separation between metropolitan France and

the DOM-TOM (overseas departments) entails the continuing separation of France from its

colonial possessions. In a sense, there is a myriad of institutions, agency and structures that

oversaw the links between France and its former colonial possessions, territories and its

people that have yet to be decolonised (Charbonneau, 2008: 30). France’s ‘others’, be it

postcolonial African states or domestic ‘migrants’ whom France have clearly distinguished

from the self whilst appropriated as subjects of civilising missions, integration (assimilation)

and in the concern of this work, humanitarian crusades remains a structured marginality

sustained subordinated forms of representations.

!!


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!The most striking feature of contemporary Franco-African relationship is that it remains

difficult for French politicians to refer to French African policy without making remarks on

its historical past till this day, Hollande’s earlier statement that ‘ the time of françafrique is

over ‘ in 2012 as he embarked on the ‘traditional African tour’ by all new French presidents

(Le Monde, 2012) remains feeble to as ever to critics of Franco-African relationship as the

socialist president lunched two major operations on the Continent since he assumed office.

Africa has remained high on France’s security agenda, the latest Defence White Paper stated

that French capabilities is contributing to international peace and security, particularly in ‘the

periphery of Europe’ which includes Africa from Sahel to Equatorial Africa (Defence White

Paper: 2013:127).All of which signifies a remnants of mission civilisatrice that cannot be

underpinned entirely in the grand ahistorical narrative of system sovereignty attempting to

regulate and sustain African sovereigns. Africa. As the previous paragraphs sought to

demonstrate, subjects of French hegemony remains vital to the spatial imagination of France

in an era where multiple levels of governance overlap and coexist. Especially in the case of

France whereas it is redefining itself through the European project in the civilisational setting

of Europe and as a key agency in global liberal governance, and has its share in combating

threat of terrorism, transnational illicit activities presented by zone of danger in the South. In

simpler words, the binary position between metropolitan France and its structured

marginality have not been fundamentally altered, and that metropolitan desire and supposed

capacity to intervene have continue to reproduce patterns of dependency, albeit through new

organising logics and source of legitimacy, this is will be addressed in the next section.

! !!


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French security policy in Africa since decolonisation !!!It is widely recognised that formal decolonisation of French colonial possessions in Sub-

Saharan Africa did not equate to the end of colonial cultural, military, economic and political

links between the mother country and its colonies, limited by the scope of our essay , this

section is dedicated entirely to the historical evolution of French security policy in Africa.

However some general narratives are necessary to critically engage with the historical

development of French military interventionism on the continent. Arguably, the process of

decolonisation was never a simple division between a periphery that oppose colonial rule and

a metropole that tries to sustain it. Some évolués (enlightened african elites) were only too

happy to forge new relationship with the former colonial master, a textbook case being the

Ivorian president Houphouët-Boigny whom famously coined the term françafrique. The

transition from colonial to neo-colonial dependence desired by de Gaulle and his grand vision

for France (Gregory, 2000:435) was mutually constructed as the special relationship profited

both France and postcolonial African elites where individuals involved profited in terms of

personal enrichment and France gained the geopolitical influence and grandeur that

distinguished it from other Western European powers (Bovcon, 2013:7).

!At the core of the French military commitments to Africa was the defence accords and

military cooperation between France and African armies that are transformed directly from

formations of the colonial armies whose elites have received french training and often served

in the french military, as Tony Chafer (2002b) argued, this was a restricting of imperial

relationship of the colonial era. The material reality (and politicisation of many postcolonial

African armies) quickly rendered the french military a dependable source of support for


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African political elites (Charbonneau, 2013:14) and the foundation of postcolonial African

regimes’ dependency on French military capabilities (which later extended to Zaire and

Rwanda, who were Belgian possessions). In general France was able to exercised a ‘virtual

empire’ (Gregory, 2000:435) largely rationalised and deemed permissible under the context

of the bi-polar geopolitical rivalry during the Cold War. However, this did not mean that

French security policy on the continent remained static during the Cold War, nor did it entail

that support granted to regimes were unconditional and permeant, particularly in the case of

Central African Republic ( Luckham, 1982). Nevertheless, France was able to sustain and

mange the spatial representation of itself as ultimate source of stability for its former colonial

possession. Nor was the African elites on the passive receiving end, as established elites

sought to undermine domestic oppositions through communist framing, and political

opportunists utilising French military presence to seize power, eroding the understanding of

imperial history and experience as a simple case of metropolitan dominance and peripheral

passiveness.

