Tag Archives: Le Monde

News, Politics, Government

Chad's leader: Troops to leave Mali guerrilla war

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Chad‘s president says his country’s troops are ill-suited to fight armed Islamic extremists in a guerrilla war in Mali and have begun pulling out.

President Idriss Deby said the French-led mission of seizing northern Mali‘s cities from the extremists has been accomplished. After France, Chad‘s 2,000 soldiers were the second-largest of the international force fighting in Mali and are the targets of militant attacks, including a suicide bombing last week that killed three Chadian soldiers.

“Chad‘s army has no ability to face the kind of guerrilla fighting that is emerging in northern Mali. Our soldiers are going to return to Chad. They have accomplished their mission,” he said in a joint interview recorded Saturday with Le Monde newspaper, TV5 Monde and RFI radio. He said one battalion is already leaving.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/XgN303c4p4k/

History

France takes a step back in its history

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By hnn

…And, much as President François Hollande of France denies that his country is still the gendarme of francophone Africa, the columns of French soldiers and planeloads of paratroops embroiled in the newest fighting recall much earlier campaigns.

“There was a time when General Faidherbe pursued armed bands attacking the forts of the Sahel, and even then they professed radical Islam,” Bertrand Badie, a political science scholar in Paris, wrote in Le Monde, referring to Gen. Louis Faidherbe, who played a central role in solidifying French interests in the broad swath of desert known as the Sahel in the 19th century. “What have we done since then?”

Source:
NYT

Source URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/world/europe/12iht-letter12.html

Date:
2-12-13

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at History News Network – George Mason University

News, Politics, Government

French journalist killed in Syria

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French President Francois Hollande offered condolences Friday for a French journalist slain in the Syrian city of Aleppo while reporting on the civil war there.

The journalist, Yves Debay, was covering clashes between rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad when he was shot by a regime sniper on Thursday, according to the Aleppo Media Center, a network of anti-regime activists in the city. It said the sniper was positioned on the roof of the Aleppo central prison near the Museilmeh district.

Syrian rebels reportedly brought him across the border to Turkey, where a Foreign Ministry official said he was pronounced dead on arrival at the state hospital in the border province of Kilis early Friday. He had been shot in the heart, according to an initial autopsy report, the Turkish official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with government rules that bar civil servants from speaking to journalists without prior authorization.

According to the French newspaper Le Monde, Debay was born in what was then the Belgian Congo in 1954. He joined the Belgian army but became bored and joined the white Rhodesian army, which was fighting black Marxist guerrillas.

After his mercenary period, Le Monde said, Debay “satisfied his passion for war” by writing for magazines specializing in military matters, including, finally, a magazine that he founded, called “Assault.”

But the paper called him attentive and kind, and reported that, after 30 years of reporting from around the world, he said he had learned to respect all people, regardless of their origins or ideas.

“France condemns this heinous act and expresses to the family and friends of Yves Debay its condolences, sympathy and solidarity,” Hollande said in a statement. “France pays tribute to Yves Debay and other journalists who, in Syria, pay with their lives for their commitment to freedom of information.”

Twenty-eight journalists were killed in Syria in 2012, prompting the Committee to Protect Journalists to name Syria the most dangerous country in the world to work in last year.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

French president bares tough side in Africa fights

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Bombing militants in Mali may be the most popular thing Francois Hollande has done as France‘s president.

The bespectacled and self-described “normal” man who was once lampooned as resembling flimsy yellow custard, is now flexing France‘s military muscle against al-Qaida-linked Islamist extremists who he believes pose a threat to northwest Africa, France and Europe. And in doing so, he has nearly united the French political class.

“His hand didn’t tremble,” Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said of Hollande’s order Friday for French troops to fight the insurgents blamed for kidnapping, drug-running and forcing oppressive rules on the people of Mali, a former French colony. “The president made his decision knowing the risks it implies.”

