Tuesday 12 April 2011

France: fingers in many African pies

France returned in NATO and wanted to make up leeway?! The Ivory Coast conflict has just resolved with France help:

“Ivory Coast's UN-recognised President, Alassane Ouattara, has urged restraint after the dramatic capture of his rival Laurent Gbagbo”[1].


And exact in this day France's foreign minister made statement where he described dissatisfaction of NATO’s role in Libya:

 “Nato is not doing enough to destroy heavy weaponry used by Muammar Gaddafi's forces in Libya, France's foreign minister has said.
Libyan civilians remain at risk, Alain Juppe said, despite an ongoing bombing campaign now led by Nato.
"Nato must play its role fully. It wanted to take the lead in operations," Mr Juppe said, saying efforts so far were "not enough".[2]

After failure of [3] African Union's proposal this statement of France's foreign minister shows only the one way out: ground operation.

Moreover, the “kavkazcenter.info” wrote interesting notes about French and other countries’ ground forces in Libya:
“"The Algerian newspaper "Al-Khaber" published a report saying that a French commando unit got lost in the desert region of Al-Hamada Al-Hamra in the south-west part of the country. According to the newspaper, they went there to prevent the flow of weapons, mercenaries and terrorists into Libya. For reasons that are unclear, Paris lost contact with the commandos and asked Algeria to provide air-space and two air force bases in order to search for the special forces soldiers," wrote the Italian newspaper.
"The aforementioned French unit is one of the many units sent by the coalition to assist the rebels. British SAS soldiers, CIA agents and, probably, special forces from Arab countries are active in this theater of war."”[4]
LA Times: “Reporting from Washington— CIA officers are on the ground in Libya, coordinating with rebels and sharing intelligence, U.S. officials say, but the Obama administration has not yet decided whether to take the further step of providing weapons to those trying to oust Moammar Kadafi.”[5]
This war became very expensive for Europe, and the stumbling block isn’t money; the main problem is political benefits, which can reach after Libyan struggle.

So, speaking truly, I’m expecting for the ground operation. Why? There are many voice against such intervention, however they doesn’t relief from the situation: conflict has no evolution nor for rebels neither for Gaddafi forces. I think, that inspired by ‘victory’ in Ivory Coast French’s government might consider that it will be other fast ‘victory’ in Libya, and they want to repeat the same scenario that was in Ivory Coast...


[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13044818
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13046127
[3] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/04/201141116356323979.html
[4] http://www.kavkazcenter.com/eng/content/2011/04/08/14055.shtml
[5] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-cia-libya-20110331,0,4277132.story?track=rss

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