!However, decades of economic impoverishment worsened above all by predatory state

behaviours, fall in commodity prices and subsequent economic liberalisation have

contributed to political destabilisation and insurgence, above all facilitated by illicit

transitional networks and proliferation of small arms, weakened many postcolonial regimes.

It became increasingly difficult to main stability through limited military operations. By the

end of the cold war, military ties with Africa has became increasingly costly and cumbersome

and interventions are often utilised by regimes whose ties with Paris put France under

unfavourable lights (Utley, 2005:31). Franco-Afircan ties was in need of reorganisation,

continuous attempts were made to normalise Franco-African relationship informed by both


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change in the international and domestic context (Kroslak, 2004:65). Arguably, the

institutional resistance to altering the Franco-African relationship rendered the often cited ‘La

Baule’ speech often marked as a sign of structural changes ( Utley, 2005:25)meaningless,

since president Mitterrand himself admitted that ‘it did not change anything’ (Kroslak,

2004:68). The real momentum for change, arguably was a result of the three disastrous

military adventures in the mid 1990s most notoriously being French complicity in the

Rwanda genocide. France’s inability to disassociate itself from a murderous regime and

providing security for neither the regime nor the people fundamentally challenged the image

of grandeur France tried to maintain (Gregory, 2000:441). Furthermore, its commitment to

Mobutu’s regime in the wake of Zaire’s collapse in 1997 was nothing short of strategic

shortsightedness as it was becoming increasingly apparent during the early 1990s that

Mobutu was in no position to contain the rebellions against him coming from all directions.

Lastly, French military was involved in close urban combats during its operation to contain

army mutinies in the Central African Republic which resulted in heavy civilian casualties

manifested. Not only did all three cases signifies failures of French foreign policy and

military strategies as the African military in all three countries had received assistance from

France; the inability of France to reverse the ultimate downfall of regimes in all three

countries is an indication of France’s misinterpretations of the ‘local’ crisis and its limited

capacity to impose imperial peace. Rather than being seen as a cases of the metropole

intentionally prolonging the chaotic social condition, these three failed attempts to support

local regimes was an acute examples of France failing to adapt to changes on the ground and

its security commitments being appropriated and utilised by postcolonial African regimes. As

Utley argued, the crisis in the Great Lakes region particularly Rwanda has fatally undermined

the legitimacy of French involvement in Africa (Utley,2005), especially when it is difficult


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for to believe that France with its ‘expertise’ in managing African crisis, did not foresee the

calamity (Lemarchand,2009:87)

!!A more critical historical reflection on the historical experience of French hegemony on the

continent reflects the commonplace misconception that Africa is simply France’s pré carré

(sphere of influence) entails nothing but intellectual shortsightedness. Particularly as changes

in ‘local’ conditions have prompted France to reorganise and redefine its security

commitments on the continent. However, the reorganisation of French military on the

continent, manifested in the reduction in troops numbers and closure of bases did not entail

France’s strategic retreat. It is important to keep in mind that even after the the disastrous

experience in Rwanda, France lunched another total of 33 operations in Africa prior to its yet

another controversial involvement in Cote d’Ivoire in 2002, of which only 10 had UN

mandates. Despite the official discourse of ‘normalisation’ , which has been repeated in

various French administrations from Mitterrand to Hollande ‘ generally reflects a shifting

paradigm of global norms, of multilateralism, democracy, development and sovereign

responsibilities. The changes in french military strategy did not necessarily reflect a complete

overhaul of spatial representations, Sub-Saharan is again presented as a major ‘zone of

fragility’ as France commits itself to ‘fighting all forms of terrorism from the Sahel to

Equatorial Africa ‘ (Defence White Paper, 2013:39). The continuing involvement has been

presented as France’s contribution to security and development on the continent

(Chafrbonneau, Chafer, 2011:278) legitimised through the new language of cosmopolitanism.

Nevertheless, this shift, itself prompted by the calamities induced by the incompetence of

French imperial interference , cannot escape the historical context of French colonialism and


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imperialism, nor can it escape the historically developed dependency of some African

agencies, as Chafer argued, ‘for normalisation to happen, both sides have to want it (Chafer,

2002:177).

!!!!!

