Africa: US, In; China, In; France, Out.

No continent suffers violence today on the level of Africa. Nor is there a land so massive and so poor. In the past few years, superpowers have ramped up strategies to exploit the land's resources and angle for military superiority. China has been building infrastructure in the south, to be paid in future oil deliveries. At the same time, the US has launched AFRICOM, a centralized military command.

One would think that the European Union would follow suit. Lest we forget that the most powerful nations in Europe a hundred years ago colonized all of Africa, divided the spoils, and left it in tatters after World War II. However, the EU seems to be turning the other way.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy, midway through a trip through the continent has announced sweeping changes in his country's military power in Africa. Lately he's come under fire for France's recent involvement in the Chadian crisis. (Chad is a former French colony.) He said, "Defense agreements must reflect the Africa of today and not yesterday."

France has four bases throughout Africa, some of which are now rumored to be shut down. "It is unthinkable that the French Army should be drawn into domestic conflicts," Sarkozy said.

Western involvement on the continent, even when done with the best intentions, so often seems to be a refashioned colonialism, minus the guns, plus the paternalism. Only, France's move presents the quandary: naming quickly five massive conflicts -- Darfur, Southern Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, and Kenya -- would the continent fare better left to its own devices?

 

The thought exercise may be a worthy one as France retreats, but neither China, nor the US, are going anywhere anytime soon.

[Image: movie poster for L'Afrance, 2001.]

Rub Yourself the Right Way (c/o Nicholas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni, Clinton, Obama, et al.)

Cada uno juzga por su propia condición . . .

What if we set aside for a moment the disillusioned thought that any man or woman campaigning for political office does so with the sole motivation to better the world, and maybe consider, for the same moment, that individuals who endure the grueling and near-lethal process of running for national office commence such farcical journeys for reasons having to do more with themselves than anything else?

And here we have new French president Nicholas Sarkozy.

Nary a year in office, the high-coiffed premier has divorced his second wife, a model and public relations executive, and less than four months later married Carla Bruni, the ravishing pop singer (and former model, what an infatuation!).  In Hollywood, the immense amounts of publicity surrounding such an affair would fly as an obvious stunt to hype an upcoming movie. Surely, in France, this is all about love, even despite the fact that Bruni has a new album due out this fall.

The French are unamused. When Sarkozy joked to a crowd of steel workers in Gandrange about not taking a honeymoon, they booed him. The BBC reports that his popular support is plummeting.

The seemingly selfless candidates running for the presidency of the US also create, among other things, a spectacle. When they cough too much, it makes news. When they look tired, it makes news, in Australia, no less! When they lose control of the tone of their voice, it makes news. When they ... do anything, it makes, well, you get the point.

All for the good of the people? Oops. All for the good of the people.

Speaking of it's all about me, Angelina Jolie was visited Baghdad today, on a mission to draw attention to the Iraqi refugee problem, which the Inquirer reported on yesterday. Should the Inquirer be on the six o'clock news? Well, of course. Barring that chance reality, let it be said that her beautiful, double-baby-bearing belly fixing the war is any day than the celebrities the country spends so much time killing.

Do Sarkozy, H.Rodham, B.Hussein and Angelina all tie up in a single, shiny, bow-ribboned package? In a way, they do. Each is self-indulged beyond comparison. They could talk about themselves over and over and over until you are blue in the face, and then they will go on to the next crowd. What, even so salient being is capable?

The elite goes down better than an elixir, one that few ever have the chance to taste. After all, one cannot practice before an audience of tens, of hundreds, of thousands, of millions, even if you had the audacity to ask. Sarkozy may have stock his big posts with the descendants of 1968 Paris radicals (more power to him), but the reason that the steelworkers booed him is because, and this is not an issue of propriety, responsibility rightfully runs roughshod over leaders. Should self-love trump deep-gut obligation, you'll be made a fool.

(Atop, Bruni.)

The French in Chad as Rebels Overrun Ndjamena

Sunday nights at the United Nations Security Council aren't known for four-hour blowout negotiating sessions. Violence in central Africa, however, summoned the fair arbiters of 21st century international peace and security to the horseshoed table yesterday. The region faces nightmarish mahem.

France conquered Chad in 1920, relinquished control in 1960, and yesterday French military swept in to evacuate Westerners as rebels overran the capital city of Ndjamena. Reports now are unclear; it seems as if Chadian president Idriss Déby has fought them off, though, according to the Associated Press, in the city "casualties were believed to be high." After taking fire, the US embassy now stands evacuated and abandoned.