Nearly simultaneously, across Africa‘s midsection, French commandos led a raid in Somalia in a failed effort to free a comrade held hostage there for 3-1/2 years. Officials said 17 Islamists and two commandos died and that they believe the hostage was killed. Hollande is said to have given the green light for that high-risk mission last month.

Both the Mali mission, which entered a fourth day Monday with continued French air strikes, and the Somalia raid bared an unfamiliar side of the French leader, who took power eight months ago and had seen his popularity slide.

For all his qualities, few French fancy Hollande as a warmonger. As Interior Minister Manuel Valls, quoted in Le Monde newspaper, said of his boss: “It’s in exceptional and difficult times that a statesman emerges.”

The French appear to welcome this new, hard Hollande in the guise of terrorism-fighter-in-chief. But it’s not clear whether he can revive his own popularity in the long-term.

“It’s too early to draw conclusions about the benefits for Francois Hollande‘s image. We need to wait and see how the situation in Mali evolves,” said Ifop agency pollster Frederic Daby. “But what we know is that Francois Hollande is benefiting from a movement of national unity — a sacred union because French interests are at stake.”

An Ifop poll released Monday found that 63 percent of respondents in France supported the intervention in Mali. The poll of 1,021 adults was taken this weekend; the margin of error was about 3 percentage points.

The head of the conservative opposition, Jean-Francois Cope, said France‘s air strikes in Mali had “complete international legitimacy,” and even far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the intervention “legitimate.”

Hollande’s order for the Mali operation is particularly perilous because seven French hostages are in the hands of the same al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups that France‘s troops are fighting in vast northern Mali.

Hollande’s poll numbers have been on a steady slide ever since he handily beat conservative incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May’s presidential election, becoming only the second Socialist head of state in France in more than 50 years.

He has been assailed for inconsistent handling of the economy. His backpedaling on campaign promises — like one to freeze fuel prices — or watering down others has frustrated many voters. And his romantic partner Valerie Trierweiler caused him no small embarrassment in June by tweeting a comment that was widely read as a nasty swipe against his ex-partner.

Hollande’s headaches as president have mainly been domestic, including a jobless rate around 10 percent, few signs of economic rebound and a full-bodied debate on his plan to legalize gay marriage and thus allow same-sex couples to adopt and conceive children. On Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people marched in protest against that idea.

Critics say Hollande cherry-picked the easiest and most politically palatable reforms proposed in a November report that he commissioned on ways to rejuvenate competitiveness in France‘s moribund economy — backing down from other ideas amid howls from labor groups that are a pillar of his leftist coalition.

Magazine covers have recently portrayed him under headlines such as “Hollande: The Surrender” and “The Rejection.”

Hollande also took office vowing to end a policy of “Francafrique,” a paternalistic French buzzword for a cushy and corrupt relationship between political and economic elites in France and its former African colonies

Those hopes all but vanished on Friday — even if Hollande insists he still wants Mali and its African neighbors to take command of counterterrorism efforts in the region in the future.

Internationally, until now, Hollande’s most significant decision was pulling French combat troops out of Afghanistan last month — far ahead of the 2014 timetable of the United States and France‘s other NATO allies.

Until last week, Hollande had been talking tough both about the terror threat in Mali and against President Bashar Assad‘s repression in Syria‘s civil war, but hadn’t taken any major concrete action. He’d repeatedly said that France would back up African troops in Mali, but not send troops to fight.

As with some other countries, international issues tend to have less impact on the French president’s image than do pocketbook concerns such as jobs.

Sarkozy, a brash, hard-nosed former interior minister, put France in a leading role along with Britain and the United States in NATO‘s air campaign in Libya that helped topple dictator Moammar Gadhafi last year. But he got little lift in the polls and lost the presidency to Hollande.

Still, Hollande could benefit from countering public expectations about him. Unlike tough-guy Sarkozy, he’s better-known for glad-handing crowds than — as he did this weekend — looking sternly into TV cameras to defend risky military action and saying France won’t give in to terrorists’ “blackmail”.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

African troops head to Mali as French battle against Islamist militants rages

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Troops from Mali‘s neighbors are expected to join hundreds of French soldiers in the battle to push back Islamic extremists holding Mali‘s north, a fight that in its first two days has left at least 11 civilians dead, including three children who threw themselves into a river and drowned trying to avoid falling bombs.

Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Nigeria agreed on Saturday to send soldiers, a day after France authorized airstrikes, dispatching fighter jets from neighboring Chad and bombing rebel positions north of Mopti, the last Malian-controlled town.

State television announced that the African troops, including as many as 500 each from Burkina Faso and Niger, are expected to begin arriving on Sunday. Britain has offered the use of its transport planes in order to help bring in the soldiers, according to a statement released by Prime Minister David Cameron‘s office in London.

The African soldiers will work alongside French special forces, including a contingent that arrived Saturday in Bamako in order to secure the capital against retaliatory attacks by the al-Qaida-linked rebel groups occupying Mali‘s northern half. National television broadcast footage of the French troops walking single-file out of the Bamako airport on Saturday, weapons strapped to their bodies. Some carried them like skis, against their shoulder.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Sunday that France now has more than 400 troops in Bamako, mainly to ensure the safety of French citizens and also to send a signal to the extremists.

“We will strengthen our operation depending on the situation,” he said on a political talk show with itele and Europe 1 radio. Le Drian said that Rafale fighter jets will be part of the operation and that technical support will be arriving in the hours ahead.

He said that France has international support and “the Americans seconded us” with intelligence and logistical support, though he did not elaborate.

Storage hangars and “sensitive sites” were among targets destroyed so far and the Islamists lost a “significant number” in the fighting, Le Drian said. “The intervention is still in progress and we will continue” as long as needed.

The military operation began Friday, after the fall of the town of Konna on Thursday to the al-Qaida-linked groups. Konna is only 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of the government‘s line of control, which begins at the town of Mopti, home to the largest concentration of Malian troops in the country.

The United Nations had cautioned that a military intervention needed to be properly planned, and outlined a step-by-step process that diplomats said would delay the operation until at least September of this year.

The rebels’ decision to push south, and the swift fall of Konna, changed everything. After an appeal for help from Mali‘s president, French President Francois Hollande sent in the Mirage jets and combat helicopters, pounding rebel convoys and destroying a militant base. Footage of the jets provided to French television stations showed the triangle-shaped aircrafts screaming across the sky over northern Mali. French newspaper Le Monde reported that the jets dropped at least two, 250-kilogram (550-pound) bombs over militant targets.

The human toll has not yet been calculated, but a communique read on state television late Saturday said that at least 11 Malians were killed in Konna.

Sory Diakite, the mayor of Konna, says the dead included children who drowned after they threw themselves into a river in an effort to escape the bombardments.

“Others were killed inside their courtyards, or outside their homes. People were trying to flee to find refuge. Some drowned in the river. At least three children threw themselves in the river. They were trying to swim to the other side. And there has been significant infrastructure damage,” said the mayor, who fled the town with his family and is now in Bamako.

Human rights groups have warned that any military intervention will exact a humanitarian price. The nation of Mali, and the international community, found itself in a Catch-22 because every passing week that the intervention was delayed has allowed the rebels affiliated with al-Qaida to dig into the terrain, and prepare for war. The rebels occupied Mali‘s northern half, an area larger than Afghanistan, in the chaos following a coup in Mali‘s capital last March.

With no clear leader at the head of the country, Mali‘s military simply gave up when the rebels arrived, retreating hundreds of miles to the south without a fight. In the nine months since then, the extremists have imposed their austere and severe form Islam, and those who disobey their rules are beaten with whips and camel switches. Public amputations of the hands of thieves have become a regular spectacle.

They have also used their nine-month siege of the north to dig into the landscape, creating elaborate defenses, including tunnels and ramparts using the construction equipment abandoned by fleeing construction crews.

In addition to the civilians, a French pilot was killed after the Islamists downed his combat helicopter, in a sign of how dangerous the terrain has become even for trained, special forces.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News