The tragedy of mere pretension !“ France intends to be present alongside Africans to help them to integrate themselves into the modern world, to prevent the crisis which can tear apart the continent, and to overcome the immense difficulties which countries emerging from conflicts encounter. “ !Chirac, 2002 (Cited in Utely, 2006:31). !!Defenders of contemporary humanitarian interventions like Roland Paris rejects the notion

that imperial and colonial legacy have lingered on in (legitimate) contemporary interventions

driven explicitly by (to dispute this point is another matter) liberal moral imperative (Paris,

2010). As much as one wish to reimpose the perennial theme of tragedy in international

relations onto his optimism, his argumentations deserve some serious reflections in the case

of French interest in African affairs. As emphasised in the previous chapter, the continuation

of french hegemony on the continent after formal decolonisation was not a simplistic story of

outright French domination, the rationales behind interventionism became increasingly

unfavourable not only owe to the changing external environment stated previously but also

with the passing of earlier generations of franco-african state apparatus (most famous case

being Jacques Foccart who is known as Monsieur Afrique ). Furthermore, whilst it is true that

French remains dependent on Africa for strategic resources such as uranium,sub-Saharan


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Africa’s economic significance measured both in terms of merchandise import from and

export to Frane has declined sharply from 9% and 8% of early 1960s to 3% and 2%

respectively in 2011 (World Bank, cited in Melly, Darracq, 2013: 19), the economic rationale

behind French military interventionism remains unconvincing at marco-level.

!Furthermore, the new emphasises on multilateralism and enhancement of African capacity

(often funded and undertaken under EU frameworks ) in a sense signifies an imperialism on

the cheap(Utely, 2002). Almost in all measures, France is by no means a fearful geopolitical

power surrounded by states with equitable capacity. However, as Profant argued, France’s

declining material influence has not had much influence on its projection of itself in relations

to sub-Saharan Africa (Profant, 2012:42). Arguably, sub-Saharan Africa remains a ‘cheap’

place for French interventionism where it could alter ‘local’ events dramatically with a few

fighter jets and APCs roaming down the dusty roads (as how such interventions are often

portrayed in popular media), than say involving in Syria. France has attempted to reorganise

its capacity and play a leadership role through the UN and EU in managing African crisis, not

not because they are better source of legitimacy, but also as an acute reflection of France’s

diminishing material capacity, and its adjustment of interventionism in Africa within new

paradigm of liberal governance. For instance, France actively lobbied for EU involvement in

Congo in 2004 and eventually obtained the materialisation of Opération Artémis. However,

as Utley (2006) observed that the official discourse on the operation itself focused

exclusively on Europe: Chirac was quoted saying that “(Artémis) cemented the significant

advances of European defence which the French military played a significant role (ibid:35).

The fluidity of rationale behind French interventionism in Africa does indicate some

qualitative changes in Franco-African relationship. Nevertheless, if one focus entirely on the


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fluidity in French official discourses that emphasises on ‘special relationship’ whilst at the

same time stresses the importance of normalisation and multilateralism, as Kroslak

(2006:80) warned, we would lose sight of the continuity of French African policy, in our case

it is the spatial representations inscribed to the continent.

!!Arguments that claims that France interventionism persisted in Africa underlines

determination of various French administration to reproduced Gaullist version of grandeur is

not a novel observation (Dine, 2008:175, Profant,2010, Lévy, 2000). Charbonneau and

Chafer (2011) argues that France interventionism has been been legitimised and reauthorised

in the context of global liberal governance, where it attempt to reproduce its geopolitical

exceptionalism through new paradigms of capacity building, development all of which are

said to be aimed at a peaceful and prosperous Arica, and in doing so saw the persistence of

French imperial capability and new patterns of dominance (Charbonneau, 2008). In a sense

these arguments resonate with those of post-imperialism whereby intervention does not

purely steam from economic rationale but from moral cosmopolitanism, responsive to the

moralisation of global space in the era of mass media, where public opinions can have acute

political and economic consequences on a given country (Dexter,2007:1057). This is

precisely why this essay chose to situate the entirety of the debate within the context of a

hegemonic global liberal governance, and at the beginning of this section, stressed that

Roland Paris’s argument (2010) deserves some serious reflections. However, his argument

that colonial and imperial legacy have given way to new moral imperative, whilst

acknowledging the imperial nature of contemporary interventions, he argued that they were

fundamentally different because they were aimed at benefiting the local societies (ibid:


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349,350). Nevertheless, what ensured the transformation of France’s pursuit for grandeur

(which should not be a problem if it genuinely wishes to help) substantiated by its willingness

and capacity to intervene militarily on the continent is the continuation of submissive forms

of representations that were used to justify and inform contemporary humanitarianism bears

shocking resemblance to those of colonial and imperial era.

!This is not our attempt to situate societies where these interventions took place in a perennial

postcoloniality, where ‘local’ agencies operate entirely at the whims of the ‘international’.

After all the structured marginality, is structured, imagined and denotes an misinformed

understanding of societies, either as backward uncivilised, or as simply alien. The later form

of understanding is what prompted Chandler (2010) to conclude that external interveners

have given up on restructuring ‘local’ societies and resorted to maintaining the status quo.

