Let us have a Chirac to lead France again

People gather at Place de la Republique (Republic Square) in Paris on Sunday to pay tribute to the victims of the November 13 terror attacks. A coordinated wave of attacks on Parisian nightspots claimed by ISIS jihadists killed 130 people. (Photo: AFP)

In response to the carnage in Paris, France has gone into attack, striking Raqqa deep inside Syria in ISIS territory and combing the Molenbeek area in Brussels where the terrorists are said to have come from.

President Francoise Hollande has declared war — cette fois, c’est la guerre. It is ironic that he has had to do this, since as recently as in 2003 when Jacques Chirac was the President, France was the Middle East’s closest ally, like no other country in Europe. President Chirac had good reasons to nurture the relationship.

He had noted that around 10 per cent of France’s 60 odd million residents were Muslim and that by 2030, around 20-25 per cent of the France would be Muslim. The second reason was France’s historical legacy with the Middle East and North Africa. Colonial memories of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, and Lebanon were ingrained in the French psyche.

Indeed, more than a million Frenchmen had taken up permanent residence in Algeria before its independence. Many had intermarried with the local Muslim population. The third reason was that closeness to the Middle East helped France get better access to oil.

Many had termed France’s policy as pro-Arab. Indeed the French had helped the Arabs often in defiance of major powers like the US.

It had provided safe-haven to Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini who had carried on his anti-Shah campaign from French soil. It had supported the Arabs against the Israelis. To give an example, in 2004 out of 18 UN resolutions condemning Israel which were all vetoed by the US, France had voted 13 times in favour of the resolution and abstained on the other 5 occasions.

In the eyes of the Middle East, President Chirac was then the only Western leader who appreciated their point of view and who could counter the unconditional support of the US to Israel. A number of Palestinian families had named their sons “Chirac.”

Merchants in Cairo had named the best quality dates — the traditional food used to break the Ramadan fast — “Chiracs” in his honour. Beirut named a street after him in its financial district.

His personal relations with Saddam Hussein went back to 1975. Lebanon’s Rafiq al Hariri was his close friend; so were Syria’s Hafez al Assad and Palestine’s Yasir Arafat.

These relations ensured growth of France’s economic interests in the region and the French were held in high esteem. The relationship endured when George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Mr Chirac together with Vladimir Putin, Hu Jintao, and Gerhard Schröder spoke out against the invasion. Despite intense US pressure, Mr Chirac threatened to veto a resolution in the Security Council seeking authorisation to use military force for the removal of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

France went further and stated categorically that Iraq did does not represent an immediate threat that justified an immediate war, a statement that made Mr Chirac the target of Mr Bush and Mr Blair. The US accused France of betrayal and renamed French Fries and French Toasts in the US Congress cafeterias as “Freedom Fries” and “Freedom Toasts”.

However as the truth began to emerge one US restaurant renamed the “Freedom Fries” to “Impeach George W. Bush Fries”. In a poll conducted in 2010 Mr Chirac was chosen as the most admired political figure in recent times in France.

People felt that their President was his own man and that he, based on sound reasons and statesmanship, had brought the Middle East and the French closer to each other to the benefit of both.

It is true that the Middle East situation today is vastly different. Earlier there was no ISIS. Nevertheless Mr Chirac’s successors Presidents Sarkozy and Mr Hollande seem to have been largely oblivious of France’s limitations and unconcerned while dealing with the Arab world and the Muslim issue.

France had adopted an unnecessarily aggressive stance in September 2014 when it became the first European state to join US airstrikes against ISIS targets in Iraq; a year later it extended its air strikes to Syria. In a somewhat similar way in February 2011, President Sarkozy had been the first to push the EU for sanctions against Gaddafi‘s Libya and the first to say Gaddafi must go. Thereafter France had flown the highest percentage of Nato’s strikes against Libya. Like in the Middle East, France is involved in Africa in numerous interventions. Its troops are stationed in its former colonies in West and Central Africa including Mali, Chad, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire. They are reportedly fighting Islamic insurgents in these Muslim majority countries and providing intelligence and other inputs.

To many observers French interventions in general appear to be bolder than those of the US and of many other countries like Great Britain. Some of these interventions have also caused major controversies such as alleged child sex abuse by French troops in Burkina Faso.

In general France seems unconcerned about the sensitivities of the vast number of Muslims within its own borders.

Muslim youth in France have few skills, fewer jobs and very little hope. By not discouraging Charlie Hebdo from publishing satirical cartoons involving Islam, France seemed to have learned no lessons from Denmark which was involved in the “Muhammad cartoons crisis” in 2005.

Perhaps a time has come for France to remember that however big a super power it may be, it is certainly not in the same league as the US; that geographically France is close to the Middle East making it vulnerable; that even President Obama with his country’s unparalleled reach and firepower, has cautiously rectified his predecessor’s misadventures, mended fences and has refused to be provoked.

Indeed there can be no going back right now but the French leadership needs to recognize fairly soon that guns are not the only answer in such matters and that French glory will be best served by statesmanship and moderation in thought, words and actions.

The writer has been an adviser to the UN and the World Bank in Africa and the Middle East