Gendarme of Africa

...Since Shaba II, the Giscard government has tried to bring these soldiers into a permanent inter-African force which could act both as an auxiliary to French forces and as a surrogate for direct French military intervention...

...Washington's chief interest in Africa, however, is as a post for possible intervention in the Middle East...

...To demonstrate the effectiveness of these measures, France held a "test exercise" in September 1979 to show its capability of intervening alone in the event of new insurgent attacks in Zaire or elsewhere...

...During the crisis—known as Shaba II—the three countries airlifted 750 French and 1,200 Belgian paratroopers into Shaba Province, where the insurgents were quickly and brutally crushed...

...France is no longer the only Western power willing to use military force in Africa...

...It has ordered twenty-five new Transall transport aircraft and created a special 3,000-sol-dier Overseas Combat Unit armed with light tanks and armored personnel carriers...

...The United States now has its own Foreign Legion—a 200,000-sol-dier Rapid Deployment Force—and has arranged for the use of bases and naval facilities in Egypt, Kenya, Somalia, and Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean...

...another $1 billion is invested each year by French banks and corporations...

...As a result, Paris regards the maintenance of pro-Western regimes in mineral-producing countries as essential to France's economic survival...

...H In April 1978, 2,000 French soldiers, backed by a second squadron of Jaguar aircraft, intervened in Chad to prevent the overthrow of a black-dominated pro-French government by Arab insurgents of FROLINAT, the Chadian National Liberation Front...

...Then, early in 1979, Paris switched sides to support FROLINAT's seizure of power...

...The Giscard government has curried the favor of Gaullist nationalists, who complain that France is too dependent on the United States for logistical support in Africa...

...The purpose of France's growing military involvement in Africa is to safeguard its extensive investments and trade...

...H In January 1980, when guerrilla forces attacked the town of Gafsa in Tunisia, the Giscard government provided transport planes to airlift Tunisian government troops...

...Now, in response to the merger of the former French colony of Chad with neighboring Libya, the Giscard government has dispatched even more troops to Africa as a warning to Libya to stop while it is ahead...

...Commerce between France and Africa amounts to $10 billion a year and accounts for a quarter of France's total foreign trade...

...Some 300,000 French civilians—teachers, technicians, business people, and their families—live and work on the continent...

...While France has preferred to play a direct role in Africa, Paris has also sought, as one French official told The New York Times, "to create a strong chain of moderate French-speaking countries in Africa, stretching from the Ivory Coast and Cameroon up to Senegal...

...The second civil war in Chad ended in December 1980 with the victory of FROLINAT's pro-Libyan faction...

...In addition, the French economy is increasingly dependent on Africa as a source of imported raw materials, particularly metals such as cobalt, manganese, and chrome, and fuels such as oil and uranium...

...On January 8, in the underground war room at the Ely-see Palace, President Giscard and his advisers—responding in part to pressure from Francophone nations uneasy about their own security—decided that the number of troops stationed in the Central African Republic, Gabon, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast should be increased, and that military agreements should be concluded with Niger and Cameroon...

...For keeping capitalism safe in other parts of the continent, Washington has been happy to delegate responsibility to the French...

...Three days later, on January 11, the first new units were airlifted to the Central African Republic, and the French Air Force began preparing to send a squadron of Jaguar aircraft to Gabon...

...The Giscard government further strengthened its African force after Libya and Chad issued a joint communique January 6 announcing that the two countries would merge and unify their armed forces...

...France has some 14,000 combat and combat-support troops garrisoned throughout France's former African domain and on board a naval task force in the Indian Ocean—and has 9,200 marines and 23,000 paratroopers held in reserve for combat abroad, along with the 8,000 members of the legendary French Foreign Legion...

...Those days may have passed, but over the past few years the government of French President Valery Gis-card d'Estaing has pursued an equally aggressive military policy in Africa— stationing thousands of troops in France's former possessions and intervening throughout the continent...

...In the past five years, France has intervened militarily in Africa five times: 11 In December 1977, a squadron of French Jaguar counterinsurgency aircraft based in Senegal was sent into combat in Mauritania against the guerrilla forces of the Polisario Front, a nationalist movement that sought to block Mauritania's annexation of the Western Sahara...

...These troops remained in Shaba Province to guard the mines until July 1979, when they .turned over control to Zairean troops assisted by French and Belgian advisers and officers...

...The Giscard government has come to rely on the use of military force to ensure that its investments remain secure and that the flow of Africa's mineral wealth continues uninterrupted...

...The Reagan Administration is likely to continue that policy, giving President Giscard a free hand and, as Carter did during Shaba II, providing whatever assistance he requests...

...11 In May 1978, when Zairean insurgents operating from bases in Angola threated to overrun mineral-rich Shaba Province and disrupt the flow of copper and cobalt to the West, the United States and Belgium joined France to intervene against the rebels...

...Despite the continued presence of 1,200 French troops, the new FROLINAT government quickly collapsed as fighting between competing factions erupted into a new civil war...

...After three days of heavy fighting, however, the guerrillas were defeated and several hundred local sympathizers were arrested to prevent further unrest...

...The Giscard government annually provides more than $1 billion Daniel Volman wrote "A Continent Besieged: Foreign Military Activities in Africa Since 1975...

...And in May 1980, the Giscard government was forced to transfer its forces to the Central African Republic...

...Some 300 to 400 French paratroopers were airlifted to Zaire and dropped into Kolwezi—one of the centers of the Shaba II insurgency—to join a French trained and led Zairean paratroop battalion...

...Thus France will continue to serve, in the apt phrase of the Paris-based weekly Jeune Afrique, as "the Cubans of the West...

...France also stationed a naval task force off the Tunisian coast to facilitate the rapid intervention of French forces if that became necessary...

...But although seven West African countries formed a mutual defense pact following a Franco-African summit meeting in Paris in May 1978, French officials now admit that the plan was "premature," because "there is too little coordination now between the West African nations" to create an active military alliance...

...This strategy was first employed following Shaba II, when France withdrew its forces from Zaire and replaced them with 1,500 Moroccan troops and smaller contingents from Senegal, Togo, and the Ivory Coast...

...The various factions of FROLINAT and their former black rivals united, however, to demand the withdrawal of French troops...

...Such countries provide African bases for French troops and from among them Paris can readily assemble what officials privately call "an anagram of armies from moderate states," prepared to move in after an outside group—probably the French Foreign Legion—has stabilized a situation...

...in economic grants and loans to African countries...

...Gendarme of Africa The empire is dead— long live the empire Daniel Volman Once France was the proud con-querer of a vast African colonial empire, stretching from the Mediterranean to the Congo River...

...We don't like to admit it," a French official confessed in 1978, "but for the moment at least we've become NATO's Cubans...

...French air strikes in Mauritania continued until July 1978, when Mauritanian army officers seized power and made peace with the Polisario Front...

...11 In October 1979, France resumed its more familiar role as an independent activist by dispatching 1,000 troops to overthrow the notorious Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Empire, and to install a new government headed by Bokassa's cousin, David Dacko...

...Although the departure of Emperor Bokassa was welcomed in the new Central African Republic, French troops remain in the country to control public opposition to his replacement and to France's role in the change in governments...