The probelmatique of interventions in the scope of this essay is not that it interfere with an

imagined state of indigenousness, but the very assumption of that state of indigenousness. It

is worrisome enough when metropole/international seek to manage local/peripheral conflicts

informed by spatial misrepresentations which presupposes the capacity and knowhow the

interveners simply do not possess. Arguably, had France actually possessed the effective

hegemony it projects itself to have, some long standing regional conflicts in Congo, Chad and

Central African Republic would have been resolved some time ago, and ‘friendly’ African

regimes would have been more stable. What renders the misrepresentation even more

precarious, is the capacity of ‘local’ agencies to profit from misrepresentations they are

subjugated to. Bovcon (2013) used demonstrated the ‘incongruities between France’s actual

power and its behaviour towards its former colonies and the (failed) attempt by then Ivorian

preisdent Gbagbo to consolidate his position both through dependency on françafrique and


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his anti-imperialist stance. Moreover, breaking down the comfortable binary view of the

world and spatial misrepresentations requires us to also repudiate the conventional anti-

imperialist polemic stance commonly associated with Franco-Africa relationship.

Commonplace interpretations that sub-Saharan Africa is simply France’s pré carré, where

France is able to ‘cheery pick’ close links with states (Gregory, 2000:442) needs to be

contested as they are equally subversive. In order to better illustrate the points this essay has

been pursuing thus far, the following sections are dedicated to the case study on Central

African Republic, this is necessary to grant some materiality to an otherwise abstracted

argumentation.

!!!!Case study: Central African Republic, myth and reality !!!Central African Republic, rarely mentioned in the anglophone press apart from occasional

reductionist reference to its political turmoil which bears little difference from sheer

criminality and irrational violence, is a prototype case for Afro-Pessimism. The continuing

communal violence at the time this paper is being written and concurrent attempt by the

‘international’ to scramble efforts makes it a highly relevant case study for this paper. The

misrepresentation of the current crisis and the historical legacy of neocolonialism and

imperialism the country is subjugated to, has continued to operate till this day and hijacked

genuine humanitarian efforts to reproduce a new pattern of dependency on the international/

imperial core. This section of the essay argues that the historically developed dependency on

external support and structural weaknesses of the Central African Republic ( from here

onwards referred to as the CAR) is by no means local, and that historically developed


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prejudice and misrepresentation has omitted the ‘international’ root of local crisis and

materialised in misinformed peacekeeping (making?) operation. The dysfunctional and feeble

Central African State prior to the crisis is not only owe to the ingenious criminal design of

‘indigenous’ politicians, nor is it a simple developmental malaise, but rather a chronic crisis

that combines all too familiar theme of geopolitical contestation,regime survival,

humanitarian concerns and a local political class who is dependent on external support

system.

A simplistic analogy of the current crisis !“We can not allow the atrocities in Central African Republic. The international community must act and France intends to take its share of responsibility” - Francois Hollande, 19 November 2013 (Libération, 2013) !‘ Militias in the C.A.R are slitting children’s throats, razing villages and throwing young men to the crocodiles, What needs to happen before the world intervenes?’ - Guardian 2013 !!France has actively advocated for multilateral management of the unfolding violence in CAR,

thus far gaining support from all spectrums of the ‘international community’, from UN

mandate for French military operation Sangaris (Security Council, 2014) to an EU -funded

African led peace operations MISCA (EU, 2014:4) and promised EU support to relieve

French military in the capital (IWPR,2014). Furthermore, France claimed that it has recede d

to a secondary supportive role to the much larger African MISCA contingents under

RECAMP (Ministère de la Défense, 2014), a French initiative to reorientate French security

policy in Africa towards improving the capacity of African states, essentially a

multilateralisation of French military presence on the content (Charbonneau, 2008:114).

!


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However despite the presence of international peacekeeping effort, localised communitarian

violence continue to break out around the countries. As the violence continues to unfold, the

conflict is being fashioned increasingly from a case of state collapse and regime change to

sectarian violence and identity politics (Human Rights Watch, 2013). The implicit message is

clear, that France alongside the international community (System sovereignty) and the EU is

the only salvation to African crisis where neither the Central African state nor the various

African agencies could alleviate people of CAR from irrational slaughtering. The intervention

in CAR is necessitated under the pretext that devoid of EU funding, French/EU security

expertise and knowhow, the conflict could not be resolved by African agencies, let alone

CAR itself.

