It was a crossover unexpected, and yet: Balard attacks Wakanda. This Sunday, the Minister of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu denounced the representation of the French soldiers in the second part of the Marvel blockbuster Black Panther where they are depicted as having come to plunder resources, a reaction which is part of a context of information warfare in Africa.
“I strongly condemn this misleading and misleading representation of our armed forces”, published Minister Sébastien Lecornu on his Twitter account. “I think and pay tribute to the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali at its request against Islamist terrorist groups. »
The resemblance to the soldiers in Mali
The film Black Panther: Wakanda Forever by Ryan Coogler, released in France at the end of 2022, depicts French soldiers prisoners kneeling before the queen of Wakanda, a fictional kingdom, in outfit similar to those of French soldiers deployed in Mali until last August. In the film, a French minister must also answer for their actions before the United Nations.
Sébastien Lecornu’s entourage underlines “the minister’s anger at seeing the film”, while France also regularly accuses Russia of waging an information war on it by manipulating public opinion on its action in the region.
No withdrawal, no censorship
The ministry admits the freedom of an “artistic work” of which France does not claim either the withdrawal or the censorship. On the other hand, “there can be no revisionism about France’s recent action in Mali: we intervened at the request of the country to fight against armed terrorist groups far from the story told in the film, namely a French army coming to plunder its natural resources,” it added.
“It is the minister’s role to defend the results of operations Serval and Barkhane”, deployed respectively in 2013 and 2014 at the request of Bamako to fight against jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group. The double coup in Mali in 2020 and 2021 sealed the operation. The last French soldier left the country at the end of August. Relations have since been icy between Paris and Bamako, which, according to Paris, offered the services of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner, which the junta denies.
The deteriorated image of France in the Sahel
The minister’s reaction is also part of Paris’ desire to respond “to the stories of our competitors” in Africa, we recognize at the ministry. A direct allusion to the deterioration of the image of France in public opinion in the Sahel, amplified in particular by Russian propaganda, in particular by the galaxy of media organs linked to the Wagner group.
The very latest National Strategic Review (RNS), presented by President Emmanuel Macron last November, thus established among the “strategic functions” of defense the concept of “influence”, which includes the fight against false information for of destabilization.