France

Alex Grigsby is the assistant director for the Digital and Cyberspace Policy program at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Something remarkable happened a few months ago. Bernard Barbier, the former head of signals intelligence (SIGINT) between 2006 and 2014 at France’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE), gave a speech at one of France’s top engineering schools in which he reflected on his career and imparted some of his wisdom to students. He also said some things that he probably shouldn’t have, like confirming that France was behind the Animal Farm advanced persistent threat, commenting on the SIGINT capabilities of European allies, and reacting to the revelation that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) had compromised the networks of the French presidency. Last week, Barbier’s speech surfaced on YouTube but was quickly taken down (UPDATE: A new version of the video is up here. H/T Boing Boing). However, it was up long enough for French daily Le Monde to transcribe some of the highlights. Here they are, paraphrased and translated from the original French. 1. "I got the order from Mr. Sarkozy’s successor [current President Hollande] to shout at the Americans ... it was a great moment in my professional career" Barbier recalls that he was first informed of a possible compromise at the Élysée palace in 2012, when a former colleague working IT security at the palace reached out for analysis on a piece of malware. With the help of a new metadata capability the French obtained in 2012 and Edward Snowden’s revelation of the NSA’s QUANTUM capability in 2013, Barbier’s staff concluded that the attack on the Élysée was the work of the United States. Barbier recalls:   I received the order from Mr. Sarkozy’s successor to go to shout at the Americans. It was on April 12, 2013 and it was really a great moment in my professional career. We were convinced it was them. At the end of the meeting, Keith Alexander [director of the NSA from 2005 to 2014] was not happy. While we were in the bus, he told me he was disappointed because he never thought they would have been caught. He added: "You are pretty good." As allies, we didn’t spy on them. The fact that the Americans broke this rule took us by surprise.   2. "And yes, it was a Frenchman"  In 2014, Le Monde published documents from the Snowden archive revealing that Canada’s SIGINT agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), suspected that Paris was behind a cyber espionage campaign that began in 2009 targeting Iran’s nuclear program but also targeting computers in Canada. CSE was able to attribute the campaign to the French based on some reverse engineering revealing that the malware developer used references to a French children’s cartoon character, Babar the Elephant. That reference also led Kaspersky to baptise the malware Animal Farm. Barbier recalls that CSE "concluded that he [the malware author] was French. And yes, it was a Frenchman." 3. The pipe dream of united European intelligence agency and the possibility of merging French and German intelligence.  In one of the more surprising aspects of Barbier’s speech, he mused about the possibility of creating a European intelligence agency but quickly dismissed the notion, noting that only a fusion of French and German intelligence agencies would be feasible.   It is impossible to build a single European intelligence agency with twenty-eight countries that don’t have the same capabilities or the same culture. The best, by population size, are the Swedes. The Italians are bad. The Spanish are a bit better, but don’t have the capabilities. And the Brits, with 6,500 staff at GCHQ [Government Communications Headquarters, the UK SIGINT agency] are very good, but are they European? And France has the strongest technical capabilities for intelligence collection in continental Europe.   That leaves the Germans, who are solid partners. I’ve worked a lot with them, sometimes transmitting our knowhow and bringing them some technical capability. German and French engineers work very well together. In contrast, a British engineer with a French engineer is complicated. To be more effective, I told French politicians that we had to merge the BND [the German foreign intelligence agency] and the DGSE. It’s the only solution. It would be a an agency with 15,000 staff. The NSA has 60,000 people, and the SIGINT section of the DGSE is 3,000 agents. But the French politicians never followed up.   Merging the BND and the DGSE would have made for some awkward conversations given that last year, news reports revealed that the BND had been spying on France. 4. Snowden is a traitor that "rather helped us" Finally, Barbier gives his opinion on Edward Snowden, presumably in response to a question from the audience.   For me, Snowden is a traitor to his country, but he has nothing to do with Julian Assange. The Americans made Snowden, who was an external contractor, a systems administrator. Those who do that job in the DGSE are bureaucrats that have between fifteen and twenty years of seniority. The possibility of having a Snowden in France is very low. Snowden showed that espionage between allies existed and that Americans compromised hardware, such as that sold by Cisco and poses a problem for technological independence. In that sense, Snowden rather helped us.  