!It is difficult to deduce how the conflicts are understood by the French government simply

through official rhetoric, or whether it is understood at all. Commonplace interpretations of

the conflict seem to have creeped into official discourse. Understanding of the conflict has

progressed little since the security council meeting on 5 December 2013, the conflict in CAR

is said to be one of :‘(where) the state which has collapsed, is unable to protect its

population, and the country is now in danger of succumbing to inter religious violence

between the Christans and Musliums.’ - Gérard Araud, Permeanent Representative of France

to the UN (Ministère des affaires Etrangères, 2013). At the time whilst this paper is being

written, President Hollande has stressed the urgency to avoid the partition of CAR (Le

Nouvel Observateur, 2014) and his ‘transitional policy’ entails little more than the general

election scheduled for February 2015 (Le Monde 1, 2014). In Generally speaking, the

conflict in CAR is understood as an spontaneous eruption of local religious sectarian

violence, as a direct result of state failure.


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!First and foremost, it is doubtful whether France or the EU for that matter do possess the

material capability and even political will required to commit to securitising a sparsely

populated country with a landmass slightly bigger than that of metropolitan Franc given the

current fiscal reality in Europe, not to mention its relative proximity to other conflict torn

regions particularly Congo, Chad and Sudan. Moreover, it is also problematic whether France

do possess the knowhow to peace and stability in CAR given the dangerously simplified

analogy of the conflict used in the official discourse. Nevertheless, the comfortable usage of

spatial representation of Africa as a problemtised locality presupposes the French capacity

acting on behalf of the international. This does not mean this section denies the sectarian

elements of the conflict nor the incompetence of political elites in the CAR, African agencies

limited capacity nor is this a mere polemic against the pejorative representations. However,

we must not forget that discourses and representations, are not mere normative concern, they

have materiality (Mbembe, 2001:5). Historicity must be returned to the subjects of the moral

imperative of the international, to uncover the fallacious separation between the localised

conflicts and the international, to expose a ‘real’ common humanity.

!!

List of presidents of Central African Republic after Bokassa

!Years in power Method of accession ‘Sectarian identity’

André Kolingba 1981-1993 Coup Yakoma, Southerner

Angre-Félix Patassé 1993-2003 Election, 1993, 1999 Sara-Kaba, Northerner


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!!!

French complicity in the formation of a predatory political class

!“ CAR has experienced a tragedy…this country has lived under decades of instability, disorder, corruption..” - President Hollande, in his speech to religious leaders in Bangui, 28th February 2014 (Hollande,2014) !!France’s military intervention in CAR has always been informed by a mixture of

humanitarianism and imperialist geopolitical concern. For instance, CAR’s most notorious

dictator Bokassa, a pioneer in the militarisation of CAR’s political scene (ICG,2007:4), who

soon depleted the tacit backing of France as his brutal crackdown of political opposition was

made publicised by Amnesty International (O’Toole,1986:54) in 1979 which brought

embarrassment to the French government as the brutality of the structured marginality

reached the metropolitan core. If his atrocities alone did not suffice to seal his fate, Bokassa’s

subsequent attempt to seek for Libyan backing ultimately saw him forcibly removed by the

french military present inside the country and in neighbouring Chad. There was always a

humanitarian element to the imperial. However, the picture becomes murkier once we

abandon the all too familiar metropole-periphery binary where African agencies are reduced

to mere executioners of French imperial will. The militarisation of Central African politics

François Bozizé 2003-2013 Coup, Election 2005 Gbaya, Born in Gabon,

Michel Djotodia 2013-2014 Armed Rebellion Muslim/Gula , Northerner

Years in power Method of accession ‘Sectarian identity’


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(Mehler, 2011)and the formation of a predatory political class has historically utilised French

interventions to their own end, that is not necessarily desired by Pairs. In fact, by 1978, CAR

was one of the only five African countries that had maintained the defence accord with

France which provided French military the rights to intervene (Lellouche, Moisi, 1979:114).

!!In the 1982, the designated successor of Bokassa, David Dacko who was already proven to be

extremely unpopular during his presidential term, ‘voluntarily’ handed over the power to the

military, which soon saw the rise of General Kolingba as the new head of state.Not only was

his regime highly dependent on Paris for financial aid and advisory (Berg, 2008:20, ICG,

2007:10, O’Toole, 1986:70); French support and its commitment towards ‘stability’ in

francophone Africa (Vasset, 1997) provided the precondition for Kolingba’s subsequent

rampage over the Central African state. Under his rule, the military and state apparatus

became increasingly dominated by the Yakoma people, an ethnic group who resides in the

southern part of the country where the capital Bangui is located. Kolingba’s reliance on

primordial ties for political recruitment of both the state institutions and the security

apparatus which in term inscribed the sectarianism into CAR’s political scene was arguably a

risky move given the country’s relative small military. In a sense, the security of his regime is

partially ensured by the presence of 1,500 french soldiers in the country during the early

1980s (O’Toole, 1986:67). Moreover, it is important to bear in mind that this ethnic

favouritism that was employed as a mean to distribute limited resources through the state was

used to consolidate control by the president, it should not be seen as a priori prominence of

primordial identities.


