The overseas French province of New Caledonia experienced its worst outbreak of unrest since the 1980s after the National Assembly passed a constitutional amendment granting voting rights to those who’ve lived on the island for at least ten years. The local Kanaks, many of whom are independence-inclined but have been demographically replaced by French settlers and non-French migrants over the decades, feared that this move would further dilute their already gradually declining electoral influence.
Instead of taking responsibility for provoking the locals through this false democratic pretext aimed at strengthening Paris’ control over its mineral-rich de facto colony that’s supposed to serve as the focal point of its “Pivot to Asia”, leading officials tried scapegoating Azerbaijan. According to them, this meddling is being managed through the “Baku Initiative Group”, which was founded in that city last year to bring together anti-imperialist and pro-independence activists from France’s overseas provinces.
It didn’t come out of the blue though but was a response to the last three decades of French meddling in Azerbaijan’s formerly Armenian-occupied western regions. President Ilham Aliyev also gave two fiery speeches last year where he condemned French neo-colonialism, which were analyzed here and here at the time. France still continues trying to “poach” Armenia from Russia’s CSTO in order to turn it into a NATO proxy for waging war against Azerbaijan yet again at some future date in the worst-case scenario.
By championing the cause of anti-imperialist and pro-independence activists in France’s overseas provinces, Azerbaijan is simultaneously discrediting Armenian diaspora-influenced French allegations that it’s supposedly the “imperialist” of those two while also giving France a dose of its own medicine. It would be wrong to blame Baku for the latest unrest in New Caledonia, however, since the trigger event was Paris’ own National Assembly passing that contentious constitutional amendment.
Had that not happened, then no unrest would have broken out last week, nor would France have to urgently dispatch reinforcements from the metropole to its de facto colony out of desperation to restore law and order after imposing an ultra-strict state of emergency there. This sequence of events further reinforces the perception that the latest unrest was inadvertently self-inflicted due to that poorly thought-out policy, not the result of a foreign-backed conspiracy hatched in Baku.
All that Azerbaijan did was provide a platform for like-minded anti-imperialist and pro-independence activists in France’s overseas provinces to network with one another. The political support that it extended to their multipolar causes might have emboldened some of them to ramp up their activities since they now have a chance of having their views amplified on the international stage. None of this, however, was responsible for bringing together groups of rowdy protesters in New Caledonia.
Those individuals gathered together on their own initiative after the National Assembly passed its contentious constitutional amendment, not because Baku or anyone else paid them to. Local political groups probably played a role in organizing some of these initially peaceful demonstrations, but blaming Azerbaijan for the subsequent breakdown in law and order is meant to deflect from the self-inflicted nature of this unrest as was earlier explained. Simply put, Paris doesn’t want to take responsibility.
It’s much easier to try pinning the blame on Baku than to admit that this latest political move was a provocative overreach of the metropole’s power that predictably engendered a violent reaction. France has already lost most of its influence in its former African colonies since 2022 so it’s more sensitive than ever about the scenario of losing control over its de facto colonies too. This paranoid mindset helps explain why the National Assembly wanted to change voting laws in New Caledonia in the first place.
Instead of pushing through that legislation, it would have been better from the perspective of France’s national interests as its elite perceive them at least to have promulgated a Georgian-like US-inspired foreign agents act for mandating that foreign-funded people and groups publicly disclose their status. If indisputable proof exists that Azerbaijan is funding some of these anti-imperialist and pro-independence forces in France’s overseas provinces, then everyone would have been made aware of it.
Upon that happening, France could have then tabled its contentious constitutional amendments, after which the involvement of any foreign agent-designated people and groups in the predictably forthcoming unrest could have then been presented as alleged evidence of foreign meddling. By rushing to push through its amendments without any thought of publicly exposing supposedly foreign-funded people and groups beforehand, France made it so that few believe its accusations against Azerbaijan.
From here on out, any supposed evidence that’s shared in support of the claim that anti-imperialist and pro-independence forces in its overseas provinces are financed by Azerbaijan will be questioned since many might now suspect that it’s manufactured in order to push through the aforementioned narrative. It’s politically convenient for France to lay all the blame for this latest unrest on Azerbaijan, but it could have more compellingly made its case had it already shared proof of this before everything happened.
Not only that, but any follow-up efforts to rally the West against Azerbaijan on this pretext will now be more difficult, thus throwing yet another wrench in France’s plans. That’s not to say that it won’t try, just that the chances of success are less likely now than if it had earlier presented such evidence. As for Azerbaijan, it won’t flinch in the face of French pressure to abandon those anti-imperialist and pro-independence forces, some of whom are quickly turning into serious problems for Paris.
