hello and welcome to cross talk were all things considered i'm peter all about 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 grab why is the u.s. deploying troops in thirty four african countries and how does the new actor of china add to this mix. to cross the rio neal conan or zation 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 crossed to emanuel to hear the president of the 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 terrorist jihadist islamist groups which basically had serious potential for destabilizing the whole region and of course the state of mali ok michael but 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 mean foreign intervention depending on the scenario at stake i mean in the case of mali at the ninth of january dates national committee had to really give it out and had postponed every action till september two thousand and thirteen but then the jihadist decided to make an incursion and were heading towards but michael 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 violence towards about marco so actually the jihadist. go to bomb 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 it seems that 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 or terrorism go. into a geographic and historic perspective. as we. understand the threat to establishing bases in the whole of the whole region which actually extends from sub-saharan africa although we do somalia every single. it was you had this who actually started the. most of the the challenge the legitimacy of governments. 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. chips in the seats over eight in the am and it was you had this or actually started

playing well the stability in somalia which they did to piracy so what some people would call intervention came as a result of jihadist terrorist attacks not the other way around ok you wouldn't say mali was an example of that though would you. malley was a classic example like afghanistan somalia and yemen where you have if you have a snake problem. spirit and the central government did notice spawns two you have a very large vast space with with sort of weak asunta loss already and then you have a military you've already admitted to me in mali because you know i just it's. exemplar to that coup and that is in. the end so in order to sort of learn from that it's not going to afghanistan and somalia and so on you have to rush to fill that vacuum

up fortunately the only sort of reasonable three in power with democratic accountability that had bases in the region where the french i'm. not i'm not willing to do the french might if they drove 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 all right well that you mentioned france it's going to remain you were in paris ok go ahead many parents 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 judge is the major negative effect affecting the. afghan population let's have in mind that what is going on sale is along jewing instability and the jihadists are there because there is 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 solidarity 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 jerusalem 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's weak festival because it's a former colony of france and you haven't kept iraq together since independence. it's a bit of a pep plexi to you that are these cuts are trying to say that france france is interested in states' legitimation or democracy for that matter if we look across africa apart from uganda which is unlawful and equatorial guinea which is loose a 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. always francophone and we're talking about congo brazzaville come a room booking office so chad. to miss you and to recently gotten to recently in the jail until recently until recently all nine cases are francophone and the reason that happens because all these states have military pacts with france where bar 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 i didn't mean to imply there emmanuel 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 missed. 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 get also is when in djibouti and when each other so that would that has to be taken in consideration one last bit have in mind that a many to many to wait when you took power in one thousand nine hundred one was a 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 adel 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 twenty years ago and 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 with well you know why didn't we intervene so. ok michael i what we're hearing and hearing we're hearing you know this africans can't rule themselves to him sounds like to me go ahead no i'm not i'm not going to i'm asking michael now go here some cause and effect michael it's it's essentially you know. 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

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more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are today. welcome back to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter a little to remind you we're talking about africa and the major powers. ok i'd like to go back to paris manual why does france have to be so involved in africa i thought colonialism was over well well it is absolutely well it

doesn't look that way it doesn't look the way it looks like a new colonial project that i had 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 can say it sounds like 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 and it's basically it's a it's broadly the the answer i would give to you is that we have forces that are predisposed to intervene because we are present throughout. the mission. 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 up is also something we have to take in consideration as a legacy of story which let me just if you. please 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 have 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 lead 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 part of manny but not the french ok adele lot of people would say it's an

asset grab you know africa's the last great place to grab assets go ahead adele. 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 are these columns which show me a spread sheets where for example the cost of french prisons in bases the cost of british intervention in libya and wrongs. how much that cost of the british taxpayer french taxpayer any taxpayer going purred with the money. the sources coming out from this country whether it's mineral knit 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 spreadsheet and show me that french presence or british intervention adele western powers are in actually very. good can you tell then are you convinced by in some other 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 as the words with the turks no off and kept breaking these agreements to the extent that decided that they wanted independence where i was friends in the jail where the president had basically stayed for too long and exceeded their limits where was france and all these other cases it's quite clear that there's a pattern that france is only interested in its interests in the natural resources

and doesn't care too much about good governance and then when it comes to the critical point france into veins to look and appear are safe where the savior but there actually can do the whole process to the. to the situation that brought the trouble. and as i've said i'm not a list that so many cases the us the office of what rojas friends be 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 terrorist operation it is not a stab it is ng 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 talk 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 a saw or western part and of news here and to have in mind that now we are into legend to mitt and legal intervention and this is precisely the fact why

we are calling for a united nation why france is calling for united nations mission observer observer to be mission if france had been 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 such a partnership with francophone countries and with other countries which which we did not have contacts i will take the example of nigeria where we are 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 that in 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 fortunately you have a president well it can only invade so many countries at a time. who is very very good in making speech is the big bow is that when it comes to action at zero. the use of the law of make 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 who was threatening to slaughter people from house to house on 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 be it and 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 long been there and that 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 and 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 of the african union backing from the united mine don't go ahead jump in does advocate need more or less interventions. africa needs. support worthy matus 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 myler 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 actually mitigate the whole civilian problem i mean just before the coup in march two thousand and twelve and with the whole international body has actually met in bamako to put together a package of humanitarian and economic and military package for the whole problem and a quitter 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 either dates national community i'm talking about africa eco wise 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 birkenau for so and i mean i mean. joe i'm going to give you the last word in our program is that good now american drones are going to africa is a good. now we're out of time i tell go ahead and i think drones from from from a tactical point of view sort of better making human errors because. pilots are humans after all it's them i actually drove the road in you were was drawn. 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 enough the destruction of the americans and they have this capability i'll say something that i was as you mention competence a noble was trained by the americans not by the french i have to put that clearly in mind of the spectators is having a dual point of view concerning all right i wish we had it on another half an hour gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks today to my guests in london and in paris and thanks to our viewers for watching us here see you next time and remember talk rules. please.

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