a new scramble for africa cloaked under the guise of fighting terrorism and in support of noble western values africa is again in play is this continent at the center of a vast natural resource why is the u.s. deploying troops in thirty four african countries and how does the new add to china add to this mix. to cross the rio neal conan of africa i'm joined by michael mower in london he is an expert on africa at the london school of economics also in london we have adel darwish he is the political editor of the middle east magazine group and in paris we cross to emmanuel to put he hears the president of institute for perspective security studies in europe all right gentlemen cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want michael if i could go to you first i mean if you read western media it's the worst fighting terrorism jihadism in africa is that

the worst problem africa has right now. it's definitely one of the key problems africa is grappling with at the moment particularly to do with. mali and the fact that the whole of north of mali had until recently been occupied by. jihadist islamist groups which basically had serious potential for destabilizing the whole region and of course the state of mali michael what does that justify interventions military interventions you think . it becomes a problem for the international community and our smiley the state of mali is unable to do with it obviously there has to be international support and that can sometimes be foreign intervention depending on the scenario at stake i mean in the case of mali. after the ninth of january the international community

had to really give up and had to postpone every action till september two thousand and thirteen but then the jihadists decided to make an incursion and were heading towards but michel on the ninth of january when france decided that they were going to intervene on the tenth of january to stalk the cation and the advance towards about marcos so actually the jihadists to go to burma a coup is more or less a blessing in disguise because if they hadn't done that the whole war that given up on mali and had left to its fate until september twenty third take a michael i mean so we have to be a blessing and a spark disguised as kind of odd adel where do you come you know this if development issues of terrorism go. into a geographic and historic respect. as we. have just

to establishing bases in the whole of the whole region which actually extends from sub-saharan africa all the way to somalia every single case it was you had this who actually started it was thought that there is most of the challenge the legitimacy of governments that. when the us intervention even if you go back to nine eleven and new york which triggered the afghanistan war it was al qaida that. ships in. in. this were actually started. the stability in somalia which led to piracy so what some people would call intervention as a result of jihadist terrorist act. it's not the other way around ok you wouldn't

say molly was an example of that though would you. well mally value was a classic example like afghanistan somalia yemen where you have if you have a snake problem. spirit and the central government did not respond you have a very large vast space with with sort of weak asunta low sort of here then you have military you've already admitted to me in mali it was you know i just it's. exemplar to cool and that is in. in order to sort of learn from that it's not afghanistan and somalia and so on you have to rush to fill that vacuum up fortunately the only sort of reasonable theory and power with democratic accountability that had bases in the region with the french i'm. not i'm

not into the french neither the eight hundred ma is. perfectly i mean the issue is which is a different issue anyway not to leave them when they're on the whole african sort of community have to alright well that you mentioned france it's going to in many ways when paris ok go ahead paris react to what you just heard well i would like to have come from to compliment to the point of you stating what you mentioned saying that is terrorism is judges the major negative effect affecting the. afghan population let's have in mind that what is going on sale is a long jewing instability and the judges are there because the. in the beginning the weakening of a certain number of states that's the first issue the second issue is saying that africa is nine hundred million inhabitants and that's ahead gaza's only one hundred

fifty billion inhabitants so what is happening now is hell and it's dreadful of course and i'm grateful that france has been capable of intervening is a more wider problem it's a problem of the weakening of the states and the people who are replacing what normally should be the ledger to miti of a state the legitimacy of an army and the legitimate stakeholders for the major issue that is facing africa is weakening of state institution that's one second of all the lack of pan african sort of diety which is also something that must be. put into interests and put in debate concerning the million and the syrian crisis and the third parts more than judaism is to link between jet isn't big criminality and the drug smuggling agenda which is huge in this part of africa but can also be. located in other parts let me let me i don't finish the let me go to

michael i mean why are these countries weak in the first place and you think military interventions are a good idea. well in this country is weak first of all because it's a former colony of france and haven't kept iraq together since independence. it's a bit of a pep plexi to you that you know are these cuts. are trying to say that france france is interested in states' legitimation or democrats for that matter if we look across africa apart from uganda which is under phone and equatorial guinea which is elusive phone if you find any state in africa where the head of state has been there for a very long time and where the maximum limits of the presidency has been exceeded constitutionally you know road always francophone and we're talking about congo brazzaville come