Bloodshed in Ndjamena threatens to bring a bloody cauldron of fighting and murder to a boil. Three different Chadian rebel groups have banded together. As recently as 2006, rebels attempted to topple Déby's government in Ndjamena; since, Deby has gone against the country's constitution and taken a third term as president. Now, the banded rebels, which swear allegiances to distinct clans, charge Deby with corruption and stacking his parliament with his own Zagawa clan. (Zagawas make up less than three percent of Chad's population.)
 
Eastern Chad today houses hundreds of thousands of displaced Darfuris on its border, a remote region that has for years been home to varying forms of unrest. A force of more than 20,000 UN peacekeepers had been scheduled to land in Darfur by the end of 2007, but that didn't happen. Officials have since said that deploying a force by the end of 2008 would be a goal, and more importantly, any effort to calm the situation in Chad first depends on the pacification of Darfur. On Friday Reuters reported that Chad wrote to the Council, "Faced with the aggression orchestrated and strongly supported by Sudan, the Chadian government intends to use its legitimate right of defense by all means at its disposal, including pursing the aggressors into Sudanese territory."

In effect, the border between the two countries is entirely imagined. Roads are dirt, crossings are controlled by rebel groups, not state-paid customs and border control officials. That said, the more this border widens, the more a severe conflict could not only spread but also challenge the sovereignty of Ndjamena and Khartoum, and as it all goes down, put into question the postcolonial borders of both nations.

The wildcard is France. In the past, Paris has come to Chad's rescue, in the strange custom of a former kidnapper protecting out of obligation. Nicolas Sarkozy, the newly-married French president, this time instead offered President Déby a ride out of town. The Chadian president refused. French officials have said that Sudan is backing the Chadian rebels.

The Council released a statement this morning support the government in Ndjamena. Interpretations were being made as to what kind of support the statement authorizes, but French military support could soon be on the table.

UPDATE: France appears to have stepped on on Déby's behalf, and violence in the capital has quieted.

Nicolas Sarkozy, What a Guy, Well, Wait, What Kind of Guy?

The French are aflutter with their newly-elected leader, Nicolas Sarkozy. A prominent writer has penned a "lucid, maternal . . . caustic, and at times, cruel . . . and always savory," biography of the man who has already decided to vacation in New Hampshire and has now called for the US withdrawal from Iraq. The French are reading the book, and at the same time, the usual French-correspondent suspects are writing up what they expect in the coming months and years. What follows is a roundup of reports from major publications on the coming age of Sarkozy.

(And for what it's worth, it's pronounced: zar-ko-ZEE.)

Roger Cohen, International Herald Tribune: Cohen reports that Sarkozy has been compared to Napoleon and, disdaining the regal nature of the French presidency, "once compared his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, to an out-of-touch French monarch on the Revolution's eve." Cohen argues that ruptures in the "trans-Atlantic bond" render the world less stable, and with the noxious Bush-Chirac mix now halfway remedied, and a neophyte French president, "more at ease in the world, attuned to globalization," brighter days could lie ahead. That is, unless the US heeds the pattern of its short-lived dynastic legacy, "as if all we had were Tudors and Stuarts."

Elaine Sciolino, New York Times: Sciolino wrote of Sarkozy's fondness for the US, "He is unabashedly pro-American, a man who openly proclaims his love of Ernest Hemingway, Steve McQueen and Sylvester Stallone and his admiration for America's strong work ethic and its belief in upward mobility." A few weeks later she compared the Sakozy family, in the paper's style pages, to the Kennedys. "Gone are the much older and more formal Chiracs, with their discretion, impeccable manners, old-fashioned style and easy slow motion." Reportedly, Sarkozy will make activism the "leitmotif of his presidency," and with colleagues and journalists (ahem!) opts for the more colloquial second-person tu instead of the more formal vous.

George F. Will, Washington Post: Will gets a quote calling Sarkozy a, "Keynesian who doesn't know who Keynes was," but then points out, "Sarkozy does know of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek," and calls him, "A fountain of suspiciously opaque formulations (he advocates 'regulated liberalism' and 'humane globalization'), he is pleased that the word 'protection' is no longer taboo." Will rails against France's leftism as "perfectly reactionary," and concludes, "American conservatives should seek happy harbingers elsewhere."

Adam Gopnik, New Yorker: Gopnik recalls the simply astonishing story of Sarkozy, then mayor of Neuilly, talking a psychotic suicide bomber out of a nursery school (the piece is entitled, "The Human Bomb"). His heroism, it took place in 1993, was how the country came to learn about the man who, "likes risks, enjoys risks, revels in risks." Gopnik sizes him up: Sarkozy's mother is a family of Greek Jews and his father were Hungarian. Lastly, he gets at economic policy, "Some suspect that Sarkozy's secret strength in resolving the French economic 'crisis' may be that there is no crisis."