Of the four circles that make up the national defence perimeterThe broadest of these is international security. The three smaller circles cover bilateral or multilateral diplomatic action, arms control and the promotion of collective security mechanisms. This includes the French army's overseas operations (OPEX). To illustrate this circle, Athena has chosen this week to look at France's involvement in peacekeeping operations launched by the United Nations.
These operations did not come into being when the UN was created in 1945. Moreover, they were not provided for in the United Nations Charterwhich defines the aims and principles of this organisation. As researcher Alexandra Novosseloff writes in the Dictionnaire de la guerre et de la paix, "Although they are mechanisms outside the charter, they are nonetheless based on its provisions".1. In particular, Article 1, which states that maintaining peace means not only "taking effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace", but also "achieving by peaceful means the adjustment or settlement of disputes or situations which might lead to breaches of the peace", but also "to bring about by peaceful means the adjustment or settlement of differences or of situations which might lead to breaches of the peace", and also on Article 40 because these operations are basically "provisional measures which in no way prejudice the rights, claims or position of the parties concerned".
In addition to this legal foundation, there are three basic principles: the consent of the parties (the host state and other actors in the crisis); impartiality (the Capstone doctrine 2008 states that "just as a good referee is impartial but whistles for fouls", the operation cannot allow violations of a peace agreement or international principles to go unchallenged); and the use of force in self-defence. Chapter VII of the Charter, entitled "Action in case of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace and act of aggression", is most often invoked in resolutions launching an operation.
AN INITIATIVE OF UN SECRETARY-GENERAL HAMMARSKJÖLD, KILLED IN OFFICE IN 1961
Following the first observation missions set up in 1948 (in Jerusalem and Kashmir), the first peacekeeping operation was conceived in 1956 under the aegis of the then Secretary General, the Swede Dag Hammarskjöld: the UNEF (United Nations Emergency Force), deployed in Egypt in response to the Suez crisis. Five years later, Hammarskjöld would also give his life for peacekeeping, his plane being shot while working to resolve the Congolese crisis.
As one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (along with China, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States), France is one of the main financial contributors to peacekeeping operations, although not in terms of the number of soldiers. As Alexandra Novosseloff explains, there are "two main types of contributor to peacekeeping: troop contributors (military and police), who since the late 1990s have come mainly from Asia and Africa, and financial contributors, essentially Western countries and China, including the permanent members of the Security Council who draw up the mandates for these operations".
Of the operations in which France has participated by sending troops, three have been particularly memorable, with many French soldiers losing their lives. Legally, these operations illustrate the variety of frameworks for deploying contingents under the aegis of the UN.
1983: THE DRAKKAR ATTACK IN BEIRUT (LEBANON)
On 19 March 1978, at the start of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), the UN adopted resolutions 425 and 426, which set up the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to respond to the outbreak of violence along the Israeli-Lebanese border. It is still in place today, with contingents from eleven countries, including France.
At the same time, on 25 August 1982, at Lebanon's request, the Secretary General of the United Nations created the Multinational Security Force in Beirut (FMSB), bringing together the armies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy and France, to help the Lebanese government restore its authority around the capital in the face of pro-Syrian militias, and to protect the civilian population.
Around 2,000 French soldiers were deployed, and 1,500 on the American side. On Sunday 23 October 1983, at 6.18 am, a lorry loaded with six tonnes of explosives piloted by an Iranian suicide bomber crashed into the American army headquarters at Beirut international airport. The toll was terrible: 241 soldiers, including 220 Marines, were killed.
Two minutes later, the HQ of French troops, located in the Drakkar building in West Beirut, exploded: 58 French soldiers (55 from the 1er Régiment de chasseurs parachutistes and 3 du 9th RCP) and 6 members of the Lebanese guard's family were killed. To date, this attack remains the deadliest for the French army since the end of the Indochina War in 1954.
According to investigations by the Lebanese and French authorities, the modus operandi of the Drakkar attack was the same as that against the American base a few minutes earlier: a suicide attack using a truck bomb. This version is called into question by survivors of the attack, who did not see a lorry and believe that the building, which previously housed the Syrian secret services, had been mined.
After the shock of the double attack, the United States and France pointed the finger of blame at Iran and its local ally, the Lebanese Hezbollah. The latter's armed wing, the Islamic Jihad Organisation, claimed responsibility for the double operation. Its leader, Imad Moughniyah, was killed in a car explosion in Damascus in 2008, an operation allegedly carried out by the Israeli Mossad with CIA support.
2004: THE BOMBING OF BOUAKÉ (CÔTE-D'IVOIRE)
On 4 February 2003, United Nations Security Council Resolution 1464 authorised the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and France to send troops to Côte d'Ivoire, following the Marcoussis Agreement signed in January between the belligerents in the civil war that had broken out the previous year. In February 2004, when the UN adopted resolution 1528 creating the United Nations Operation in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), the French Licorne force, deployed since September 2002 under the Franco-Ivorian bilateral defence agreement, was given a mandate to support the UN mission.
