By Ralph Peters
New York Post
June 19, 2006
THIS spring, I visited French-speaking West Africa. Wherever I went,
two things remained consistent: The French government was hated, and
Africans looked to Washington for a square deal.
President Jacques Chirac and his racist minions know it, and they
don't like it, and they're trying to do something about it: Sucker
America into showing "solidarity with an ally in the War on Terror."
The French want our military and diplomatic cooperation - but not our
economic presence, of course. Let me translate what the parasites of
Paris really mean: "Support our brutality and exploitation of West
Africa, stiff-arm tens of millions of Africans yearning to be free of
French neo-imperialism - and just maybe we clever Frenchmen will toss
you stupid Americans a little bone now and then."
And we're in danger of falling for it.
In the half-century since France thrust a phony independence on
colonies such as Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali, the French government
and French business interests have looted everything they possibly
could. To Paris, African "independence" meant business as usual, except
that Paris would no longer accept any responsibility for the welfare of
the local populations.
It was a free ride for the Frogs, guaranteed by a French military
that had failed everywhere else, but remained sufficiently competent to
bully unarmed Africans. One French government after another supported
pro-Paris strongmen, from the relatively benign Houphouet-Boigny of
Ivory Coast, who merely bankrupted his country with nutty construction
projects, to Jean Bedell-Bokassa, a literal cannibal who frequently
played host to then-President Valery Giscard-D'Estaing.
But the winds of freedom have been blowing, often in unexpected
places. The era of African "Big Men" is over, even if a few linger on.
And Africans want real freedom this time, not French colonization in
disguise.
In Ivory Coast, the French utterly mismanaged a 2002 rebellion they
thought they could manipulate. Their efforts at playing the factions
off against each other exploded, shattering a country that had been a
source of pride and great profit to Paris. Muslim or Christian,
northerner or southerner, the one commonality I found among the people
of Ivory Coast was that they all now hate the French.
Even in Senegal, the country that has had the most benign
relationship with France, the people are tired of French bullying and
condescension. Throughout the region, animosity toward Paris -
especially the ham-handed government of Jacques Chirac - has reached a
tipping point past which legitimate anger threatens to turn into
irrational fury.
Early in October 1960, Dr. Félix-Roland Moumié, the exiled leader of the Camerounian nationalist movement, the Union des Populations du Cameroon (UPC), traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, on a mission. On the eve of his return to Conakry (Guinea) where the UPC had set up its headquarters in exile, he was invited to dinner by an individual whom he had met earlier in July in Accra, Ghana. The individual, 66-year old William Bechtel, claimed to be a journalist interested in the UPC’s armed struggle against the French-backed regime of Ahmadou Ahidjo.
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