In fact, at one point the situation appeared so out of control that it not only motivated President Macron to hastily leave the ongoing European Council on his way to Paris, as well as prompted even the UN to intervene by urging the French government to “address the deep-seated problems of racism and racial discrimination among the forces of law and order.” a rather interesting intervention, the latter, given that -I think it is worth keeping in mind- never before has the UN seemed to be more than anything else the fig leaf of the U.S. establishment, which for the past few years would seem to be quite interested in an exit from the scene of the unwieldy Macron.
Further complicating matters, but perhaps for that very purpose, at one point also came the very untimely demand, made by some politicians and representatives of the rather short-sighted (or consciously opportunistic?) of the French right, for the declaration of the Etat d’Urgence, the exceptional and controversial regime which, under a law passed in 1955 following the Algerian War, must be established by decree by the Council of Ministers and on the basis of which the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the prefects could have banned demonstrations, rallies and public meetings, called for the closure of public places and established curfews: a request that government sources were quick to tell FranceInfo was not, at the moment, among the options being considered because the establishment of the State of Emergency would have been even more reminiscent of the 2005 uprisings albeit the conditions of today and then are certainly different: a statement, the latter, that has become almost ritual, but concretely never became the starting point for a deeper analysis of today’s events-and not only these.
With too much superficiality many observers have so far insisted on linking the most recent events and the Gilets Jaunes uprising (November 2018- ), to the uprisings of 2005 and 2015 -and this is not a little surprising when the UN seems to have been involved, as seen, in furthering the misunderstanding.
As is well known, the violent protests of 2005 were the result of all the French policies conducted since the 1980s and the marginalized conditions of the Parisian banlieu (suburbs) that flared up starting in Clichy- sous-Bois following the deaths of two teenagers, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, on Oct. 27, 2005, who were electrocuted inside an electrical substation while trying to escape a police checkpoint that was held responsible for hit-and-run by the victims’ families. Three days after the tragic event, the anger provoked by the throwing of a tear gas at the entrance to the Bilal mosque by policemen who had intervened to counter the riots caused protests from Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil to spread throughout Seine-Saint-Denis and within two days to more than 200 municipalities throughout France, creating a tense situation that forced the need to declare (Nov. 8, 2005) a state of emergency, later extended for three months.
The toll of the uprising, with calm regained on Nov. 17, registered the arrest of 2,921 people, 3 deaths, extensive damage to infrastructure and equipment (including 10,000 burned cars and 230 damaged or burned buildings) as well as 217 injuries among the police force.
In 2015 there was a new wave of protests when, ten years after the tragic events of October 27, 2005, the two policemen charged with hit-and-run for failing to help the young boys were acquitted, provoking strong angry reactions from the relatives of the victims culminating on May 18, 2015 in clashes in front of the Palace of Justice in Bobigny, Paris.
In such a context, if on the one hand it is understandable that Macron, already touched by the protests against pension reform as well as mindful of the violent uprising of the Gilets Jaunes, has not lavished himself on analysis and distinctions, it is equally not understandable that such an examination has not been undertaken by foreign observers and professional analysts mostly focused on what he could do to avoid reliving those days that had already put the transalpine republic and with it the entire French political set-up to the test.
In the immediate term, the more than legitimate fear is that the mix of the anger of the banlieu and that of the rest of the population, already decidedly exaggeratedly in turmoil in the past few months, may further degenerate into outbursts of violence whose magnitude and consequences are certainly not easy to predict at the moment at a historical moment that is certainly not easy for the country, which, with understandable trepidation, awaits the developments of a situation that is quite serious in all respects, even, I would add, for the whole of Europe: a fear legitimized by the fact that at the moment it is not given to understand who is pulling the strings of the protest using modalities similar to those that saw the explosion of that complex and articulated system of street movements that globally went down in history with the high-sounding name, unfortunately totally lacking in planning content, of Arab Spring.