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A close examination of all of Central African presidents from Boprior to the latest takeover

by Djotodia in 2013 revels their similar path to power, perhaps with the noticeable exception

of Patassé. First of all, in consecutive order, Kolinga, Patassé and Bozizé served key military

and civilian positions in Bokassa administration, with Patassé being the Prime Minister and

the other two being generals of the army. Aside from Patassé, all of the three remaining

presidents sized power through military coup owe to their position as the commander of the

army (Mehler,2010:53) and through armed rebellion as in the case of Bozizé. Arguably in a

country where the military is highly politicised, key military post would not be delegated to

those who is perceived as inherently ‘alien’ by the executive. The motive behind their seizure

to power cannot be sufficiently explained as ideologically driven nor as commitment to

primordial tie, but as the desire for personal gain. This informal tradition of political

succession could only be made possible when their illegitimate seizure to power was partially

assisted or unopposed by the French military stationed in the country and in nearby Chad.

Furthermore, in later years where the military become significantly weakened owe to the

distrust of the administrations, in 1981 the army only had 1,900 soldiers as oppose to 7,500

under Bokassa regime (O’Toole, 1986:67, Mehler, 2010:53), the coercive ability of their

often oppressive regimes relied heavily on the deterrence to oppositions posed by French

military in the country. Similarly, oppositions’ chances of gaining power also varied

significantly on the degree of french support over the regime.

!Seen in this light, the emergence of a predatory political class is to an extent owe to the

constant possibility of French interventions as local elites exploited imperial and neocolonial

relationship within ‘local’ political context. Noticeably, Bozizé regime collapsed when

anticipated French support was not given (CNN,2012), rebels forces marched into the capital


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after it was clear that French army (Operation Boali) and FOMUC troops did not intend to

intervene (Minstére de la Défense, 2013), unsurprisingly, the security apparatus made no

apparent attempt to protect the regime itself (Reuters,2013).

!!!

C.A.R. a ‘local’ failure?

!Liberalisation and the first ‘free and fair election’ since the country’s independence first held

in 1993 did not lead to the normalisation of the political structure. The first president with no

military background Patassé was said to differ from his predecessors because he was from the

northern part of the country, perhaps a continuation of the identitarian politics of the Kolinga

era where people of the river (Yakoma) dominated his administration. The domination of

security apparatus and state institutions by Yakoma posed as an acute threat to the the

country’s first democratically elected leader, Patassé pursed to weakened the Yakoma

domination through the creation of parallel security apparatus, a practice continued by Bozizé

(Mehler, 2010:54). The attempt to undo the remnants of Kolingba’s former patronages in the

state and military apparatus, again through political recruitment along ethnic lines, and the

marginalisation of the Armed Forces yield precarious consequences.

!Army mutinies soon erupted in 1996 and 1997, Patassé regime survived the reprisal with the

help of yet another french military intervention (Almandin II) justified thorough its defence

accord with CAR (Ministé de la Défense, 2010). The behaviours of the ‘international’ bears


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shocking resemblance to that of today, as France beefed up its presence in the country and

funded a joint African peacekeeping contingent. However, situations quickly deteriorated as

three consecutive army mutinies broke out despite French presence. The rapid deteriorations

and French involvement in close urban combats in Bangui which resulted in mass civilian

casualties (ICG, 2007:11) forced Paris to pressured Patassé to include oppositions and rebel

leaders in the government. A quick peace was achieved under the facade of inclusive politics,

presidential election was planned for 1999, and France withdrew from the country as part of

its military restructuring and a sign of France’s reluctance to be drawn into urban conflicts

and complex political crisis it cannot resolved militarily (Chafer, 2002:11). This generated

two consequence: first, inclusive politics and culture of privatised yield a dangerous

combinations (Mehler, 2011:124) as armed oppositions were legitimised through

international recognition and undermined the little cohesiveness that was left in the Patassé

regime; Second, the French and international withdrawal from the country arguably placed

significant strain on the survival of Central African state that simply did not have the capacity

to maintain political order on its own. Five months after the presidential election of 1999 of

which Patassé claimed victory, violence returned to Bangui.

