On May 31, 2024, a handful of “caledologists”, a small circle of senior civil servants specializing in the archipelago, are gathered on Rue Oudinot in Paris, at the Ministry of Overseas Territories. For the past two weeks, New Caledonia has been shaken by violent riots following the adoption by the National Assembly of a constitutional reform project on the modification of the electoral body. The major general of the gendarmerie, André Petillot, is there, as well as the director of the national police, Frédéric Veaux, and Céline Berthon, the head of the General Directorate of Internal Security (DGSI), the internal intelligence agency.
“We were expecting an intervention on the profile of the rioters but we learned absolutely nothing,” regrets Jean-Jacques Urvoas, former Minister of Justice and former rapporteur of the parliamentary information mission on the future of New Caledonia, present in the room. After her speech, I had the impression that the DGSI sensors did not exist. Or that, if they did exist, they were not in the right place.” Described as almost mute during this meeting, the head of counter-espionage illustrates what many consider to be a failing of French intelligence: not having been able to predict the uprising that is tearing New Caledonia apart.
Two months earlier, three MPs had the same impression as Jean-Jacques Urvoas. On March 14, Davy Rimane, elected from Guyana (Democratic and Republican Left), Tematai Le Gayic (GDR), then representative of Polynesia, and Philippe Gosselin (LR), MP for Manche, were in Noumea, for a fact-finding mission on overseas territories. They had just crisscrossed the territory, collecting the grievances of increasingly angry activists. The first agitated demonstrations had taken place. In a meeting with the High Commissioner, the local equivalent of the prefect, Louis Le Franc, they noted with surprise… the great optimist of the civil servant, despite the fact that he had received the intelligence notes. “He told us that neither the separatists nor the loyalists were capable of mobilizing enough for us to worry about it,” recalls Philippe Gosselin. The MPs exchanged a stunned look. “We told him repeatedly that we risked an explosion by voting for the text in this situation,” adds Davy Rimane. “That there was going to be a tragedy.” As of September 19, 13 deaths have been reported, as well as 300 injured and 2 billion euros of damage, in a situation close to civil war. To deal with this, Beauvau announced to the newspaper The Opinion the dispatch of seven additional mobile force units by September 24, in addition to the 34 already present.
The deputies’ trip will result in a parliamentary pre-report, very lucid on the pro-independence anger. “It was a working document,” says Philippe Gosselin. “It was intended to be reread before publication.” The elected officials will not have the opportunity. In the wake of its drafting, it is leaked in the ranks of LR and Renaissance. Immediately, the rapporteurs receive phone calls from leading figures from both parties. “There was no pressure, but rather tensions,” believes Philippe Gosselin. “We reached a good compromise on the final document, but this episode has added fuel to the fire.”
Parliamentary report leaked
Published on April 29, the final document warns of the extremely tense social situation in Noumea. Citing L’Eveil océanien, a small moderate party seen as a “kingmaker” in New Caledonia, the parliamentarians evoke a “fear of chaos”. They continue: “The very strong mobilization, on both sides, during the demonstrations of the independence supporters and loyalists in Noumea on April 13, must encourage caution. In many ways, the embers are hot.” Premonitory. How could the State have seen nothing coming, or almost nothing? In August 2024, Gérald Darmanin expressed his surprise at this blindness to a Caledonian elected official visiting Paris. In the summer torpor, the Minister of the Interior reread all the notes sent by the DGSI before the riots. There is no trace of the violence to come. Not the slightest warning. “The notes did not give us any indication of the scale of the events,” a government source confirmed. “We were a million miles away from imagining what was going to happen on May 13.”
The subject is highly sensitive, because it concerns a very valuable tool of the state apparatus. “The intelligence reports simply say what is happening, what the prospects for possible developments are, without being able to say that violence will break out on a given day because of such and such people,” Gérald Darmanin’s entourage qualifies today. “They do not predict the future.” Within the government, voices are being raised to admit a “problem with sensors on site.” Accused in Paris as in Noumea of not having taken the warning signals on the ground seriously enough, the Ministry of the Interior is being asked to examine its conscience. “I think that Gérald Darmanin expects to have a commission of inquiry on this subject. And I bet that to anticipate it, he had to reread all the notes from the DGSI. So I wouldn’t be surprised if he could say that ‘no one warned me'”, analyzes Jean-Jacques Urvoas. Despite several warnings, no one, from local elected officials to the highest level of the State, has in any case seemed capable of seeing, or hearing, the insurrection that was coming.
