Baghdad to Paris: The undying axis

"We are opening our door to France, and are inviting it to take advantage of the opportunity we are offering it. It would be as much your interest as ours."

This quote, recounted by journalist Chris Kutschera in his Black Book of Saddam Hussein, is one that could well be attributed to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki who just a few months ago invited French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner to provide his country with "high quality military equipment."

Yet, the open-ended offer is one that was in fact extended by Saddam to then French prime minister Jacques Chaban-Delmas in June 1972, over three decades ago.

Nothing better than this quid pro quo can convey the permanence of mutual interests in the close relations Paris and Baghdad have enjoyed ever since the early days of the Baath regime. France was in Iraq from the start, and now that its dictatorial partner has gone, it seems poised to take another run at living up to the war-torn country's expectations.

Helicopters without borders

The story external page was broken just a few weeks ago by French daily Le Figaro's veteran reporter Georges Malbrunot: Paris could soon be selling up to 50 helicopters to Baghdad in order to boost the nation's security apparatus.

Though the details of this possible transaction remain undisclosed, the Associated Press has reported that the original deal would be for "30 surveillance and rescue helicopters, with an option to buy 20 more."

Very little is known about the specifics of the product being discussed, but Stratfor - a US forecasting group - tells ISN Security Watch that the Iraqis could be looking at SA-341 or SA-342 Gazelle light multi-role choppers, which could be used to secure Iraq's borders and oil fields.

Because production of this model ceased in the mid-1990s, the aircraft originally designed by the Marseilles-based and world-leading helicopter maker Eurocopter would have to be sold second-hand by the French armed forces to their Iraqi counterpart.

This procedure, Stratfor explains, could be warranted by the fact that "the Gazelle was used by the Iraqi military during Saddam's tenure, so there would be a certain familiarity, possibly some surviving parts and specialized tools and potential attraction because of that."

One reason for not choosing American-made helicopters is that "there are some cases where US companies do not offer the right product" and Iraq has "long experience with non-US equipment," as recently illustrated by Baghdad's multiple purchases of Russian Mi-17 Hip transport helicopters.

Overall, as one Iraqi official told the AP in Paris, "Iraq needs to renew its military capacity, and needs to have several arms suppliers, not just one state.

"Baghdad is seeking to increase its bargaining power against the United States in the political and military realms, and the bilateral contracts currently under discussion fit into that perspective," a leading observer of Iraq's reconstruction added for ISN Security Watch.

Grief all around

Clearly, Iraq has plenty to gain from broadening the scope of its foreign relations, which have been marked by Washington's crushing involvement in the country's sluggish reconstruction since 2003.

"The Iraqi arena is open to British companies and British friendship," Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki external page announced in the Times of London just a couple weeks ago.

But the overtures do not stop there.

Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, a lecturer-researcher at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) as well as the author of Hamlet in Iraq (CNRS, 2007), reminds ISN Security Watch that already in July 2004, Baghdad had invited France and Germany to begin training the country's security forces - an offer taken up at the time by Berlin only.

More surprising, however, is Paris' desire to reverse course and follow al-Maliki's invitation not to "allow ourselves to be controlled by what happened in the past," which referred to France's friendship with Saddam throughout his reign.
Indeed, the renewal of French arms sales to Iraq could prove a costly move politically and financially.

For one, the refurbishment of the Paris-to-Baghdad axis is likely to upset the Quai d'Orsay's regional strategy of engagement. "The contracts currently being discussed naturally worry Iraq's neighbors - Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia - who do not wish to see a too powerful Iraq re-emerge on the military level," Scheffer said.

Jean-Paul Hébert, who heads the Paris-based Interdisciplinary Research Center on Strategic and Peace Studies, adds that France's Middle East policy appears somewhat desultory, focusing on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates one day and on Iraq the next.

