France profonde

Summits of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie should be celebrations of French values. But African squabbles spoiled this year's event
January 16, 2005

The tenth summit of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie has just been held in Burkina Faso—perhaps not a world-changing event, but if French values have global weight it is in part due to this 53-nation club.?

La Francophonie had its first biennial summit nearly 20 years ago, although the idea was mooted 20 years before that by four presidents of newly independent French colonies. Unlike the (ex-British) Commonwealth, membership is not restricted to "those having a constitutional link past or present" with any other member, and none of the ten observer nations—including Austria, Poland and Slovakia—has linguistic links either. Bizarrely, Canada counts as three separate members (Canada, Canada-New Brunswick and Canada-Quebec), Belgium as two (Belgium and the French Community of Belgium), while France's largest ex-colony, Algeria, is not a member at all. But although the rules of admission may seem muddled, the aims of la Francophonie are not, for it has become overtly political: "We want to find a way of expressing politically a different vision of the world," the host of this year's summit, President Compaoré, said on French radio. "A socially aware globalisation, incompatible with the Anglo-Saxon version, which puts the market before everything." Confront, in other words, Bush's Manichean vision with diversity and multipolarity, since, after all, the president continued, "La Francophonie model is superior to the Anglophone model."?

Thus more than mere language, la Francophonie neatly encapsulates everything my neighbours see as quintessential Frenchness, from the work of José Bové, who continues tearing up genetically modified crops and other examples of American agriculture in front of the world's lenses, to President Chirac's more sophisticated methods: his remarks during a recent state visit to Britain, for example, played very well down here. A French president is never so popular at home as when he stands defiant on the world stage, particularly at the head of a group of non-aligned countries. But of course it goes deeper than that: my neighbours not only agree with President Compaoré that a world based on the French model would be best, they are also convinced that most of the world thinks the same, and cite the ever-growing Francophonie as proof of la France universelle. Chirac chose the summit to promote microfinance, his pet form of diversity. Seen as an alternative to the World Bank, microfinance can be an effective way of helping people with nothing to start a business, with a loan of as little as £5. But helping the poor was not the main concern of this summit.?

The timing and venue of the previous summit had been ideal for non-alignment principles. Beirut in October 2002 became the perfect platform from which to denounce the forces gathering against Saddam and for Chirac to mobilise votes against the expected second UN security council resolution, authorising war against Iraq. But even as la Francophonie experienced its finest hour, things began to unravel. By unhappy coincidence, just at the same time, France was sending her troops to protect French citizens in an incipient civil war in Ivory Coast, a Francophonie member. Two years on, this involvement has degenerated into a chaos of mutual recriminations and killings, casting a shadow over the summit in Burkina Faso. With the alleged support of Burkina's president, the Ivorian rebels are using his country as a base, so Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo boycotted the proceedings. To add insult, the minister he sent in his place was stopped at the airport, accused of bringing with him anti-French leaflets and gruesome photographs of civilian corpses allegedly killed by French soldiers. He returned (or was returned?) home. But what are French troops doing in Africa? asked Colonel Gaddafi of Libya (not a member) mischievously of the French press. An irritated Chirac tried to minimise this family dispute, instead raising his glass to "Butcher" Bashir, Sudan's president and instigator of the genocide in Darfur, Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda. Kagame apparently now finds it expedient to overlook French military involvement in the run-up to the 1994 genocide of his people—while sending his own troops into… the Democratic Republic of Congo.?

The reason France tolerates this motley crew is simple: oil. While oil was plentiful and cheap, no one else bothered with west Africa—and the then nationalised French oil company Elf could dominate the region. Now with instability in the middle east and greater demand for oil, previously uninteresting corners of the globe have taken on a new lustre. The reviled Americans are prospecting, offering the sort of money which can transform muttering minorities into fully armed rebel armies, thus opening the door to instability. Now fear has replaced friendship in la Francophonie, as each dictator looks to Switzerland (whew! a member) as a haven for early retirement, and Chirac looks tired and irritable as his ideas and French influence wane.