Africa's gendarme France not hanging up baton yet

By Daniel Flynn - Analysis

DAKAR (Reuters) - France is trying to shed its reputation as "Africa's policeman" but, despite efforts to involve European partners in peacekeeping missions, there are no signs it will hang up its baton just yet.

France won backing last month for an EU force to be deployed soon in east Chad and Central African Republic, where it already has troops stationed. The EU force will protect civilians from a 4-year-old conflict spilling across from Sudan's Darfur region.

This marks progress in Paris' new policy of involving European allies in a region it once regarded as its "backyard". But France will still provide the bulk of the troops of the up to 3,000-strong EU contingent, and its logistical backbone.

"France has a vision of multilateral intervention but it is the only European country that has a military presence," said Alex Vines, head of the Africa program at Chatham House. "They are lonely in Africa. There is no-one else to take the lead."

France has five bases on mainland Africa -- in Ivory Coast, Senegal, Gabon, Chad and Djibouti -- with 11,000 men there. The United States, by contrast, has 1,800 troops in Djibouti and Britain only has training missions in Kenya and Sierra Leone.

Between 1962 and 1995 France intervened 19 times in Africa, installing presidents and propping up governments across the continent. But a much-criticized humanitarian intervention in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, blamed for worsening the slaughter, prompted ex-President Jacques Chirac's government to rethink.

Cutbacks to Europe's largest army have prompted calls from French commanders for a retrenchment in Africa, but political expediencies have hampered France's disengagement. There are still some 240,000 French expatriates living in Africa.

"The plans to downsize French troop commitment are not new ... but a number of events over the last 10 years has slowed this, notably the Ivorian crisis," said Daniela Kroslak, African Research Director at Crisis Group.