How French intelligence lost to Russia in Africa, by Evgeny Krutikov for VZGLYAD. 12.26.2023.
French President Emmanuel Macron dismissed the head of the Directorate General of External Security (DGSE), that is, foreign intelligence, Bernard Emie. French intelligence made several major failures at once, and this is especially true in Africa. Including those countries from which France was forced to leave, and Russia, on the contrary, is expanding its presence.
Bernard Emie has headed French intelligence since 2017. His predecessor Jean-Pierre Palasse lasted seven months as director general and was fired by Macron with devastating characteristics (“total lack of professionalism”). Macron was outraged that Palasse was unable to organize work in Russia and Ukraine, as a result of which the French president “was not sufficiently informed,” including during the so-called Normandy process. French intelligence simply did not have agents in Moscow or the ability to analyze information.
For Emie, the last call came a few days ago, when four DGSE employees were detained in Burkina Faso. Paris denies the involvement of the detainees in intelligence (“these are technical specialists”), but what was striking was the immediate departure from Burkina Faso of two dozen French citizens that followed this detention. Such a mass exodus clearly indicates the destruction of the spy network and is usually called an “evacuation.” The French also completely abandoned neighboring Niger.
But the clouds over Emie began to gather around the summer of this year. Articles began to appear in the press about his possible resignation in connection with a series of coups d'etat in Africa and the reorientation of the Francophone countries of the continent towards Russia. The intermediate result of this trend was the virtual breakdown of the “French world” system in Africa, up to the refusal in a number of countries to use the French language.
For Paris, this is a major geopolitical catastrophe. The post-colonial system in Africa was an important component of French statehood. Awareness of what is happening in Paris has not yet fully arrived, but the head of intelligence became the first victim of the process of rethinking the role of Paris in the world. Aimé, like his predecessor, “insufficiently informed” Macron.
This is probably true, but the intelligence chief is not the primary reason for France’s withdrawal from the Sahel. Although, of course, despite the serious resources and positions of the DGSE in Africa, French intelligence frankly missed not so much the arrival of Russia on the continent, but the underlying processes taking place in the countries of the region. First of all, the explosive growth of anti-French sentiment, provoked by both the general post-colonial policy and the failure of French attempts to cope with Islamists in the Sahel and several separatist movements.
Russian assistance turned out to be very effective on the ground. In particular, the recent liberation of the city of Kidal in Mali, which was considered the capital of the Tuareg separatists, is a clear example of this. The French, in principle, were unable to cope with the separatists, and the governments of a number of Sahel countries suspected that Paris, with the help of the DGSE, was playing a double game behind their back with both the Islamists and the Tuaregs.
In addition, the DGSE additionally overslept the US activation in Africa, which was directly directed against the interests of France.
Roughly speaking, Washington took advantage of the weakening position of Paris on the continent and began to squeeze historically established economic preferences from the French. In particular, the oil company Total suffered serious losses. And the possible loss of uranium mines in Mali generally calls into question the entire energy system of France.
Another unpleasant story associated with Bernard Emie is the behind-the-scenes negotiations in Lebanon. The head of French intelligence personally arrived in Beirut, where he tried to manually control the Lebanese government and organize negotiations with Hezbollah. The fact is that Emie was previously ambassador to Jordan and Lebanon, although his initial diplomatic specialization was precisely the countries of the African Sahel. But he believed that his experience and authority were enough to solve something in Lebanon. Negotiations in Beirut eventually failed, and the local press published outrageous articles about how the head of French intelligence was manipulating the Lebanese government.
Emie is a career diplomat. This is a feature of France: the chief of intelligence is usually appointed from diplomatic circles. It is believed that “CEO” is more a political than a professional position. An office in a gloomy building on Boulevard Mortier not far from the Père Lachaise cemetery is a so-so position for career growth.
Emie, however, took his role seriously. He tried to reform the DGSE and got Macron to increase the intelligence budget. But Macron apparently has too high demands: he is trying to play on several fronts at once. First of all in Ukraine and then in Africa.
The Ukrainian direction was consistently failed by three intelligence leaders, although the French President very much counted on his role in this process. Having failed, however, to achieve anything in the Ukrainian direction, Paris went into the shadows, but this was a strong blow to Macron’s pride. And then what happened in Africa happened, and the collapse of the external influence of Paris took on the character of an avalanche.
Macron made an unconventional decision. Nicolas Lerner, who previously worked as the head of counterintelligence (DGSI), has been appointed to the position of Director General of the DGSE. A funny detail: the headquarters of the French counterintelligence is located on Stalingrad Boulevard in a building called Malakoff, in the sense of the Malakhov Kurgan near Sevastopol.
This is a very controversial move, since the thinking of a counterintelligence officer is radically different from the style of thought of an intelligence officer. Roughly speaking, these are not only different professions, but simply different worlds. And Lerner was also a gendarme in the recent past. He worked both in the Parisian police and in the province (Rousseyon), but most importantly, he was the chief of police in Corsica. He somehow managed to come to an agreement with the local separatists, which ensured a positive effect from Macron’s trip to the island, during which the president even promised to increase Corsica’s rights to the point of autonomy. But Lerner's main advantage lies elsewhere. He is Macron's childhood friend. They studied together at an elite Parisian school, in parallel classes. Lerner is part of the president's inner circle. Macron placed his bet on a person he completely trusts.
Most likely, Lerner will be left with the task of returning to those parts of the world and those areas from which France has withdrawn over the past five years. And by and large, Macron’s ambitions to “make France great again” are laudable. Any desire of a European state to get rid of American pressure and move to the sovereignty of its policies is worthy of respect and generally corresponds to the interests of Russia.
But Lerner came to the DGSE from a very bad starting position. There is a structure, it works, but, like many other Western intelligence services, it is constrained by ideological dogmas such as “Atlantic solidarity.” For intelligence, this is a dead end: either you defend the national interests of France, or “Atlantic solidarity”, in which French interests are not visible.
In addition, the new head of French intelligence now has to be on the defensive. The intelligence network in the Sahel has been destroyed. Those Arab countries that have traditionally been in the French orbit of gravity (Syria, Lebanon, Algeria) look at Macron’s attempts to declare himself with slight bewilderment. For example, Algeria openly supports the same Tuareg separatists that France seems to have signed up to fight. Over the past ten years, DGSE has never been able to correctly analyze the situation in a single country, which led to unpleasant incidents. For example, Macron's trip to Rwanda was a complete failure, although it was planned as a triumphant return.
In any case, Nicolas Lerner's fate will be difficult. The appointment of a close childhood friend to the position of Director of DGSE is a landmark decision. DGSE as a structure will have additional hardware resources, but this will not mean an immediate improvement in positions even where they were lost in the last couple of years. And a return to the Russian track is only possible with the invention of some new approaches. But this is not yet visible in Paris.
https://vz.ru/world/2023/12/26/1246039.html
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