Policy
Posted about 3 hours ago
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Pakistani security officers examine the carcass of the bus destroyed by a suicide attack when it was carrying a dozen French people in particular, in front of the Sheraton hotel in Karachi on May 8, 2022. (Source: Humanity) –
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Memory, pain and bitterness. On May 8 in Cherbourg, a ceremony paid tribute to the 11 employees of the Naval Construction Department (DCN), now called Naval Group, the European leader in this defense sector, with nearly 16,000 employees. Twenty years earlier to the day, these employees had perished in an attack in Karachi, the port city and first urban center of Pakistan.
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On this morning of May 8, 2002, according to a well-established daily routine, a Pakistani navy bus parked in front of the Sheraton hotel to pick up DCN employees. He must lead the group’s engineers, senior technicians and workers to the site where their expertise is required to carry out the construction of French Agosta submarines sold in 1994 to Pakistan, also a long-time client of the defense industry. tricolor. When the French boarded the vehicle, a violent explosion occurred, gutting the bus, brutally claiming the lives of fifteen people and injuring a dozen. From the outset, the terrorist dimension of this tragedy is obvious. If initially the hypothesis of an attack of Islamist origin is favored by the Pakistani authorities, the “possibility of a retaliatory gesture against France is essential” gradually**. When he arrived at the Élysée in 1995, Jacques Chirac had refused the payment of commissions promised on arms contracts. A strong political choice, perhaps at the origin of the ire of certain Pakistani actors affected by this initiative and dissatisfied.
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*Ex-Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve (also former deputy and mayor of Cherbourg), rapporteur for a parliamentary fact-finding mission on this appalling attack, took part. President Emmanuel Macron sent a message of support to victims and families. **Tried in 2021 by the Court of Justice of the Republic, the former Prime Minister Édouard Balladur was acquitted and the former Minister of the Armies François Léotard sentenced. ***Sunday newspaper, May 7, 2022. ****The world, 20 avril 2002.
While no representative of the French government in office attended the ceremony of homage to the victims *, their family are still in the dark, twenty years after the tragedy. If the financial and legal aspects ** of this dark affair will not detain us too much in these few paragraphs, the terrorist dimension of the tragic disappearance of our eleven compatriots will detain us more. “For several years, nothing has happened on this part” ***, rightly deplore the civil parties. As one survivor of this tragedy rightly and resignedly points out, “Twenty years later, it is becoming difficult to imagine that one day we will know who were the sponsors and the performers of this attack which left eleven dead, twelve seriously injured and twenty-seven orphans”****. –
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A still devastated France-Pakistan relationship
*The hypothesis of a possible involvement, at one level or another, of the Pakistani secret services (ISI) in this tragedy has been raised on numerous occasions by a host of French and foreign experts. **Following in particular the republication in the fall of 2020 of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad by Charlie Hebdo. ***The echoes, April 20, 2021. ****Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari said: “Macron does to Muslims what the Nazis did to Jews” (Le Figaro, November 21, 2020).
This situation between shadows, suppositions and heavy unspoken* constitutes a considerable ballast, if not a mortgage, in the relations between Paris and Islamabad. But things have gotten even worse in recent years. A year ago, in the spring of 2021, the Pakistani government was preparing to propose to Parliament to vote for the expulsion of the French ambassador, at the request of a radical politico-religious formation, the Tehrik-i-Labaik Pakistan (TLP ) particularly hostile to Paris, to its democratically elected representatives, Emmanuel Macron in mind and his enlightened conception of freedom of expression and the right to caricature**. A radical party yet officially condemned by the Pakistani authorities for advocating terrorism***. In this Islamic Republic of 229 million inhabitants, popular demonstrations inflamed with hostility to French interests followed one another in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi. The outrageous and highly inappropriate statements of the then Prime Minister, Imran Khan, and some of his ministers**** saturated the Pakistani media space. As a precaution as well as common sense, the Elysée then asked its nationals and companies present on the spot to leave temporarily but all business ceasing this country of southern Asia suddenly most inhospitable to our place. Extremely rare in the modern diplomatic history of France, the Quai d’Orsay repatriated fifteen of its diplomats stationed in the “land of the pure”. –
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One semester later, in fall 2021, The world predicted in its November 3 edition: “Franco-Pakistani diplomatic relations are unlikely to improve immediately. » Four days later, the TLP, the central linchpin of anti-French mobilization and violent popular protest, effectively brought down the Khan government, which authorized its administrative and political rehabilitation in exchange for the end of its feverish street demonstrations.
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Since this episode of optimal tension, a slight bilateral improvement prevails in the spring of 2022. The hasty departure from power of Imran Khan in April and with it the mechanical disappearance of anti-French salvos of rare violence, his replacement on April 11 by the more moderate veteran of the Sharif clan, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif (PML-N party), older brother of former head of government Nawaz Sharif, have helped to calm relations between Paris and Islamabad somewhat – but probably not eliminate the feelings hostile to France of the Islamists of the TLP.
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In an April 25 tweet, the 23rd Prime Minister of Pakistan addressed kind words to the French President, in the wake of his re-election: “Congratulations to President Emmanuel Macron on his re-election as President of the French Republic. I look forward to working together to build a stronger and more multifaceted Pakistan-France relationship. » An entire program. But as usual, there can be a long way from the cut to the lips. Especially since the France-India strategic partnership, further consolidated in recent weeks by the visit to Paris of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi – the first foreign head of state received at the Élysée by the French president after his re-election – presents for Paris, France and Europe guarantees, far more reassuring and promising prospects.
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An interior scene grappling with its traditional demons[/asl-article-intertitre]
Moreover, the news of the last few days in Pakistan, steeped in upheavals, incidents, and signs lending little to optimism – even less to internal stability -, will slow down all the possible inclinations of an improbable spring Franco-Pakistani. On May 25, the Pakistani police had to work hard, with a lot of batons in hand and tear gas, to disperse Imran Khan’s supporters and prevent them from reaching the capital. The former head of government thrown out of power just a few weeks ago, deprived of the support of the generals, had invited his faithful to march on Islamabad and to remain there until the current government resigns and announces the date of the next national legislative election. In anticipation of this umpteenth anti-government mobilization likely to take a violent turn, the authorities had since sealed off the main accesses to the capital the day before and deployed an abundance of law enforcement and riot squads. –
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* Claimed by the Revolutionary Army of Sindhudesh (SRA), which militates for the independence of the province of Sindh, the attack of May 12 targeted the police. The suicide attack perpetrated on April 24 on the campus of the University of Karachi killed four people (including three Chinese teachers working for the Confucius Institute). A terrorist act claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army, a violent entity demanding the “independence” of Balochistan.
Obviously, without even mentioning here the domestic security context which is still devastated – in particular because of the attacks of May 12 and April 24 in Karachi* -, the return to a more or less normalized domestic political scene does not seem visibly to the short or medium term agenda. –
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About the Author
Specialist in Asia, researcher at CERIAS (University of Quebec in Montreal), Dr Olivier Guillard is notably the author of the book ”The worrying Islamic Republic of Pakistan”, (L’Harmattan, Paris, December 2021) . Among other parts of Asia, he has traveled extensively to India, South Korea, Afghanistan, Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal, Cambodia and Bangladesh. . Holder of a doctorate in public international law from the University of Paris XI, he is also director of information for Crisis24 (GARDAWORLD), a consulting and engineering firm specializing in the analysis and management of international risks.
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