This is a guest post by Claire Wilmot, a former intern for the Council on Foreign Relations Africa Program. She is a master of global affairs candidate at the University of Toronto. You can follow her on twitter at @claireLwilmot. Violence in Burundi has escalated significantly over the past month. Opposition leaders and activists have been tortured and killed, independent media is being stifled, and human rights monitors report the daily discovery of bodies across the capital. It is estimated that at least 240 have been killed and thousands have fled since April, when President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to flout a constitutional two-term limit and run for a third term in office. It is unsurprising that Nkurunziza’s refusal to relinquish power triggered a wave of violence, given the history of civil conflict in Burundi. The Arusha Accords, which ended Burundi’s 1993-2005 civil war recognized that the country’s vulnerability to violence stemmed from “a struggle by the political class to accede to and/or remain in power.” Arusha implemented a number of provisions that sought to lower the stakes of political competition in Burundi—a pivotal mechanism was limiting Burundi’s president to two terms in office. Limiting terms for leaders helps avoid the kind of zero-sum politics that can lead to violence in highly divided societies. Burundi’s colonial history gave rise to a state-capture complex—access to the state is a lucrative privilege for the political class in power, often at the expense of the majority. In poor or divided societies, maintaining power becomes a high-stakes game, and can lead political competitors to resort to violence. Term limits can play a stabilizing role by leveling the political playing field. Newcomers have a greater chance of ascending the presidency if the incumbent must step down after two terms, and opponents are more likely to challenge the government electorally. Nkurunziza’s victory in the July elections, which were not free or fair, proved to the opposition that contesting power peacefully is futile. Despite growing fear that the ruling party’s rhetoric is reminiscent of the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, it is unlikely that the conflict in Burundi will play out along ethnic lines. Burundi has been successful in ethnically integrating the government and key institutions. Political identities are not determined by ethnicity alone—both Hutu and Tutsi make up the opposition, and both have suffered government repression. Fears over possible military fragmentation are founded; however, the crowding out of certain officers appears to be based on party affiliation rather than ethnicity. The heart of the conflict is between Nkurunziza’s faction of the ruling CNDD-FDD, and those unwilling to accept democratic backpedaling. The AU was quick to condemn violence in Burundi, but failed to pressure Nkurunziza to respect his country’s constitution and step aside, which might have prevented violence. However, presidential term limits are a touchy subject at the AU—many heads of state in the region have successfully pursued strategies similar to Nkurunziza. The AU’s Peace and Security Council issued a statement in October urging Nkurunziza to commit to inclusive negotiations with the opposition. So far, he has failed to include key opposition groups in the inter-Burundian dialogue, denouncing them as “enemies of the nation.” Extending the dialogue to these groups would recognize the legitimacy of Nkurunziza’s political opponents, something he is yet unwilling to do. The AU also proposed an Africa-led peace implementation mission should a political solution fail. Ethnic rifts may be less salient, but political divisions have become explosive. Burundi’s conflict is unlikely to culminate in genocide; however, the re-emergence of civil war could be just as devastating. A political solution may still be possible for Burundi, and international actors should continue to pressure Nkurunziza to pursue inclusive dialogue with the opposition. The key to preventing future political violence, however, lies in defending constitutional provisions that encourage peaceful contestations of power.

In press events around his September 15 diplomatic visit to Paris, President Muhammadu Buhari said that the struggle against Boko Haram and the self-proclaimed Islamic state is the same fight. He added that Boko Haram had expanded after its March declaration of allegiance to the Islamic State. According to Agence France-Presse, French President Francois Hollande agreed, saying “We know Boko Haram is linked to Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State). To fight Boko Haram is to fight Daesh, and we can no longer single out terrorism according to regions. It is the same terrorism, inspired by the same ideology of death.” According to Nigerian media, Hollande said that France will provide intelligence and equipment to the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) fighting against Boko Haram. The MNJTF is made up of Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Benin, and Cameroon. Niger, Chad, Benin and Cameroon are francophone and have close ties with France. There is a French military base in Chad’s capital of Ndjamena that has been the hub of its operations against jihadist radicalism in the Sahel. Hollande also promised significant developmental assistance, and the French presidency hinted at upcoming French private investment in the Nigerian economy. Many Nigerians  have seen Boko Haram as linked to the Islamic State and part of the “international war on terror.” Hollande has long subscribed to that view. Some Nigerians suggest that the “face” of Boko Haram,  Abubakar Shekau, is in fact in Syria. There are strong theological and ideological similarities between Boko Haram and the Islamic State. However, the former has long been focused on the destruction of the Nigerian political economy, rather than the Islamic State’s much broader agenda. Conventional wisdom is that Islamic State operatives are often hostile to black Africans. A few Nigerians have gone to Syria to join the Islamic State, allegedly including a son of a retired Supreme Court justice. But, the numbers have been very few. Unclassified evidence of collaboration and cooperation between Boko Haram and the Islamic State is thin. The Islamic State does appear to have helped Boko Haram upgrade its video propaganda. Nevertheless, Boko Haram has changed over time. In the face of military pressure from the MNJTF and the possible defection of some of its fighters, it may be turning to the Islamic State. For its part, Islamic State propaganda refers to Boko Haram as one of its “provinces” thereby seeking to augment its own international prestige.