Paris remains firm on Corsican independence

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): "If the Corsicans want their independence, let them have it!" Last October, former French prime minister Raymond Barre broke ranks and spoke the words that no French official ever says. And you could see why: 20 years of nationalist terrorism on the Mediterranean island, an average of 600 bombs a year, and latterly more and more of them on the French mainland. Enough is enough.

But Barre's outburst did not trigger a rapid slide into Corsican independence. On the contrary, there has been a decisive shift towards a get-tough policy in Paris -- and on present evidence, it is a resounding success.

In the past month, most of the known leaders of the Corsican separatist movement have been arrested, and there has been neither the bloodbath nor the general strike that many predicted on the island. "I believe we have at last left ambiguity behind," said current French prime minister Alain Juppe last month, closing the door on the long history of official appeasement of the terrorists.

In Paris, they are starting to hope that they have actually won. The French seized Corsica from Genoa in 1768. Their punishment was Corsican-born dictator Napoleon Bonaparte, who bled France dry during his 15-year-long effort to conquer Europe. But the Corsicans have never been very happy with the relationship either.

There are only a quarter-million of them, but to this day most of them do not use French in their daily lives, clinging instead to "Corsican", a variant of the Genoese dialect of Italian. There was never a full-scale Corsican version of the Sicilian mafia, but the local obsessions with family and honor, the traditions of secrecy and blood feud, bring Sicily irresistibly to mind.

Corsica is also a very poor place. Its economy is the usual Mediterranean island combination of goats, wine and tourists, with the emphasis on the tourists. But the nationalists have been killing people (over 40 dead in 1995) at a clip that has scared most of the tourists away.

So why doesn't France just give Corsica its independence? One reason is that most Corsicans don't really want it. Even the bombers mostly don't want that -- not when French subsidies amount to US$1.4 billion a year, or almost $6,000 per capita.

In the last election to Corsica's local assembly, in 1992, the separatists got only one-fifth of the votes. Opinion polls suggest that now, after the upsurge in violence and the falling tourist income of the past few years, they would get only around one-tenth.

Twenty years ago, when the insurgency started, a lot more Corsicans wanted independence. There was no elected local assembly then, and everything was run from Paris. Besides, it was 1975, and "liberation movements" were in fashion everywhere from Quebec to New Caledonia. But that sort of fashion gets old very fast.

Bombs went off, militants were tortured by the French police, people on both sides got killed -- and the dilettantes and romantics in the separatist movement were shoved aside by the hard men who knew how to run a war. Who knew, in particular, how to finance a small war by imposing a "revolutionary tax" on every business operating on the island.

It's standard late 20th-century guerrilla tactics to shake down the local business community have been pay up or we'll fire- bomb your premises -- or maybe we'll just kill you. The IRA does it in the Catholic parts of Northern Ireland, ETA does it in the Basque country in Spain, the Tamil Tigers do it in northern Sri Lanka.

But in Corsica, with its primitive family-based politics and its deeply entrenched bandit tradition, this was just asking for trouble. For many of the leading gunmen, the independence struggle gradually changed into a glorified and extremely lucrative protection racket. Which led, naturally enough, to turf wars.

Political analysts ponderously explain that the nationalist movement split into three in the early 1980s over the French initiative that gave Corsica a locally elected parliament and a degree of control over its own affairs. But the split was at least as much about control of the revenues from the "revolutionary tax".

Most of the bombs that go off in Corsica are reminders for slow payers ($60 million in property damage in 1995), but the deliberate killings are mostly part of the internal wars between rival clans of gangster nationalists.

However, gangsters in jail can easily become nationalist martyrs -- consider Colombia -- so Paris avoided a crackdown and gave the Corsican terrorists plenty of rope. French governments talked secretly to the nationalists, even bargained with them about acceptable levels of violence.

As Justice Minister Jacques Toubon put it recently, in the 1980s Paris "negotiated with suitcases filled with money." Only one year ago Toubon's own government was still secretly talking to A Cuncolta Naziunalista, the political front for the Corsican National Liberation Front (FLNC). But that's all over now.

The new hard line technically dates from December, when businessman Jacques Dewez bravely refused to pay the "revolutionary tax" on the resort he owns in Corsica and went to the police instead. (The FNLC promptly bombed it.) But it was really a strategic decision: Paris now reckons it is safe to hit the terrorists hard, because the Corsican population no longer has even a sneaking sympathy for them.

In the past month, every leader but one of A Cuncolta Naziunalista has been arrested, together with many of the lower- level gunmen, and there has not been a shadow of popular protest in Corsica. More like a collective sigh of relief, in fact. It's over.

There are two lessons here for all the other governments that face similar challenges. First, not every group with a strong local identity is bound to become a separate nationality. Most of them don't need to, nor do most of their people necessarily want to.

Secondly, you need a 20-year strategy, immense tactical cunning, and more patience than Job. Then, finally, the silent majority may throw its weight behind you.