Macron, France and liberté

“Liberty, equality, fraternity” is the French national motto that comes from the historic French Revolution (1799). Sadly, just like these slogans barely hide the 10-year-long, blood-soaked Reign of Terror of the revolution, likewise they fail to warp a pretty face on France’s present imperialistic inclinations, though France does pose to put up a pretty face anyways.

The French character of the colonial-era in Franc-Afrique is not worth forgetting. The massacre of around 1,500,000 Algerians in their War of Independence from France gives a glimpse of how ‘liberty’ was valued in French mentality even after World War II. However, the colonial era ended and states got their freedoms, and ex-colonials became the slogan-bearers of democracy and freedom in the world. In the new world, France became a leading member of UN organisations, with several organisations like the International Federation for Human Rights, the Interpol and Unesco, based in France. The FATF, mandated to combat terrorism financing, is also situated in France.

With all this good work, one might presume that a modern and refined state like France would not be involved in any crime against humanity at the least. But the truth is a bit ugly. It seems that even as most colonies gained their freedoms after WWII, those that were under French rule were not so fortunate. In fact, the bunch of 14 Franc-Afrique states from Mauritania to Niger and down to Gabon, never really got their independence because they practically remained in the CFA-Franc zone that was created in 1945. CFA, short for colonies francaises d’Afrique, is the name of the joint currency that is pegged with the franc and later with the euro, used in all these states. The CFA franc is printed under the supervision of the French National Bank and all these African states are bound to keep 50% of their foreign exchange reserves in French treasury, and 20% more of their foreign exchange is to be paid to France as financial liabilities, because France ‘is taking care of them’. According to Dakar-based economist N Samba Sylla, “the CFA franc is more than a symbol of the monetary system, which is designed to organise African countries in a way that treats the interest of French businesses, French government and more generally European businesses.”

With the CFA, a French ‘financial and economic’ trap, tightly controlled by the French Ministry of Finance and the French treasury, a highly overvalued exchange rate of the CFA franc on the colonies of French multinational companies is retained. These French multinationals have exclusive rights to purchase or reject any natural resources extracted from the soil of former colonies, like crude oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, uranium, etc. French firms such as Avera and Total control these resources and take them at cheap prices, and only with the approval of France can these be sold to someone else. For instance, in Mali, French firm Bouygues controls the construction sector, Bolloré Africa Logistics controls the transportation sector, Orange controls the communication sector, whereas the financial sector is controlled by BNP-Paribas.

France has intervened militarily 40 times in these countries since the 1960s. Moreover, all these states are members of ECOWAS, a political and economic union that was made for “African solutions for African problems” but has practically been dominated by France, who ensures its own economic and strategic interests in the region. Under the cover of providing security and training, France maintains several bases in this region. French militarily interventions in the Central African Republic (2013), in Chad (1986-present), the Ivory Coast (2002-present), in Congo (1999-present) and in Mali from 2013 conducting the ongoing Operation Barkhane, give a clear picture of how France dominates these states.

In fact, when, in February 2011, Libya was toppled by NATO’s Operation Odyssey Dawn — of which France was a major participant — thousands of Tuareg fighters that had previously been part of military squads of Gaddafi’s army, fled back to their homeland in Mali, and started agitating against the government there. At this, French forces, stationed permanently in Chad, launched Operation Serval, wherein 90 missions including 30 airstrikes were conducted only in the first three days, to clear the land of the unworthy Tuareg. Make a guess about the collateral damages — of course Mali is an information-locked country like most of Africa — and the only news agency releasing reports on Mali was the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

With all this hegemonic baggage in place, Macron in a neo-Napoleonic air, seems to be craving for a more global role. First, he steps into the streets of Beirut after the devastating double-explosion, asserting that he would be “the savior of Lebanon” and that “France will never let Lebanon go”, only to remind us that he or France for that matter haven’t been able to overpass the memory of being the occupier of Syria after WWII and thereby carving Lebanon out of it as a separate state. It is also notable that the protesters that rocked Beirut after the explosions literally demanded that Lebanon should go back under the “French mandate” as if they were the true crusaders of Crux Transmarina, greeting their Emperor in Outremer.

And now, Macron has done what it really takes to get the attention of the world — to become the leader of Islamophobia. Islam “is in crisis” and he is going to “liberate” it from foreign influences, he said. He criticised those who seek French citizenship without accepting France’s “right to commit blasphemy” as “Islamist Separatist” and that he “will never accept that violence can be justified”, nor can that France’s “freedom to speak, to write, to think, to draw” be taken away. In essence, what Macron is securing for his people is the right to ‘hate and insult’, things that are dragging France and the West into a lethal ‘Christian Separatism’.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 13^th, 2020.

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