Regardless of everything, it is quite worrying that the video posted on Twitter by a ‘bystander’ (?) who practically filmed live the dynamics of Nahel’s murder: a video shared by hundreds and hundreds of thousands of users as has apparently happened several times before as well since when a police operation is underway there are often people who film the scene and post on social networks the videos made with the aim of filming the police to publicly document their abuses according to the practice called “copwatch.” Nothing illegal, mind you, if the purpose is to promote a legal battle for civil rights: quite another if this is done on purpose to ride the tiger of social unrest by fomenting growing anger to be turned into violence.
What benefit, for example, will the marginalized people of the banlieues, mostly immigrants and children of immigrants, derive from this wave of violence? What advantage will the weaker sections of the French population gain from this wave of violence? In my opinion, the same ones that achieved the hundreds of thousands, the millions of men and women who filled, piloted by social networks of unidentified matrix, the squares of the Arab Spring: a solidified nothingness that paved the way for all sorts of further nefarious interference. And again: what civil battle did the UN intend to support with its pronouncement?
The question that fortunately at least some people have been asking has been about the form the protest would have taken in the absence of social networks, given the primary role that TikTok and Snapchat have taken on-as first denounced by President Macron himself-acting as a sounding board for the rioters by disproportionately amplifying the unrest that has erupted in France and not only there.
Macron reportedly underscored this undoubted responsibility during a meeting of the interministerial committee by announcing his willingness to take measures to counter this use of social: what was not a little surprising was the silence that followed the request forwarded to the heads of the digital platforms, to ask for their “support” if only to identify social network users involved in the commission of crimes: a request that was apparently not followed by any immediate comment from Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and TikTok contacted by AFP.
This is not a little surprising given the diligence with which social networks are wont to independently detect ‘violations’ of community rules for the use of expressions that are not strictly politically correct.
Just a few hours ago, news broke by EURACTIV that French President Emmanuel Macron, in order to prevent a further wave of violent protests across the country, would convene the mayors of the worst-affected cities on July 4 to suggest to the mayors the idea of regulating or restricting access to social media, depending on the severity of the threats, including riots, given that in light of the facts many of the clashes were coordinated through social media sites such as Snapchat, TikTok or Instagram.
Immediate accusations of authoritarianism: Olivie Faure, the president of the Parti Socialiste (S&D), wrote in a tweet “the country of human rights cannot align itself with the great democracies of China, Russia, and Iran”; the far-left La France Insoumise (GUE/NGL) party promptly attacked Macron by comparing him to Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, not to mention an unidentified deputy from Marine Le Pen’s far-right party Le Rassemblement National (ID) who came to speak of a “dramatic authoritarian drift.”
On balance, all that remains is to clap the hands of those who orchestrated all this, even if, in fact, all that has taken place has decreed the end of the democratic dream of entire generations, a dream wrecked miserably precisely in the age of communication and online accessibility to a flood of sources capable of showing us the objective reality of current events: pity that it all took place in one of the worst moments, culturally speaking, characterized by the spread of functional illiteracy primarily in that West that in the New World Order will increasingly struggle to compete with the new leaderships.
In this “who” of certainly interested not only in defusing the residual pro-European loose cannon embodied until recently by Macron, but also -as witnessed by a whole series of recent events-, in attempting to enter or re-enter in some concrete way-and on only formally new grounds-in that Africa which is exceedingly eager to shake off the cumbersome, variously hegemonic presences of the de facto French and U.S. neo-colonialists (the latter in various capacities recently particularly well-intentioned, for objective compelling strategic reasons, to restore a virginity and credibility long lost before the local populations), Russia and China have also been making a fine show for some time.
In this regard, observe, for example, the positions taken by the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia itself, just to mention two self-styled historical ‘allies’ of those United States at the moment so decidedly interested in not being ousted from this geographical context as to have supported (in my opinion by promoting and piloting it) the recent dusting off operated by the Meloni government of the entrepreneurial philosophy of that Enrico Mattei once upon a time, as is well known, exceedingly ‘disliked’ by Anglo-American oil circles and abandoned in its entirety in times not so long ago.