At 1.15pm on 6 November 2004, two Soukhoï Su-25 aircraft belonging to the Ivorian air force bombed the René-Descartes French secondary school in Bouaké, in the centre of the country, where a Licorne operation base was located. The attack left 10 dead (9 French soldiers and an American aid worker) and 40 wounded (38 soldiers and 2 civilians, all French), the heaviest losses suffered by the French army since the Drakkar attack.
Bouaké was on the front line between the rebel-controlled north of Côte d'Ivoire and the south, loyal to President Laurent Gbagbo. In the preceding days, the Ivorian army had attacked rebel positions around the town. Following the bombing of the French base, French President Jacques Chirac ordered the destruction of the entire Ivorian air force in retaliation.
We will probably never know who was behind this attack. The two Soukhoï were piloted by Belarusians assisted by co-pilots from the Ivorian army; the first two fled to Togo and disappeared from circulation at the end of November 2004. On 15 April 2021, the Paris Assize Court sentenced, in absentia, the two Ivorians and one of the Belarusians (the other's involvement could not be proven) to life imprisonment for "murder, attempted murder and destruction of the property of others aggravated by two circumstances (in a group and to the detriment of a person holding public authority)".
General Henri Poncet, former commander of Operation Licorne, gave his version of events when he appeared before the French courts in 2013.2 While he believes that the operation was "clearly deliberate", he believes that Laurent Gbagbo was "too much of a politician to give such an absurd order". He attributes the decision to bomb the French base to "extremists" in the Ivorian president's entourage.
2008: THE UZBIN AMBUSH (AFGHANISTAN)
On 20 December 2001, Security Council Resolution 1386 created the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which the UN placed under the command of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). Its troops joined the US army in Afghanistan, which had been deployed unilaterally in October following the 11 September attacks in the United States. Disbanded in 2014, this force aimed at fighting Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist organisation, its Taliban allies and other armed groups, had a maximum strength (in 2011) of 150,000 soldiers from 48 countries, including 8 non-NATO members.
Although the coalition overthrew the Taliban regime at the end of 2001, the war has become a long-term insurgency. On 18 August 2008, around a hundred French, Afghan and American ISAF soldiers patrolled the Uzbin valley, around fifty kilometres from Kabul, without prior aerial reconnaissance, in order to reconnoitre the area and make contact with the local population. The region, close to the Pakistani tribal areas used as a rear base by the insurgents, is partly in Taliban hands.
In the early afternoon, part of the Carmin 2 section of the 8th RPIMa (marine infantry parachute regiment) and a legionnaire from the 2th REP (foreign parachute regiment), 24 men strong, set off on foot to reconnoitre a pass controlling access to a nearby village. At around 3.30pm, Taliban posted on a ridge began to open fire. There were 150 of them, i.e. 5 to 1. At the same time, other Taliban attacked the rest of the section, which had remained below, firing back with its armoured front vehicles (AFVs). In the middle of a circus surrounded by ridges where their enemies were, the French were virtually surrounded. At 3.52pm, they called for reinforcements, but the Allied planes and helicopters were unable to fire because the combatants on both sides were too close. A section of the RMT (regiment de marche du Tchad) was nevertheless able to support the paratroopers under Taliban fire.
Other sections of the RMT and RPIMa then arrived as reinforcements, but the Taliban also received support. As the situation became critical, allied planes and helicopters provided air support and then ammunition. At around 8pm, three more sections of the RMT arrived from Kabul. Sniper duels, hand grenade fire, soldiers sacrificing themselves to cover their brothers in arms... the battle continued into the night, as the American air force finished clearing the ridges of Taliban. The slopes leading to the pass were retaken, and the first bodies of soldiers brought down... The pass was recaptured at dawn, and ISAF continued to bomb the Taliban positions, which finally "fell" around midday on 19 August.
In all, 10 French soldiers were killed and 21 wounded. In the Dictionnaire des opérations extérieures de l'armée française from 1963 to the present day3According to Lieutenant-Colonel Gilles Chevalier, these losses represent "one of the worst casualties suffered by the French army in combat action since the end of the Algerian War (along with the Bedo ambush in Chad on 11 October 1970)".
1 Edited by Benoît Durieux, Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer and Frédéric Ramel, Presses Universitaires de France, 2017.
2 Quoted by Mathieu Olivier and Vincent Duhem, "Bouaké bombing: from Paris to Abidjan, who was in charge?, Young Africa, 4 August 2017.
3 Edited by Philippe Chapleau and Jean-Marc Marill, Nouveau monde éditions, Ministère des Armées, ECPAD, 2018.
