High risks in Sarkozy's three wars

French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Photo / AP

President Nicolas Sarkozy is playing for his political future after committing France to fighting three wars at the same time - something last seen in the empire-building days of the 19th century.

With United Nations' blessing, French troops and helicopters in the West African state of Ivory Coast are in combat against the militiamen of its self-declared president, Laurent Gbagbo, the navy and air force are in action against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's men in Libya and ground forces and warplanes are fighting the Taleban in Afghanistan.

All told, about 12,000 French troops are in peacekeeping or combat missions around the world.

Sarkozy inherited the Afghan war from his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, but the wars in Libya and Ivory Coast bear his hallmark - a mixture of resolve and energy that, say critics, can also carry the downside of ego and recklessness.

According to the daily Le Parisien, as Gaddafi's troops prepared to strike the killer blow in March, Sarkozy promised rebel leaders France would "go it alone if need be" to save them.

Sarkozy, it added, had not even told Foreign Minister Alain Juppe of this promise - a source of some dismay, as Juppe was trying at the time to cobble together a coalition of like-minded countries and secure a UN resolution to support them.

The campaigns in Ivory Coast and Libya have high public support, because these operations are seen as being humanitarian and saving civilian lives.

But leading figures in the opposition Socialist Party accuse Sarkozy of intervening in Libya to mask his failures in Tunisia and Egypt, where he backed autocratic regimes almost until they were overthrown.

Some paint him as a cynic, seeking to reverse an unprecedented popularity slump before elections in May next year.

Others worry about accusations of neo-colonialism or the credibility of Libya's rebels and Alassane Ouattara, backed by the UN as the real winner in Ivory Coast's presidential ballot.

"What assurance does France have that the Libyan opposition is upholding the rights that are justifying the coalition's intervention?" asked the daily Liberation.

"Worse, in both countries, the opposition will always look, in the eyes of their people, as having gained power by being trucked in by a foreign army."

Pierre Sane, former secretary-general of Amnesty International and now head of a think tank, Imagine Africa International, said Sarkozy's policies were a mess.

"French diplomacy in Africa continues to be caught up in a confusion of personal interests, networks and logic of the state," he said.

But the critics have been unable to lay a glove on Sarkozy. A poll of voter last week found that two-thirds back the Libyan intervention.

"When you hear criticism that France is acting like a neo-colonial power and all that, it's just an attempt to stir things up," Jacques Myard, a National Assembly MP and a member of the legislature's foreign affairs committee, told the Herald.

Even so, backing for operations in Afghanistan - started in 2001 and also supported by the United Nations - has fallen sharply.

Only 28 per cent of French adults, asked in February, supported France's intervention there - a sure sign of the risks when a war drags on, death tolls mount and costs escalate at a time of high unemployment and belt-tightening at home.

Sarkozy and his ministers have been talking up the idea that the demise of Gbagbo and Gaddafi is just a matter of time.

But a stalemate could soon make these declarations look dangerously misplaced, says Markus Kaim, an analyst with a German think tank, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

"There is a more introspective mood these days, although I wouldn't call it isolationist," he said.

"As in the United States, people are most concerned about jobs and financial burdens than about the state of poor people around the globe. It will become a very difficult political endeavour for the government to explain why people are involved in Libya if it becomes clear that the situation hasn't changed.

"It may not be in 10 days from now, but in three months maybe. It can change from being a political asset, as it is right now, to a political liability."