More importantly, he warns, Paris runs the risk of angering the US by meddling in what seems to have become its new backyard. Unless, he adds, the current deal is part of a trade-off for President Nicolas Sarkozy's willingness to support Washington's mini-surge in Afghanistan, which may or may not be the case. 

Skeptical about the ongoing discussions, Hébert points to a final anomaly in the French move: With Iraq's finances still in dire condition and the country's heavy legacy of bad credit, it remains difficult to understand why Sarkozy would want to re-engage with Baghdad at this point.

It may be that there is much more in it for France than selling 50 converted helicopters.

A game of political comeback

As the European Council on Foreign Relation's senior fellow Daniel Korski told ISN Security Watch, "It's not sure the weapons sale in and of itself is so significant, but it has to be seen in the context of a larger French review of its Middle Eastern policy."

Though it was among the first countries to restore diplomatic ties with Baghdad - as early as April 2003 - and despite its invitation of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani in November 2006, France remained surprisingly absent from the US' war turf for many years after Saddam Hussein's demise.

That was until the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy in May 2007.

Since that time, Scheffer says, "the policy advocated by [former French president] Jacques Chirac of staying clear from Washington's position has given way to a 'rapprochement' with the United States on the Iraqi issue concerning the importance of finding a common solution to the difficulties of returning to peace and reconstructing the country."

"One of the strongest illustrations of this new policy, Scheffer adds, was French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner's visit to Baghdad in August 2007. This was the first visit of a French minister of foreign affairs to Iraq since 1988 and marked a true break with the policy of 'non-intervention' sponsored by Jacques Chirac."

Recently asked by Syrian political analyst Sami Moubayed why "France is still absent from Iraq five years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein," Kouchner, speaking to Forward magazine, an English monthly in Syria, replied that quite to the contrary, "In less than nine months, I visited Iraq twice. Each time, I made a point of spending several nights there and during my second trip I visited different parts of the country - the Shiite south, Baghdad, Kurdistan - in order to emphasize France's interest in the country."

For anyone who can read between the lines, what this means is that Paris' "rapprochement" with the US on the Iraqi front may in fact be yet another way to undermine Washington's influence in the region.

For Moubayed, who interviewed Kouchner during his September visit to Syria, the current helicopter deal is "part of a greater French strategy followed by Sarkozy to re-establish France in places that Paris had lost under Chirac, which applies to countries like Iraq and Syria."

To some extent, this scheme may well pay off, for as Stratfor analysts put it: "An increasingly international influence and presence may be welcome by some [of Iraq's] neighbors wherever it comes from just simply as an erosion of US influence in Baghdad."

Milk the cow… if you can

All in all, France is trying to re-brand itself in the minds of Iraq's leaders. From an image of "the dictator's closest ally," it is seeking to move toward one of "the people's best friend."

This may well explain its attempt "to position itself, like the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI), as a mediator, a dialogue facilitator between Iraq's political forces," as Scheffer puts it.

By promoting the Iraqi people's right to regain full sovereignty and control of its land, Paris is also making sure Baghdad recovers the right to choose its trading partners, which fits perfectly with Kouchner's efforts to boost French companies' interest in the Middle Eastern resource-hub.

The Quai d'Orsay's argument that the helicopter deal currently being discussed is one that aims to contribute to the Iraqisation of the country's enduring conflict fits this mold. As Stratfor told ISN Security Watch, "Whether Iraqisation of the country is going to happen or not is irrelevant to the French, they just want to sell weapons and if Iraqisation means more weapons sales, then more power to them."

Quite evidently, Sarkozy and his team are dreaming of a French-fueled rebirth of Iraq's economic and military potential. Yet if there is anything Paris has learned from the fallout of its clash with Washington over the run-up to the war of 2003, it is that it can no longer count without the US in its Middle Eastern policy.

Hence, though Moubayed may be right to point out that "the French are returning to Baghdad," one should probably believe Iraqi spokesman Jawad Bashara when he says that his country's overture to Paris is not about "replacing the Americans, or rejecting them.