a room booking office so chad. to this year until recently got on to recently jail until recently until recently all nine cases are francophone and the reason that happens because all these states have military pats with france where about france has special forces stationed in the capitals and the areas that if the head of state is in trouble let's see if there's a coup d'etat or france will jump to the aid of the person which actually means that they can rule with impunity they don't care about governance they don't care about they did to me ok ok did you mean by their manual just. go to paris go ahead let's go to paris to jump in on that specific specific point of you saying that france as you know in february two thousand and nine decided to. have a more transparent more. more. to really build to reshape its relation with a certain number of countries where military agreements i have to say that is not

one of the states where for outside the military agreement child was neither one of the states or so we. be very conscious on saying what my colleague has just said that special forces are here to intervene in case of a rebellion in case of domestic internal. misbehavior of militaries or rebels again france in this case in mali is intervening on behalf of a resolution united nations resolution twenty eighty five it is intervening on behalf of a follow up of african led mission i feel now and again it is only doing what others were willing to do but did not have the capability of doing as it was mentioned we do have bases in africa three bases one in when you have also it when in djibouti and when you charge so that that has to be taken in consideration one

last bit have in mind that many too many too late when you took power in one thousand nine hundred one was very democratic and that those other examples were democracy in front of them states is also a reality i would take the example of syria ok del go ahead jump in you want to jump in before go ahead. yes i was just going to say we should not really confuse. the reaction with the action or the cause. of the reaction to the cause so the had actually been a stable democracy there would be a need for the french to intervene if we cast our mind back like twenty years ago or what happened in rwanda. which was actually a mega mega tragedy i mean do we really want to wait. until another tragedy like rwanda actually happened and then we'll see well you know why didn't we intervene so. ok michael i what we're hearing are hearing we're hearing you know this

africans can't rule themselves claim sounds like to me go ahead no i'm not i'm not going to i'm asking michael now here's our cause and effect michael. it's essentially you know he would it would appear that france went in and that's all well and good because of the cover of the u.n. resolution but the underlying current really is that france intervene because of their special interests in mali and of course about the backlash of the growth of terrorism which will in the end i think france if it does not intervene so it's not necessarily i mean the great gentlemen i'm going to jump in here and we have to go to a short break and after that short broke we'll continue our discussion on africa stay with r.t. . this one. isn't .

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a trap with no way out. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. that. far. we've.

told. you know you only see one. is a. welcome back to cross talk for all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about africa and the major powers. ok about to go back to paris manual why does france have to be so involved in africa i thought colonialism was over. well it is actually

a well it doesn't look that way it doesn't look our way it looks like a new colonial project now is that i said is that is that because we intervene when we were asked to do so it was the first time that we were doing that so i think it's a it's a rupture well you know you can say something's moral how it looks like moral hazard to me ok just call the french they'll take care of it well just call the french because we're the only ones who have bases there it's base it's a it's broadly the the answer i would give to you is that we have force that are predisposed to intervene because we are present throughout. mission in those we have. a thousand four hundred soldiers now in charge and we are present in central africa again history is something you have to take into account and we are in a francophone area and most of these countries do have in mind that fifty percent of

the currency of these countries is backed up by the. defense and the process now is also something we have to take in consideration as a legacy of story but let me just if you. please a little please do please do respond to your question what is the interest that france is defending or the under agenda the secret agenda that france me have i would just has in mind that if that is the case then we should have intervened in a jail when there was a rebellion and there was a coup in two thousand and ten because obviously most of the french interest if there is that is to be summarized in the jail in the leads where we have rain your extraction we have very few. mining gold or oil or or gas extraction in the italians do so in the northern

western parts of many but not the french ok adele a lot of people would say it's an asset grab you know africa's the last great place to grab assets go ahead. well how i'm always sort of quiet and used by all these clear. neo colonialism and grabbing africa would be very interesting to see if any of those people who are these columns with which romney is spread sheets where for example the cost of french prisons in bases the cost of british intervention in libya and wrongs. how much that goes to the british taxpayer french taxpayer any taxpayer going purred with the money. the sources coming out from this country whether it's mineral nit exporting it imports taking out of that the local employment

and tax collected by the governments of this country if actually someone comes up with this is a spreadsheet and show me that french presence or british intervention or dell western powers are in. there are those going to tell then are you convinced by also are you countries do things out of interest michael go ahead jump in. well i mean you have to ask yourself where was france post-independence mali where the central government in bamako had several agreements over the decades with the other words with the turks north and kept breaking these agreements to the extent that. they wanted independence when i was friends in the jail where the president had basically stayed for too long and exceeded their limits when i was france and all these other cases it's quite clear that there's a pattern that france is only interested in its interests and the natural resources

