The view from France: War with Iraq looks a lot different from the French perspective
March 19, 2003 - The Montreal Gazette
PARIS – Diplomatic efforts for a peaceful solution on Iraq hit a brick wall on Sunday in the Azores. After a week of scurrying and last-ditch efforts at the UN, embassies have begun to clear out of Baghdad. Hans Blix and the UN inspectors left Iraq for Cyprus. Saddam Hussein was given 48 hours to step down and it doesn’t look like he will. War seems inevitable.
Despite this, France - its people and its government - continue to say a resounding “No” to a war with Iraq. Speaking yesterday from the Palais de L’Elysee, French President Jacques Chirac reiterated his belief that “There is no justification of a unilateral decision leading to war.”
Much of this sentiment is the result of close French ties with the Arab and Muslim worlds. In a poll to be released in tomorrow’s Le Pelerin magazine, 86 per cent of the French population agrees with President Chirac’s stance against the war, including more support from the left (93 per cent Socialist and 94 per cent Communist) than his own right-leaning Union for a Popular Majority Party where he still commands a whopping 86 per cent backing.
One of the primary French concerns that differs from U.S. views is what will happen once a war starts. With a Muslim population of more than 4 million, the largest in Europe, along with their historic ties with the Arab world, France believes that it faces a greater threat from outside the country as well as within its borders. The country is concerned that a delicate internal social balance could be thrown off by what could be seen as a betrayal of its connection with these two worlds. Part of what France wanted to show in its veto threat was a respect for the point of view of the Arabs and Muslims in France and around the world.
Guillaume Parmentier is the director of the French Centre on the United States at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and the author of Reconcilable Differences: U.S.-French Relations in the New Era.
Parmentier uses the French and U.S. views on the conflict in the Middle East to illustrate how, as with Iraq, the two countries’ different views have come from the shared goal of stability in the region, “Out of a similar desire to help the downtrodden, (France and the United States) end up having opposite positions. We can agree on items, but we can’t agree on a priority.
“The French feel that throwing too much support toward Israel or attacking an Arab people or country would lead to mammoth instability in the region, and a televised statement yesterday from Iraqi leaders citing Iraq’s struggle against “American, English and Zionist aggressors” seemed to reinforce this idea.
The threat of the French UN Security Council veto stemmed from this same feeling: “France always felt that handling Iraq without looking at the larger view of the Arab world was wrong,” concludes Parmentier. “(For France) Trying to attack the Iraqi issue singly would be a huge mistake.”
In a Time magazine interview, Chirac, who fought in the French-Algerian war, cited the risk of inciting what he called “little bin Ladens,” whom he feels would appear in France and around the world once the bombs start falling on Iraq. Reports from intelligence sources from around the world, U.S. and European included, are beginning to show this is already underway.
“Starting a war isn’t going to help resolve our problem with terrorists, but it will destabilize France,” said Damien Raymond, a French computer engineer who received his master’s degree from Cornell University. “Whether or not France participates, a war will incite a wave of terrorism around the world.”
“If the U.S. goes to war against a Muslim country without proving conclusively why they want to do that, they’re going to give lots of reasons for other Muslims around the world to become terrorists,” Raymond said.
Many of the strong ties France has built with Muslim countries would be significantly strained if France participated in a war against Iraq. Olivier Benoit, a graphic designer in Paris, has just come back from a vacation in Morocco, “It’s a country that’s profoundly attached to France and even has a ‘French’ culture.”
“France has a large Muslim community, and has always invested in the Maghreb,” he said. “Chirac is trying to tell both that he’s not forgetting them.”