A philosophy absurdly abjured in the first place by the center-right Italian government headed by the Hon. Silvio Berlusconi (of which -incidentally said- the current Premier G. Meloni was a full member) when, starting on April 28, 2011, it gave way, yielding to U.S. pressure, to the sadly nourishing corpus of no less than 1,900 war missions against Libya (including 310 for ground attacks against predetermined targets and 146 to neutralize enemy air defenses, for a total of 7.300 flight hours that saw Italian Air Force aircraft engaged) that, at the expense of Italian taxpayers, earned Italy, ouster from the African political and diplomatic landscape.
In this articulated scenario, as mentioned, we cannot forget the presence of the Russian Federation and China, each obviously operating in its own style and in particular:
- the Kremlin with PMC Wagner (since the end of July no longer engaged -at least for now- on the futile Ukrainian front that has seen the predictable, now concluded, failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive and the consequent mutation of the Kiev-Moscow military confrontation into an exhausting positional war according to Putin’s wishes) and the weaving of an extensive network of agreements for military supplies and training support that will now draw further impetus after the controversial -and too many gray areas- at times farcical pronouncement (for the use and consumption of the West?.) of Yevgeny Prigozhin, from the increased operational autonomy of a Wagner that has come to assume the characteristics of an autonomous legal structure that enables it to enter into agreements independently (or at least to give the impression of it) from Moscow even with foreign institutions and governments, primarily specifically African ones. This is a fact that will allow the Russian Federation to easily extricate itself, if necessary, by being able to declare itself uninvolved in the most compromising situations, such as those that in some way should involve military engagement, leaving Moscow a free hand for everything pertaining to diplomacy and economic agreements with local realities of interest according to modalities already in place, after the setback at the end of July that had followed notably Moscow’s exit from the agreement for the export of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea on July 17. As stated late last June by Putin himself, Wagner had so far been completely at the Russian state’s expense to the tune of more than RUB 86 Bn (EUR 1 Bn) between May 2022 and June 2023, to which was to be added another RUB 80 Bn disbursed to the leader of the Russian mercenaries, Yevgeny Prigozhin, for logistical services provided to the army. From Russian sources as early as a little over the middle of July we learned that Prigozhin himself had urged his men who had transited to Belarus to get their strength back in order to prepare for “a new trip to Africa” leaving the door open for a future return to Ukraine: “Perhaps we will return to the special military operation at some point, when we are sure that we will not be forced to be ashamed.” All these things that cannot be stated lightly as even unimaginable in the context of events such as those that usually accompany a real coup attempt that in fact allowed, among other things, a strategic repositioning of Wagner on Ukraine’s northern border and the infiltration of men into Poland itself under the guise of Ukrainian refugees without it being officially viewable under Art. 5 of the Atlantic Alliance’s founding treaty, as a threat brought by Russia to a NATO country (all of which would merit careful thought about the risks the West would run in the event of an impromptu widening of the conflict), as well as the provision to Moscow of perfectly trained troops for deployment in Africa. The strategy outlined here finds new implicit confirmation in the news released on July 16, 2023 by Ukraine’s border guard service announcing the withdrawal of almost all of Moscow’s troops from Belarus, troops whose numerical strength had reached as many as 16,000 men last winter who were evidently no longer needed-and further confirmed by the presence in Niger of Yevgeny Prigozhin alongside Gen. Abdourahmane Tchian, author of the coup, to prevent (deterrence) and cope, in case, with an unproductive eventual unproductive Western or, better said, Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) intervention, apparently imminent, backed by Western ‘allies’ France and the United States given the strategic importance of a key country for the EU in curbing the flow of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, as well as being a country rich in uranium and gold, and crucial in the Sahel region also controlled by several armed jihadist militias such as Boko Haram, Iswap and the Fulani. It should be noted that there is a NATO contingent in Niger consisting of more than 2,900 military personnel including 1,500 French, 1,100 Americans and 350 Italians who in the event of an attack would face Wagner on the ground in the new independent capacity I mentioned earlier. A