Afrasianet - Faraj Kennedy - The French colonizer dominated large areas of the African continent after its conquest in the seventeenth century AD, in what was known as the beginning of the European colonization of the black continent, which is rich in diverse natural and human resources with abundance.

France has used the most heinous forms of violence and abuse against the African peoples who have fallen prey to it, and has been consumed by the yoke of its unprecedented arbitrariness, injustice and domination, which distinguished the French colonial school from other schools of modern European colonialism.

School of Colonial France

France has adopted its own colonial curriculum, which has become a school with its own characteristics that it is known for, meeting in some of its features with the methods of colonialism in general, and differing by the distinction of the pure French character, which is based on many components, including:

•    The use of excessive force, violence, cruelty, and extermination against colonial peoples.

•    Direct management of the territories it colonizes with the power of iron and fire.

•    The destruction of local identity, the elimination of the language of the local peoples under its control, and the replacement of the French language so that France's colonial project known as "Francophonie" prevails, i.e. French-speaking countries or peoples who are not French.

•    Metamorphosis of an African mind of color and race, and turning it into a French intellectual, fancy and dependency.

•    Depleting the wealth of the colonized peoples and employing them in the prosperity of France and building its military and economic power.

•    Suppression of resistance movements and massacres, and launching major Christianization campaigns to transform Africa into a Christian continent.

•    Impoverishing Africans and keeping them under the yoke of the colonial trinity: "ignorance, poverty and disease".Post-World War II

France has continued its campaigns of extermination and repression of the African peoples since the beginning of its colonization of their homelands, during which it committed the most heinous forms of genocide against resistance movements, especially Islamic ones. The most prominent evidence of this is the killing in Chad of more than 400 Muslim scholars in a massacre known as "Kabkab" in 1917.

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, France brought soldiers from its colonies to serve as fuel in a battle in which they had no camels, promising them independence if the war was won by us and in generosity from it, not a natural entitlement for peoples who aspire to their freedom, independence and self-determination.

The Allies won, but the colonizer did not believe in his rules, so she broke the promise, procrastinated and procrastinated. But it responded, compelled, to the insistence of Africans who had received some education in France, and returned to demand liberation and independence through the formation of associations, organizations and parties led by symbols of African national movements such as: Lumumba, Nikroma and others. France was forced broken to meet the demands of the African peoples for freedom and independence from them in the sixties of the last century.

The stage of nominal independence

France left some of its African colonies under the pressure of liberation movements, which were active and made many sacrifices in order to gain independence and freedom, enable the people of the country to govern it and manage its capabilities, and introduce development programs to eliminate the triad of pillars of French colonialism: poverty, ignorance, and disease.

France went out the door, ostensibly, but in fact it didn't really come out, although some thought so; it came back out the window, for several considerations:

•    Those who took over the leadership of these countries are the creation of colonial France: culture, language, ideas and absolute subordination.

•    France linked the capabilities of these countries to their dependency and controlled their natural resources, which they used in their industry that provides welfare to its citizens and deprives Africans of its revenues to remain under the yoke of the French trinity that it imposed on Africans.

•    The economy of former African colonies has been pegged to the French franc, and some countries even have their central banks in France rather than in their capitals. This can only be understood as a kind of guardianship over these countries that aspire to freedom and development. French policy in post-independence African countries

French policy in Africa has been established according to a continuous methodology to root its deadly triad of enslaved peoples, and to nurture their wealth and power at their expense. To make matters worse, the matter was complicated and devastated, when direct colonialism was replaced by the first independence leaders, whose administrations were overshadowed by failure and dependence, and the inability to get rid of French colonialism in its second form.

France soon realized their failure, replacing them with leaders more subservient and more loyal to France than their devotion to their homelands and peoples, through successive military coups between military officers vying for power, with complete ignorance of the administration of the state, and the absence of the concepts of freedom, development and stability, which resulted in civil wars that claimed thousands of innocent victims, men, women and children, and turned these countries into areas of extermination and famine, despite their great and diverse wealth capable of their prosperity and growth.

African Awareness and Pre-Setback Phase

This deficient and immoral policy resulted in a reaction among the African elites, who realized the backwardness, poverty, wars and dependency that their country was going through, and began to call for an exit from under French domination, which did not achieve stability and did not help in development, but this hegemony was the first and direct reason for the continuation and stability of the triad of ignorance, poverty and disease.

African elites concluded that they would not exist in light of this presence, both civilian and military, represented by the presence of military bases in the region, which have become undesirable because they are more a source of unrest than sources of stability.

The external catalyst in France's setback

At the stage of African awareness of the influence burdened by the former French colonies that restricts their freedoms and robs them of their wealth, the solution emerged to get rid of this influence and throw it off the shoulders of these countries. This coincided with the entry of three powers on the line, two of which were great international powers and the third was a rising regional power that was expanding:

 The first international force was characterized by the military aspect (Russia), which began to expand after its retreat following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early nineties of the last century. Under the leadership of its current president, Vladimir Putin, it has made Africa a target for building military bases to compete with the influence of NATO, its arch-enemy. In the case of African dissatisfaction with the French presence, it saw an opportunity to enter the line to drive France out of its former colonies.

•    The second international power is China, which has entered the African arena economically, opening up prospects for Africans to improve their economic conditions and benefit from their natural resources to achieve comprehensive development.

•    The third regional power was Turkey, which also entered the line economically, although to a degree that does not compete with China, and Turkey's situation was characterized by the presence of old relations with the African continent dating back to the days of the Ottoman Empire in those areas.

Relapse and dishonorable exit

All the circumstances that authorized France's setback on the African continent were combined, the first of which was:

•    The policy pursued by successive French governments for decades, without regard to the needs and aspirations of the African peoples, nor to the movement of history and the laws of change.

•    Political awakening among the younger African generations, their loss of hope in changing French policy, and their awareness of the need to change and get out from under the mantle of heavy tutelage.

•    The entry of weighty political parties with political, economic and military ambitions and interests in the continent will only be achieved by removing French influence.

It was lucky with the presence of the nationalist current against French influence that dominates the reins of public life in these parts of the continent, which quickly opened its doors to the entry of Chinese and Turkish economic projects, and ended up infiltrating the Russian military forces, and removing the French military forces that were perched on their territory, under the pretext of combating terrorism, and other justifications.

The dishonorable end for France was its departure from those lands under overwhelming popular pressure, and the mouthpiece of the Africans echoes what the Libyan poet Ahmed Rafik Mahdawi represented when the Italian forces left Libya after their defeat in World War II:

"If the donkey goes with Amr's mother, neither will the donkey return."