and doesn't care too much about good governance and then when it comes to the critical point france into vain is to look and appear are safe where the savior but there actually can do the whole process to the. to the situation that brought trouble. a lot of said i'm not a list that so many cases the us the office of what rojas france been plain implicitly or explicitly see to bring this to us to this point ok menu on paris you want to respond to that. well it's an everlasting debate as a frenchman i'm always obliged to defend the french policy and i would have to take basic facts france has been doing a three week operation a counted operation it is not a stab releasing operation. a few days ago our minister of french ministry of foreign affairs of abuse centers france once the mission is accomplished and there

is a debate of what is the mission are we going to stop where once the major northern cities are liberated as go and to move to have been in the in the past days or are we going to pass. the mission to other actors and this is exactly what we're going to do again. who has in mind the schedule normally the words jew to intervene in next september we were obliged to intervene because no one at the military capability to stop the two thousand. armed jihadist column which was heading from from from the north from the north to march and maybe to bamako or elsewhere book enough or so or western part of news here and do have in mind that now we are into legit to make it legal intervention and this is precisely the fact why

we are calling for a united nation why france is calling for united nations mission observation observer to be mission if france hadn't underneath agenda then we would do like we have done in the recent years and of course as an analyst i have to say that there is a shift in the nature of the. operations we do not have any more defense agreement we have shared strategic partnership with francophone countries and with other countries which which we did not have contacts i will take the example of nigeria where we have training. patrol in order to enhance a more secure area in the gulf of guinea ok well military training doesn't always work out we saw that with mali i tell if i can ask you i mean do you see the militarization of africa i mean the united states the united states is arming and

training a lot of armies on the continent is this worrying well i think the why is that the united states is not taking a leadership an opportunity you have a president well it can only in days so many countries at a time. he's very he's very good in making speech is the big bow is that when it comes to action it's a zero. p.p. people especially on the left the use of the law of nature fun of president bush at least it was decisive. from obama we have not seen the leadership when it actually came to libya and gadhafi and his sons was threatening to slaughter people from house to house and street to swell i mean libya didn't work out too well french still hasn't worked out very well and listen i'm going to french actually action not american action the american skin didn't give logistics and i wish i wish the americans with some kind of leadership because what we will have modern as it is

the french action the french do not have the capability to actually sustain a long campaign in there and it could be counterproductive yes the people of mali out applauding them and so on but the need finance and logistics support we don't want public opinion in france to turn against operation so you need some kind of international force and the only history has proved with american leadership in this kind of intervention it doesn't quite work well therefore why don't we go into the how do you define the mission well how do you define what works well for the african union backing from the united mine don't go ahead jump in does advocate need more or less interventions. africa needs. support where the mattis and i think i have to say that france ought to be congratulated for intervening on the tenth of january but part of it also it's because of the guilty complex on the back of the intervention in libya which

actually caused a spillover of turkey's groups into my later itself. so i think that we need to sort of come to a situation where the union resolutions will be able to co-opt both international international support to to actually mitigate the whole civilian problem i mean just before the coup in march two thousand and twelve and with a whole international body had actually met in bamako to put together a package of humanitarian and economic and military package for the whole problem. up to this i think that it would be a good idea to get back on track on those terms and whilst the un is currently pushing for putting together a resolution to take forward a military operation to secure the territorial integrity of mali i think that of the parties before the coup need to also come together on track to to to put

together the whole package that will solve the problem. across mollies monies neighbors as well. so we'll have to wait and see you know the actual role that dates national community i'm talking about africa equalize the u.n. security council france of course the us i mean we're aware that the u.s. now wants to have a drone base. in we are also aware that there is of those already a drone base in work in africa so i mean i mean. joe i'm going to give you the last word in the program is that good now american drones are going to africa is a good. time adel go i think drone. ns front from from a tactical point of view all sorts of better making human errors because. pilots are humans after all of them actually drove the lord in you were was groans you know you don't have these fears are going to be ok man you well i have you know

what we all have thirty seconds so many well go ahead you want to say something please do. just remind everyone that africa is not the case in africa that the strategy of the americans and they have this capability. as you mentioned. trained by the americans not by the french i have to put that clearly in mind of the spectators. having a. point of view concerning all right as we all know there has been our gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks today to my guests in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on c.n.n. next time and remember.

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