ABSTRACT
The chapter shows that it is difficult for France to play the role of an impartial peacekeeper in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa. The maintenance of a bilateral military policy, advocated by decision makers pursuing a traditional approach favouring one conflict party over the other, seriously undermined French-led peacekeeping. African actors managed to instrumentalise the ambiguity of French policy for their purposes and deal a blow to the credibility of international peacekeeping efforts. It may create problems of political legitimacy because many African states are deeply hostile to each other. It is less problematic than intervention by Western actors, whether they have a colonial past or not. France has to consider the full multilateralisation of its military engagement. For the cases under scrutiny here, this would have meant the integration of operations Epervier and Boali into EUFOR Chad/CAR and of operation Licorne into UNOCI under a shared command as well as a shared mandate.
