Wuambushu: a Shimaore word meaning ‘recovery,’ is the name of a vast police operation launched on April 24th by the French government in one of its overseas territories, the island of Mayotte, which has been plagued for many years by uncontrolled immigration that brings with it a great deal of suffering and drama. The idea was to re-establish the authority of the state and enforce the law. Instead, the effort has turned into an indescribable fiasco.
It has become, as it were, a microcosm of the impotence of European governments who want to try to tackle the scourge of immigration.
Let’s remember the facts and what’s at stake in this vast operation. It concerns the island of Mayotte, located in the Indian Ocean in the middle of the Mozambique Channel. A French possession since the July Monarchy (1840s), it is part of the Comoros archipelago, which had long been under a protectorate. In 1974, a referendum was held in the archipelago, which called for independence—with the exception of the island of Mayotte, which preferred to remain French and now enjoys full status as a French department and region. The Comorian state, formed against France and without Mayotte, has claimed possession of Mayotte since its formation in the 1970s.
The island of Mayotte has the highest population density in overseas France, but also the highest growth rate with an average of almost five children per woman. This is due to the application of French nationality law on the island, or droit du sol: consequently, many women from the Indian Ocean come to Mayotte to give birth so their children can benefit from French nationality. The maternity hospital in Mamoudzou, the island’s main town, is the largest in France in terms of the number of births per year, and that’s not including the 900 clandestine births by mothers who deliver babies, in unclean and unsafe conditions, with the help of the fire brigade.
In an attempt to curb these practices, Mayotte’s birthright was reformed in 2018. Since then for a child to be born French, one of its parents must have been living in Mayotte for at least three months without interruption. This provision, which differs from French law, has somewhat slowed down the immigration of pregnant women, but not significantly to relieve the island, which is succumbing to permanent arrivals of poor, unemployed people who settle in precarious structures dreaming of the panacea that the French passport is assumed to be.
The dramatic situation of the island of Mayotte—nearly 80% of the population lives below the national poverty line—attracted the spotlight during the presidential campaign, but since then nothing has changed significantly.
On 24 April 2023, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin launched Operation Wuambushu as an attempt to bring order to a territory plagued by violence and lawlessness. The operation provides for the expulsion, from French soil, of foreign nationals who have arrived illegally in Mayotte—mainly from the Comoros archipelago—and also for the dismantling of the thousands of shanty towns on the island, the ‘bangas,’ otherwise described by the minister as “these illegal settlements where children, the elderly, and the handicapped live, who have no water, electricity or gas.” The mission is also intended to be an opportunity to dismantle the criminal gangs that are rampant on the island which create a growing climate of insecurity. Darmanin reminded the senators that he had launched this operation at the request of local elected representatives of Mahoran—regardless of their political colour.
Sound intentions, indeed. It would seem they came up against the double resistance of reality and ideology.
Reality first. The neighbouring Comorian state categorically refused to accept the illegal immigrants expelled from Mayotte, even though most of them are Comorian nationals. The boats were required to return to Mayotte, directly challenging France’s authority in this matter. The situation is worsened by France continuing to pay millions of euros in development aid to the Comorian government without receiving anything in return.
Ideological resistance, a second consideration, may be an even stronger obstacle. In metropolitan France, all the virtue leagues have come together to denounce several vices: the excesses of the ‘police state’; the contempt for migrants; the undignified treatment of illegal immigrants are among them. It doesn’t matter that a significant part of the local population, as well as three-quarters of the French population in metropolitan France support the government’s actions on these matters. Demonstrations by a few well-practised activists have been organised all over mainland France to denounce the government’s intervention in Mayotte and the dismantling of the shanty towns, in the process linking the planned bill on immigration to the police operation. On the island, shantytown inhabitants took the matter to the administrative courts, through which they obtained the suspension of the destruction operation on the grounds that it was an infringement of property rights, and that nothing had really been planned to accommodate the families thus dislodged. As a result, while more than 1,000 bangas were to be demolished, only a few dozen were destroyed.
Since the operation was launched, nothing has been settled, and the island is sinking into chaos. Looting and riots are flourishing. A painfully predictable fiasco, according to Rassemblement National MEP André Rougé, a specialist in overseas affairs who was once an adviser to former President Jacques Chirac on these issues. Nothing was anticipated by the government on the possible resistance of all kinds—however easy to predict. For François-Xavier Bellamy, a European deputy from Les Républicains, Mayotte is just a summary of the migration problems that France is experiencing—only more intense.
We can go further: the impotence of the French government’s actions on the island in the Indian Ocean is no different from the experience of any European government claiming to tackle immigration today. Unpreparedness and lack of political firmness hamstring any hope for success; moral condemnation awaits anyone who tries to show a little firmness, and for those few countries willing to toe the line, lengthy legal appeals and administrative procedures will take care of reducing a government’s efforts to nothing. Poll after poll and election after election prove that people are generally in favour of regulation and firmness. But the progressive agenda, for the moment, has decided otherwise.
