To the consternation and amazement of the French public, a supposedly benevolent French-led peacekeeping mission in Ivory Coast has, almost overnight, catapulted more than 4,000 French troops into a chaotic urban battleground where thousands of French expatriates are being hunted down by mobs animated by unmistakable hatred. Having presented itself as the neutral arbiter in a civil war, France is now in open confrontation with Laurent Gbagbo, Ivory Coast’s dismal President.

On the line in Abidjan, the country’s riot-racked commercial capital, are not only French lives, but France’s prestige. If French troops do not reassert their authority in Abidjan, where President Gbagbo’s support is strongest, 14,000 French citizens will be vulnerable to violent gangs of “patriotes ivoiriens” urged to “liberate” the country from French influence. Yet the process of establishing control will fan still further a violent and emotional surge of hatred of “colonialist” France. This is now a far more dangerous operation than France had bargained for. The United Nations, which deployed a supporting 6,000-strong peacekeeping contingent to Ivory Coast, assumed that French troops would do whatever fighting needed to be done. Paris, which has never ceased to call the political tune in its former West African colonies, assumed that its will would prevail. The peacekeepers were deployed to oversee the settlement imposed last year by Dominique de Villepin, then the Foreign Minister. This involved a ceasefire between government forces and a potent rebellion, coupled with disarmament and the inclusion by President Gbagbo of rebel components in his Government.

Since each side in this nasty conflict thought it could win, the deal was bitterly resented by both and never seriously implemented. That left French troops, with UN support, patrolling what was euphemistically called a “line of confidence” between two armies itching to return to the fight. Last week government forces abruptly broke the ceasefire, in the process bombing — deliberately, Paris insists — a French camp, killing nine soldiers and wounding 34. France retaliated by destroying all of Ivory Coast’s small air force. All hell broke loose.

As France struggles to contain the situation, clarity about its aims would help. Is it there on a mission civilisatrice to impose democracy, the rule of law and national reconciliation — a mission resembling that of the US, Britain and others in Iraq, and possibly, as enraged Gbagbo loyalists are being told, incorporating regime change? Is France content to straddle a ceasefire line for decades — a thanklessly “classic” UN peacekeeping operation in the Kashmir or Lebanon mode? Or is its aim to protect France’s considerable commercial interests in West Africa’s richest economy, a country that is moreover key to regional prosperity? The last goal, paradoxically, would be the least inflammatory. Glasnost has rarely been a feature of French policy in Francophone Africa; but, in the present emergency, stability must be the priority.