“I have already bought my coffin”
A judicial investigation was opened on May 17 – and has been ongoing since June 20 – against Christian Tein, the spokesperson for the Cellule de coordination des actions de terrain (CCAT), a Kanak independence organization, and 12 other activists, for participating in a criminal association with a view to preparing crimes and offenses. It describes a meticulous organization of the events. The prosecutor’s requisitions, which L’Express was able to consult, highlight an “action plan” with “the aim, in a context of violent radicalization, of destabilizing economic units, administrations and state services in New Caledonia”. “Comprising three “progressive phases”, it involved, according to the investigators, “the destruction of commercial premises and warehouses”, “the blockades of strategic axes”, “acts of looting”, “attacks on people as well as violence against the police with the use of firearms”.
Investigators also cite “vindictive speeches by Tein” made before the riots. In one of them, made five days before the clashes, the man galvanized his supporters, declaring that he wanted to “attack banks, insurance companies, multinationals,” the interests of “those who make money, because they don’t want to see Kanak workers.” “I told the general of the gendarmerie that I have already bought my coffin,” he concluded. An analysis that is disputed by the lawyers of the accused, including François Roux, lawyer for the FLNKS, and Florian Medico, defending Christian Tein. “There is no evidence to incriminate Christian Tein on the main charges against him,” assures Mr. Medico.
Deployment of logistics
The file also points to the “deployment of real logistics” for “the recruitment and mobilization of rioters, the targeting of objectives and the collection of material resources”. Among them: drones, walkie-talkies, but also weapons, in abundant circulation in New Caledonia. “Town halls were targeted, administrative structures, several gendarmerie barracks. Strategic traffic routes were blocked at the same time, insists Yves Dupas, the prosecutor of Noumea, to L’Express. All this suggests a prepared, coordinated plan, with logistics that suggest anticipation.”
In its actions, the CCAT was able to count on a new generation of activists, young and particularly determined. “Its leaders realized the power represented by a large and frustrated youth, breaking with the traditional independence leaders, who placed themselves directly under their control”, analyzes a former High Commissioner. This upheaval is not perceived in Paris or in Noumea, where they have been dealing with the same interlocutors for more than thirty years. “When you are High Commissioner, you are High Commissioner for all of New Caledonia, not just for Noumea, chides another former occupant of the position, describing civil servants entrenched in the capital. Otherwise, you do not perceive the intimate changes in the archipelago”.
Faulty sensors
At the time reassured by loyalist elected officials, notably former minister Sonia Backès, “sure that she would reach a major agreement with the separatists”, summarises a former High Commissioner, the executive is comforted by the intelligence services’ notes. “The weak signals were not reported, deplores a government source. They were only perceptible in the Kanak world.” Obtaining the information would have required a difficult infiltration in New Caledonia, this “village” where “everyone knows each other”, notes David Guyenne, president of the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry: “Honestly, anyone is capable of saying who is part of the general intelligence on the archipelago”. Another problem, even more sensitive, would also hamper the action of the services. “The policy implemented since Nicolas Sarkozy, placing people born overseas in posts on their territory has been to the detriment of intelligence, believes a source within the executive. When the sensors are local, we should not be surprised that they provide truncated or attenuated information.”
Having been permanently shaken up by the intelligence reform carried out by the right in 2008, territorial intelligence, the successors of the legendary “RG”, seem to have lost some of their acuity. “It’s a three-pronged problem,” analyses former prefect Jean-Jacques Brot. The first is that the staff have never really recovered from this reform. There is a problem of motivation, training, and selection. The second is the ‘Caledonisation’ of jobs. The third comes from the elimination of research offices.” These bodies, present in the High Commissions and prefectures, depended on the military intelligence directorate and provided valuable notes to the civil servants in office. “They were observers capable of providing analyses of political developments and prospects, which territorial intelligence does not do,” observes Jean-Jacques Brot. Previously Prefect of Guadeloupe and Mayotte, then High Commissioner in New Caledonia, the former senior civil servant has experienced both eras: “We have lost the capacity for analysis for the decision-maker, that is to say the prefectural authority, then the governmental authority.” It is now up to the High Commissioners and the Prefects to extend their own intelligence networks. With more or less success.
Without eyes, without ears, it is a State that seems to be moving forward blindly that wanted to carry out a major reform in New Caledonia. “The service notes arrive in a continuous flow, and we always ask ourselves the question of being able to make them not only an immediate information note, but also a product for making political forecasts. This exercise is a real difficulty for the services”, admits an ambassador, an expert on the region. The possibility of a possible failure of the intelligence services must not make us lose sight of political responsibility. “There is always the temptation, among the hierarchs, a fortiori among political circles, to claim ‘we were not told anything'”, observes this diplomat. With the parliamentary session starting on October 1, several deputies, from both the right and the left, say they want to launch a commission of inquiry into New Caledonia.
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