Wagner already present in Mali, where it is accused of having contributed-along with Malian military units-to the alleged massacre of 500 people in Moura; as well as deployed in the Central African Republic (where it is alleged to have been co-responsible for indiscriminate attacks also conducted against “civilians”) officially with tasks of training local troops and the goal of ensuring security in the run-up to the constitutional referendum last July 30 with the coordination of COSI (Community Officers for International Security), which the U.S. says is a front company for the Wagner group in the Central African Republic, headed by Alexander Ivanov, a Russian under U.S. sanctions since January. This is to say nothing of its presence throughout the area from Libya to Sudan and then beyond to Madagascar;
- and China, with its skillful use of its own capital used as a Trojan horse according to a strategy, the so-called “debt trap” (consisting of the disbursement to third countries of loans aimed at the construction -through Chinese enterprises employing Chinese materials, means and laborers- of infrastructures, for example, such as highways, railways, ports, mining facilities and even entire geographical areas of economic interest- which the debtors will not be able to extinguish except by ceding the economic use of the same works for very long periods of time that represent the time frame of the duration of the loss of sovereignty over the works themselves) widely and systematically already used on several occasions, as well as with the employment of contractors that allow it to defend its positions of strength achieved in the most diverse areas of the planet. That of Beijing’s employment of contractors, i.e., PMCs – Private Military Companies, in order to extend its influence on the African continent is a practice that kicked off more or less in 2013 with the start of the Belt and Road Initiative and that only in appearance traces the Wagner model insofar as Chinese methodologies differ substantially from those of Wagner, which may soon be supplanted. Beijing’s stimulus to the use of private militias came as a response to operational risks directly related to the Chinese modus operandi that stimulated a whole series of criminal events targeting both valuable high-value resources and Chinese personnel because of the growing resentment generated by the perception of them as something whose presence deprived local communities of valuable jobs long awaited in vain. From here on several occasions began a long series of kidnappings for extortion purposes, when not outright violence of which one of the most recent was in March 2023, when as many as nine Chinese workers employed at a gold mine in the territory of the Central African Republic were killed by unknown assailants in undefined circumstances that apparently included Wagner men: a rather singular event given that it all allegedly took place in the run-up to Xi Jinping’s visit to the Kremlin. A few days earlier, three Chinese workers had been kidnapped on the border between the Central African Republic and Cameroon. In fact, it is from episodes like these that the proliferation of private Made-in-China security companies on the African continent has taken off, even if the private component stops only at the name since-and this takes on added significance today in light of the evolution of Wagner-as pointed out by Paul Nantulya, a famous sinologist, according to Chinese law the Chinese state apparatus exercises active control over these venture companies similar to that which the Russian Federation exercised over Wagner’s units employed in Ukraine. It is no coincidence that most of the Chinese contractors come from units of the People’s Republic of China Armed Forces although their assigned tasks at the moment do not provide for any employment other than the on-site protection of Chinese companies and workers by devolving the conduct of actual offensive actions to the appropriately hired local militias and paramilitary groups. Such a course of action, which is decidedly more forward-looking, minimizes Beijing’s public exposure by allowing the Beijing establishment to take advantage of local divisions that they can somehow support-and thus manage to their own advantage-by sending “advisers” to state military facilities, training personnel and providing equipment, intelligence and surveillance services. Such a course of action could be a harbinger of remarkable results in the future should the obsolescence of Russian strategy and the inability of Western action allow Beijing to move to the ultimate conquest of the nerve centers of the Dark Continent in accordance with a strategy that would seem to point to a global duopoly with Washington to be understood at pi an unavoidable intermediate step to then achieve a Chinese-led globalist monopoly.
In light of what has been seen, future developments will hint at much about the dynamics that await us in the near future as at stake we find all the major players in the current game with France in the role of a Cinderella without Prince Charming.
