An aggressive campaign, coming from the top of the State, mainly directed against France. This is how we can summarize the action of the Baku Initiative Group (BIG), an organization linked to Azerbaijani power, according to Viginum, the Matignon service responsible for vigilance and protection against foreign interference. In a report published this Monday, December 2, which L’Express was able to consult, the service denounces an actor “disseminating content with an editorial line resolutely hostile to France”. For this, the BIG intends to “deliberately exploit the political and economic situation” in the overseas territories and in Corsica, and “to exploit the history of the French presence on the African continent for malicious purposes”. With little success, however: in its report, Viginum notes that the BIG “did not succeed in obtaining the visibility probably expected among the populations” of the targeted territories. A failure sufficient for the operation to be nicknamed “UN-notorious BIG”, a play on words diverting the name of Notorious BIG (‘Notoriously Big’, in VF), leading rapper of the New York scene in the 1990s.
Leading several digital campaigns from July 2023 to October 2024 – the period analyzed – the BIG sought to “challenge the territorial integrity of France in its overseas territories”, using independence movements and ideas. The organization has also attempted to strengthen its ties with pan-Africanist influencers in order to increase aggressive discourse towards France. A sufficiently coordinated and notable action – both online and in person, in Baku – for the report to underline “the clear and persistent desire to undermine the fundamental interests of the Nation”. And does not hesitate to accuse the Azerbaijani power: “It appears that the BIG can be considered as a state propaganda agency against France, therefore the strategy consists of exploiting the public debate in the Overseas Territories to serve the objectives foreign policy of Azerbaijan. “France strongly condemns these attempts at Azerbaijani interference, added the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It calls on Azerbaijan to find the diplomatic channel to deal with bilateral disputes and contribute to international stability.”
“The Baku initiative group is our child”
The Baku initiative group was created on July 6, 2023, in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. At the time, the latter held the presidency of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries, an international organization of around a hundred states, which claim not to be aligned with any major world power. The BIG was therefore created on the sidelines of a ministerial meeting, after a round table organized by an Azerbaijani think tank founded by presidential decree, Air Center. This round table, in the name of “Towards Complete Elimination of Colonialism”, already brings together several members of independence movements from New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Guyana, Martinique, Guadeloupe and Corsica. It announces what the BIG will become, namely an organization claiming to “fight against colonialism and neocolonialism”.
Born in the heart of power in Baku, the organization will never move away. Since the fall of 2023, it has been headed by Abbas Abbasov, who worked for a long time for Azerbaijan’s national oil fund. She benefits from the clear support of the president. “The Baku initiative group is our child,” Ilham Aliev said earlier this year.
Hostile gestures and statements
Adept of an aggressive digital presence, the BIG was notably involved in an initiative to “denigrate German, Irish and Austrian French deputies of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe” on January 25, 2024. But also in a doxing campaign (publishing private information about a person without their consent) against Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Secretary General of NATO. Maneuvers, notes Viginum, intended to “defend the political interests of the Azerbaijani power”. In each case, the targeted personalities have one thing in common: they are accused by Azerbaijani actors of being linked to the “Armenian lobby”. This argument is recurrent in circles close to power, Azerbaijan being in conflict with Armenia over a territorial enclave in the Caucasus, Nagorno-Karabakh.
Paris, which is “resolutely committed to the side of Armenia and the Armenian people”, in the words of the Quai d’Orsaynotably through arms deliveries, has become a favored target for Baku. “Since July 2023, Azerbaijan has chosen to open a bilateral crisis with France, we note at the Quai d’Orsay. Despite France maintaining a posture of dialogue through diplomatic channels , the Azerbaijani authorities have increased hostile gestures and declarations, most recently by using the climate negotiations held in Baku to target France and the European Union.
Inauthentic amplification
Since its creation, the BIG has carried out several digital campaigns – the first between July 6 and 8, 2023, the others detected between September 2023 and February 2024 – against France. Each time, an ecosystem of several hundred accounts (sometimes reaching nearly 900) participates in the “inauthentic amplification” on the X platform of hashtags linking France and colonialism. In the majority of cases, these users carry out coordinated action, copying and pasting the same messages, regularly using the same illustrations – linked to French nuclear tests in the Pacific, or to colonization. These campaigns can be linked to current events, such as the organization in Baku by the BIG of a conference on neocolonialism in October 2023, or the arrest of two activists from the Nazione independence party on February 2, 2024.
Analysis of the messages thus reveals several obsessions: France and its supposed neocolonialism, firstly. Martinique, for example, is one of the organization’s interests, as well as Corsica “which has become, from February 2024, one of the BIG’s preferred targets”, underlines the report. But the attention seems above all to be focused on New Caledonia, “a territory (which) seems to be the preferred vector of BIG actions over this period”, and, surprisingly, “even before the outbreak of riots in mid-May 2024.” Their online activity during this period and its denunciation in a previous report by Viginum, however, led X to close several accounts in this ecosystem, leading to “a significant drop in activity” on the platform. A closure which did not prevent them from acting subsequently. Opportunistic, the BIG did not hesitate to exploit every tension in the overseas territories. In October, demonstrations against the high cost of living in Martinique were an opportunity to publish content “aimed at polarizing the French-speaking digital public”, observes the report.
France’s “racist policy”
Conferences, events of all kinds, writing reports… From spring 2024, the organization has deployed a wealth of activity, attempting to forge ever closer links between independence movements and Azerbaijan. Each time, only one compass: exploit the heritage of French colonization. On April 18, 2024, a delegation from New Caledonia was even received in the Azerbaijani parliament. A reception with great fanfare, during which Omayra Naisseline, elected FLNKS-UC of the Caledonian Congress, signed a memorandum of understanding “affirming the recognition by Azerbaijan of the right to the self-determination of New Caledonia”. These trips and Baku’s involvement are not a discovery for Paris. Two weeks later, on April 30, a representative of the Polynesian Tavini Huiraatira party in turn initialed a memorandum. In September, the process was repeated with a Comorian delegation, this time on the sidelines of a conference on “the question of the illegal occupation of the Comorian island of Mayotte by France”.
Texts without legal foundations, but which serve to bring Baku closer to the independence movements, affirming the government’s support for their cause. This summer, the BIG went further, even organizing a conference dedicated to “independenceists in French colonial territories”. Its president went so far as to announce the creation of “study scholarships” allocated to students from overseas territories. On this occasion, the BIG also supported the arrival of an “international Front for the Liberation of the last French colonies”. On the agenda: “unite the efforts of the colonies in their decolonization process” and denounce “the racist policy and repression” that France would carry out in its overseas territories.
But not only that: since the start of the 2024 school year, the BIG is now trying to get closer to pan-Africanist spheres. On October 7, the group organized a conference, again in Baku, on “The French Policy of Neocolonialism in Africa.” The pan-Africanist influencer Kemi Seba, known to be close to Russia, was present, a week before his arrest in France. An arrest widely denounced by the BIG networks… without them having any real visibility. Because according to Viginum’s analyses, the “volume of interactions under BIG publications remained very low”. The group’s activism has so far not borne fruit: the organization is struggling to establish itself in the French-speaking digital public debate. “Un-notorious” BIG: not very well known, then?
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