France has condemned the “deceptive” depiction of its national military forces in Marvel’s 2022 film “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” on Sunday. The movie shows French mercenaries being detained while attempting to plunder natural resources from the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda.
“I strongly condemn this false and deceptive representation of our armed forces,” French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said in a statement on social media, in response to a clip from the November movie posted by a journalist.
Journalist Jean Bexon posted a minute-long clip from the superhero movie on Saturday, where Queen Ramonda of Wakanda informs a United Nations Security Council meeting of the African kingdom’s objection about a recent incursion by a group of French soldiers looking for a fictional metal called vibranium.
Bexon captioned the clip, “The evil French mercenaries operating in Mali are dressed like soldiers from Operation Barkhane,” referring to an anti-terrorism military operation launched by Paris in Mali in 2014.
“I am thinking of and honouring the 58 French soldiers who died defending Mali, at its request, in the face of Islamist terrorist groups,” the French minister wrote.
In 2014, Paris launched an anti-terrorist mission in Mali called Operation Barkhane. Since 2014, the operation expanded the French presence to approximately 5,500 troops in several of the former French colonies of the Sahel region, including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, and Niger. These nations have been worst affected by the jihadist insurgency that has plagued the Sahel region since 2011.
Operation Barkhane was formally wrapped up in November 2022 after the withdrawal of French troops in August of that year, as relations between Mali and France became strained after the 2021 coup in the West African state. The pullout was preceded by protests against the French presence in Mali and accusations by the Malian government that Paris supported terrorist groups inside the African country by providing them with intelligence, arms and ammunition.
Later, French Defense Minister Sebastien Lecornu said that the French military had proved unable to successfully participate in wide-scale operations.