!Moreover, regional dynamics and CAR’s immediate geopolitical position is also pivotal to

CAR’s security environment and the regime’s chances of survival. The historical inability of

the Bangui regime to control the northern parts of the country (Bierschenk, de Sardan, 1997)

has created a safe heaven for cross-border armed movement including the SPLA with links to

key conflicts in the tri-border region of Chad, Sudan and the CAR facilitated by cross border

refugee flows fuelled by conflicts in three different countries, including some 245,000(EU,

2014:1) and trans-border trade (Giroux, Lanz, Sguaitamatti, 2009: 6). Northern Eastern


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CAR’s geographical prolixity to the oil field in southern Chad and Dafur region saw rebel

movements against and supported by both Chad and Sudan operating in this region. Without

diverting into structural accounts of Chadian and Sudanese (and perhaps now a third one in

South Sudan) conflict, it should be understood that the ongoing conflicts in Sudan and

neighbouring Chad have given rise to a regional system of conflict facilitated by movement

of people and goods (Giroux, Lanz, Sguaitamatti, 2009, Marshal,2007). This provided

N’djamena and Khartoum with strong incentive to be involved in CAR’s political scene.

Whilst the Central African state is by no means effective in the classical weberian sense and

its survival depends heavily on external support system. The temporary withdrawal of France

in 1997 and the weakened and unreliable military of CAR does not foreclose the ingenuity

(or desperateness) of a regime trying to survive. Deprived of his French patronage and

threatened by attempts of military coups, Patassé begun to seek for new foreign patronages in

the region, and in a similar attempt as Bokassa, he asked for Libyan assistance and help from

rebel group (MLC) in Northern Congo. Such a dangerous manoeuvre and its geopolitical

repercussions on neighbouring countries including France and Chad both wary of Libya,

ultimately translated into a regional purging against Patassé that involved Kabila’s Congo

(naturally) and Chad (Berg, 2008:20), and eventually saw the successful removal of Patassé

by Bozizé, a career military(coups) man backed by Chadian president Déby with the help of

Chadian mercenaries.

!Furthermore, what enabled a constant supply of belligerents (and the gross atrocities and

criminalities associated with conflicts in Chad, CAR and Sudan) is a pool of professional

combatants with fluid loyalties (Debos, 2008:227) not only coming from the tri- order region

in Northeastern CAR but also in the Northwestern region where armed groups operate as


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highwayman profiting from key trade route to Cameroon (Berg, 2008:22). Bangui regime’s

inability to control the northern parts of the country, in conjunction with general level of

economic underdevelopment nurtured a group of ‘career rebels, where CAR nationals has

been reported to be involved in the rebel groups in Darfur (Marchal, 2007: 477). The ethnic

make up of Bozizé’s rebel force included various ethnic and religious origins (Debos,

2008:227), not only implying that the nature of the politics struggle in Central African

Republic is not a simple case of confessionalism but also revels the the economic rationales

of many of the fighters themselves which saw the takeover of Bozizé accompanied by

systematic looting of the population (ICG,2007: 19) and subsequent rise in both criminality

and rise of new opposition armed movements. This pool of fighters in conjunction with weak

state coercive capacity yields a perfect combination for the opportunist predatory political

class.

!

At this juncture it should be seen clearly that there is a complex political economy of state

erosion operating in the Central African Republic whereas the incumbents of Bangui

primarily relied on foreign patronage for security.This is not only owe to the institutional

weakness of the army and poverty, but a result of the appropriation of foreign interventions in

‘local’ political context. The roots of conflicts in Central African Republic is identity politics,

but a result of predatory regimes and its logic of political recruitment which saw the

crystallisation of economic and political division alongside otherwise ambitious ethnic line.

Situated in a context of poverty, geopolitical concern of rivalry regional and at times

international power, informed by their own individual economic rationale, the predatory

political class of CAR have maintained control with outside assistance. The futility of army


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reform that was supposedly in place since 1996 (ICG,2013) funded by the EU and France is a

manifestation of the passive resistance towards attempts of altering ‘local’ dependency on the

‘international’. CAR with all of its misery and suffering is not a simple case of the subalterns

willingly subdued to the will of the metropole as polemics might claim. Serious thoughts are

ought to be given to Ayoob’s theory where state collapses and violence is an integral part of

state formation (Ayoob, 2002:46). The dependency created in CAR manifests anything but

the passiveness of the peripheral agencies, nor is the root causes of ‘localised’ crisis entirely

local.

