Taking Responsibility: France Seeks Help for Africa Intervention

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/france-seeks-financial-help-from-europe-for-africa-mission-a-939759.html



Despite its financial troubles, France remains committed to an expensive military intervention in the Central African Republic. Now the country is looking to its European partners, chiefly Germany, to support the operation.

Taking Responsibility: France Seeks Help for Africa Intervention
December 19, 2013 – 01:03 PM

Bernard Kouchner can't get the images of massacred women and children out of his mind. The co-founder of the organization Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, was in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, when some 800,000 people were killed in less than 100 days.

Later, as the French foreign minister in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, Kouchner fought for what he calls the "right to humanitarian intervention." In Rwanda the international community stood idly by while the slaughter continued. But France has learned from its mistakes, and Kouchner now says that he is filled with "pride" that 1,600 French soldiers marched into the Central African Republic last week. "The population wants us to help them," he argues. In the capital of Bangui alone, up to 500 civilians were killed within just a few days. "We cannot allow that," Kouchner says.

At stake here are "human rights, human lives," he says, along with security -- "for all of us." He contends that France has a "responsibility there," and is living up to this, "in contrast to the Germans."

Paris and Berlin are at opposite poles on foreign and security policy. Their positions resemble the economic situation, only in reverse. Germany is the economic giant, but when it comes to military operations, it runs for cover and allows France, and occasionally the United Kingdom, to risk an intervention -- and, above all, to cover the costs.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Last week he says?

In Rwanda the international community stood idly by while the slaughter continued. But France has learned from its mistakes, and Kouchner now says that he is filled with "pride" that 1,600 French soldiers marched into the Central African Republic last week. "The population wants us to help them," he argues. In the capital of Bangui alone, up to 500 civilians were killed within just a few days. "We cannot allow that," Kouchner says.

This is from a few years ago - but it truly has been a 'secret war' France has engaged in . . .

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/inside-frances-secret-war-396062.html

October 5, 2007

He is a thin-faced 45-year-old farmer, and explains, in a low, slow voice, how his home town came to this. "I woke up for morning prayers on 4 March and there was gunfire everywhere. We were very frightened so we stayed in the house and hoped it would stop. But then in the early afternoon my brother's children came running to our house, screaming and crying. They told us the Forcés Armées Centrafricanes [Faca – the army trained and equipped by the French, on behalf of their friendly neighbourhood strongman, President François Bozize] had gone into their house. They wouldn't calm down and explain. So I ran there, and I saw my brother on the floor outside, dead. His wife explained they had forced their way in and rounded him up, along with three men who lived nearby. They took them out on to the street and shot them one by one in the head."

Mahmoud's friend, Idris, lived nearby, and feared he, too, would be shot. He says now: "We could see the villages burning and the children were screaming and really scared, so we ran two kilometres out into the jungle. From there we could see our whole city on fire. We fled along the river and stayed out there. We ate fish, but there weren't many. Some days we couldn't catch anything and we starved. The children were so terrified. Still, when they hear a loud noise, they think there are guns coming and they start shaking." Idris looks off into the distance and continues: "On the fourth day, we saw the French planes come. They each had six rockets that they fired. The explosions were loud. We don't know what they were targeting, or why. Then the French soldiers arrived." A military truck filled with French soldiers rumbles by not long after, its tanned troops wearing designer sunglasses and a "why am I here?" anxiety.

I love France. Love visiting there. Love Chirac calling out Bush's dumb ass on Iraq. But their hands are not clean. Neither are their faces. This 'we are the savior' stuff is just plain nonsense and I can't believe they are getting away with being the savior for what they have created . . . going back to the late 1960's.