France and Africa have complex ties. A poster of colonial troops.

PARIS - President Nicolas Sarkozy, having suddenly engaged France in shooting wars in Libya and Ivory Coast, seems to be harking back to the old days of French African policy, sometimes known as Francaf rique, when Paris and its army dictated politics in its former colonies and reaped economic rewards.

French troops and helicopters were vital in bringing the drama in Ivory Coast to a close, striking the heavy weapons and presidential palace of the defeated presidential candidate Laurent Gbagbo and making possible his arrest. And France is the country that has pushed hardest for intervention in Libya on behalf of the opposition to Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi.

But Mr. Sarkozy and the Foreign Ministry reject the suggestion of a return to colonial reflexes, emphasizing that in both cases France acted under a mandate from the United Nations Security Council that authorized the use of force to protect civilians. French officials also point out that Libya was an Italian colony ; that French troops did not arrest Mr. Gbagbo; and that Paris was slow to understand the depth of the anger in its former protectorate, Tunisia.

Mr. Sarkozy’s line for Africa is “neither interference nor indifference.”

France’s empire covered much of North and West Africa, from Algeria to Ivory Coast. The colonies were granted independence in the 1960s, but France still has troops based in Africa and close business, political, linguistic and personal ties to its former colonies, which give France more importance in the world.

Accusations persist of France taking sides to make new presidents
or overthrow old ones, of illegal political contributions and payoffs, of parallel but separate policies run by the president and the Foreign Office. The newspapers, for instance, have depicted the friendship of Mr. Sarkozy’s former wife, Cecilia, with the French wife of Gbagbo rival Alassane Ouattara, and Mr. Gbagbo played on anti- French sentiment in his effort to retain power.

The French newspaper Liberation said of Ivory Coast that “even if wrapped in a U.N. resolution and supported by countries in the region, this French mission resembles the interventions of the past and risks being seen as such by young Africans.”

Fifty years after African independence, the paper said, France has “found itself anew on the front line in a continent to which Nicolas Sarkozy promised a ‘renewed’ relationship, the end of old privileges and a military disengagement.”

Achille Mbembe, a Cameroonianborn historian and critic of French involvement in Ivory Coast, said that France continued to support African dictators, mentioning the leaders of Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Chad and Togo. He saw “a continuity in the management of Francafrique - this system of reciprocal corruption, which, since the end of colonial occupation, ties France to its African henchmen.”

Albert Bourgi, a professor of law , wrote in Le Monde that Ivory Coast “reawakens the memory, sometimes damning, of numerous excesses of French African policy .”

But other analysts suggest that Mr. Sarkozy was sincere when he said that his African policy would emphasize partnership and not paternalism, and note that he does not share the same ties to Africa as his predecessors.

“Sarkozy has no nostalgia for the former colonies, and I believe there has not been any real change in his African policy,” said Antoine Glaser, former editor in chief of Lettre du Continent, an African newsletter, and co-author of “Sarko in Africa” and “How France Lost Africa.”

In a way, Mr. Glaser said, Mr. Sarkozy was “trapped” in Ivory Coast, with French troops protecting thousands of French citizens in Abidjan and being asked by the United Nations to end the Gbagbo standoff .

“But with the presence of the French troops, even under a U.N. mandate, there’s always the phantasmagoria of Francafrique, all the colonial past. France has not yet been able to turn the page completely.”

Stephen W. Smith, former Africa editor of Le Monde and co-author with Mr. Glaser , said that France was not returning to the period of Francafrique, which largely ended in the mid-1990s. “Sarkozy is not interested in Africa, but sees it as more of a nuisance than an asset,” Mr. Smith said. Africa is important for energy and France’s self-image, he said, but French presence and influence in its former colonies are much reduced with generational and political change.

Today, France has little corporate involvement in the main economic pillars of Ivory Coast, cocoa, coffee and oil, Mr. Smith said. In the 1980s, there were 50,000 French expatriates in Ivory Coast; now the number is 12,000, of whom at least 7,000 are dual nationals.

France is visible in construction, electricity and telecommunications, but has bigger investments in non-Francophone Africa. Still, French businessmen are investing all over Africa, and many feel a tie to a former empire.

But the special French mix of accusation and guilt over African colonialism is a kind of relic, Mr. Smith said.

“In the period of Francafrique, there were very few dissident voices in France,” he said.

“There is a kind of rediscovery, a soul-searching exercise that is also an exercise in identity. Many French don’t look at Africa as it is, but at themselves, as a mirror effect, mostly as a villain, but sometimes as a help.”

But as Mr. Glaser said, “So long as France has soldiers deployed on African soil, the ambiguity will last.”


STEVEN ERLANGER
ESSAY