Final reflection and Conclusion !The gradual unfolding of the current crisis is the result of all of the aforementioned

historically developed structural malaises: a predatory political class, weakened state

institutions, the complicity of ‘international ‘involvement, a security vacuum fuelled

‘regional’ instabilities and the interference of neighbouring regimes’. Thus far this section has

avoided engaging in debates that sought to construct an universal model to state collapses in

Africa, or attributing the the root cause of current conflict to one factor, as the current French

official discourse seem to have resorted to. It is not difficult to deduce that although France,

irrespective of all accusations of neo-colonialism, did not single handily manufacture regime

changes in CAR. Nevertheless, historical experiences suggests that the presence and absence

of French interventions is intricately linked to the survival ability of Bangui regime. Despite

various CAR leaders’ attempt to find new external support, a more recent example being the

involvement of South Africa in Bozizé’s final attempts for international support. France’s

abandonment of Bozizé was not without reason, a joint French-CAR military campaign

against rebel groups in northern CAR in 2006 again led to a media defeat of the French


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involvement as reports of war crimes by the CAR army emerged (ICG,2007:27).

Nevertheless, a peace agreement was brokered and rebels (whether they had meaningful

political agendas or not ) were legitimised by the international peace efforts and Bozizé

received another 7 years in power without strengthening the institutional capacity of his

regime despite international assistance.

!!!International (where France plays a lead role) efforts in containing local crisis in CAR cannot

deny its share of responsibility in the historically developed chronic structural weakness of

CAR. Through its direct involvements in ‘local’ conflicts, ‘local’ agencies are legitimised or

delegitimised and ‘local’ violence is depoliticised and rendered as a malaise in itself

embedded in the social conditions of underdevelopment rather than being treated as the result

of inorganic socio-economic divisions created by a predatory class whose rent seeking ability

from its former colonial master is rooted in both moral imperatives and the misrepresentation

they are subjugated to. When the regime is supported by French effort, it not only serves as a

deterrence to the oppositions but also legitimises a often corrupt and predatory regime.

Furthermore, violence is used by armed oppositions to attract international attention and

attempts of mediation which not only saw their legitimisation, but also saw the

marginalisation of non-violent political parties and the weakening of government cohesion as

it enters power-sharing agreement endorsed by its external support system (Mehler, 2010).

!!


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The perception that international effort and above all french involvement is inherently an

impartial ‘external’ effort to contain ‘local’ violence is in itself problematic. The imagined

enclosed conflict system locally is in fact deeply associated with historical patterns of

external interventions. What France and the ‘international’ cannot escape is the existence of

a highly militarised political scene in CAR that has coexisted with and in some extent it is

nurtured by external interveners. If France truly had the capacity and knowhow to local crisis,

CAR would have had a functional security apparatus after years of military cooperations

(since independence) and internationally funded security sector reform (Bagayoko,2012). The

dependency on external support for internal stability of various Bangui regimes have lingered

on from the context of French neocolonialism to contemporary global liberal governance,

effectively offloading the role of maintaining public order onto the intervener whilst the

predatory political class sought to strengthen their position irrespective of domestic

oppositions. Although, this is not always successful as manifested in Djotodia’s earlier

attempt to offset the inability of his administration to provide security through operation

Sangaris and the disarmament of rebels whom he was unable to control.

!The brief historicity illustrated in the previous section has shown that the chronic structural

weakness faced the CAR is not a simple case of local failures. It is perhaps true that there are

no explicit economic rationale behind the various French intervention in CAR, however this

in term signifies not only the moral pretension of French efforts aimed at peace and stability,

but also its incompetence and insensitivity to the dynamics of local conflicts. This is not a a

polemical approach rendering that ‘local conflicts’ should be left to its own course, but rather

a rejection of the notion of where the international/France which is deeply implicated in the

dynamics of local conflict is itself depoliticised. In the context of CAR, the role of France is


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deeply embedded not only in CAR’s local politics, but also in its geopolitical setting

(France’s leverage over Chad and African organisations), informed and legitimised by

subordinative forms of representations deep seeded in legacy of colonialism, as I’ve argued at

the very beginning of this work. Nevertheless, the artificial separation between local conflicts

and external intervention not only distort our understanding and produce disastrous

consequences but also further substantiate topological or local inferiority through what are

often the failures of the intervention itself. The tragedy of this sort of ‘humanitarianism’ is not

that it undermines the very possibility of free and equal subject (Walker, 2006), but owe to

the fact contemporary moral imperative in conjunction with misrepresentations presuppose a

fallacious material/intellectual capacity, and when this fallacious capacity materialises, it is

often the very people we try to help who endure the ultimate cost.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


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