Tag Archives: counter terror

The ‘Gendarme of Africa’ Increasingly shunned

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French 120mm RTF1 Brandt mortar in action in Mali 2019, as part of Operation Berkhane

While France was a big player in East vs West counter-insurgency wars in Africa throughout the Cold War including the twin disasters of the Algerian Wars and the Suez intervention, the Toyota Wars in Chad against Libya, Ethiopia/Somalia, and the Horn of Africa (remember, Djibouti was the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas until 1978 and the country still has 2,000 troops there) the nightmare that was the Congo and Biafra, Kolwezi in 1978, the Gambian coup response in 1981, et. al. They were also on the periphery of the South African/Rhodesian efforts in the 1970s-80s as well, being one of the few countries to ignore the general weapon embargoes on those apartheid states. 

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, France kept up its self-imposed Gendarme d’Afrique role, enforcing the way things should be as seen by Paris, overturning the repeated mercenary coups by Bob Denard, still mixing it up in Libya, sending troops to the Central African Republic (which saw no less than eight French interventions since 1960), being involved in a simmering 20-year conflict in the Ivory Coast, the forever war of the continued Operation Barkhane saga in Mali, and in Burkina Faso. 

Regarding the latter two, Russia seems to be increasingly pushing the French out for assorted reasons. The below from AJ: 

Operation Barkhane, France’s Afghanistan in Africa, just got weirder

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The French have had thousands of troops deployed to the desert Sahel region of Mali and Chad (and to a lesser extent Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Niger) since Islamic extremists linked to al-Qaeda took control of the region in early 2012, going hand-in-hand with a Tuareg separatist uprising which gave the whole thing the aura of a civil war with jihadi undercurrents.

Who wouldn’t want to get involved with that, right?

While Paris has always had a smattering of European allies there (British, Canadians, Danes, and Swedes, mainly) they never contribute anything larger than a company-sized element, leaving the French to carry the fight largely alone. 

With that, France, as French-speaking Africa’s gendarmerie despite their pull back from the Continent in the 1960s following the end of the brutal war in Algeria, have seen lots of successes. For instance, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara was “neutralized by French forces,” President Emmanuel Macron tweeted two weeks ago.

Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi was on everyone’s list, and the French zapped him in the Sahel this month, reportedly droning him off his motorbike somewhere in Mali’s northern desert. A “tactical success.”

Meanwhile, France has spilled lots of blood there for those gains.

Army Chief Corporal Maxime Blasco, a veteran commando, killed 24 September, was the 52d Frenchman to die on Operation Barkane since 2013.

So now, the French are slowly leaving Mali.

The plan is to cut the force from 5,000 today to between 2,500 and 3,000 by 2023. Most will be leaving from the northern Mali bases at Kidal, Timbuctu, and Tessalit, which may or may not be consolidated– reports vary. 

However, the Mail government, which has an Etch-A-Sketch quality to it due to a recent coup, followed by a counter-coup with “plans for an election next year,” has denounced the French redeployment (let’s just call it a withdrawal) saying that the for-now regime in Bamako would seek other allies.

From Russia.

The plan by the Mali government is to bring in Wagner Group private military contractors to fill the gap. The Wagners aren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty. They have a rough reputation for their work elsewhere in Africa– with allegations of field executions and assorted war crimes in blood diamond areas– and have seen lots of action in Syria, even famously coming up short against American artillery and close-air-support, which the Russians lacked.

In short, things are primed to get really interesting in the region.

And the beat goes on…